What started me thinking for this post was a previous form post where it was mentioned the owners 4150 tends to stay in the safe. After reading that I realized that in the past 6 months, so has mine during many shoots. The shooting experience for me with the 4150 just is not the same as the 3100, which is tragic as the image quality from the 4150 is excellent.
Based on the current posts on this site and others, I believe it's fair to state that the average owner of the 4150 is disappointed over either missing features or current firmware bugs. However after searching this site I really could not find a post dedicated to the issues. Not sure if Phase One regularly checks this site, but it's a good idea to list issues in a public forum.
I feel also that what many owners are concerned about are "missing" features that were available in the 3100 or earlier CMOS backs. Sure Phase One, never guaranteed that these missing features would be available with the 4150, but they did make a big deal about how the new technology in the 4150 would allow for so much easier integration of new features since it was a totally new platform to develop from.
I have listed my issues below in 2 lists, current issues I feel need a fix, and issues that were either overlooked from 3100 or I feel should be addressed. Please note, my first 4150 was very buggy, and seemed to have constant issues that required power on/off rebooting. I was able to replace it with a Value Add loaner back from Phase One and since I received that back the issues I had for card mis-writes or freezes declined considerably. I am grateful to my Dealer, Capture Integration for their assistance with this.
Bugs:
1. Live View is less contrasty and thus makes manual focus harder. I noticed this from day one, and did point it out to my dealer and asked other photographers using the 4150 that had come from the 3100. For me the Live view screen is much harder to dial in a tack sharp manual focus, due to the fact that you see much less contrast in the view. While I still had both my 3100 and new 4150 I did several comparisons and each time the view on the 3100 was much easier to use for me. The focus peaking implementation on the 4150 to me is not the same as peaking as other cameras by other brands, (Nikon, Fuji, Canon etc.) and I find that I don't like the green color used by Phase. (If there is a way to change it white as all other cameras offer, please let me know). Overall the Live View experience for me with the 4150, is nothing like using the 3100, which from day one was excellent and allowed me to quickly dial in focus on a shot.
2. Auto Exposure during Live View is terrible, as each time it's used the screen blooms from over exposed to under exposed at least 3 to 4 times before finally settling down on a exposure. The exposure slider (similar to the one on the 3100), also seems to need finer tuning for exposure delineation. I just find it a very tedious process, again coming from a 3100.
3. Exposure simulation issues. From day one exposure simulation won't work in low light unless you pop the ISO up to a very high rate. Phase's answer was frame rate so that in low light you just can't use it. Well for 50% of my work, low light is just part of the shot. Exposure Simulation on any CMOS camera I have is so much easier to use and in fact all other cameras I leave in that mode. With the 4150, I just can't use it as even in bright light I find the exposures shown on the backs' LCD are as much as 3/4 a stop under exposed from reality.
4. Frame cropping issue with ES, should have listed this first. Since the latest firmware I continue to see an issue with the top of several images being cropped, between 1/4" ro 1/8 of an inch. With a horizontal image the crop is top, with a vertical image crop is to the left (due to how I rotate the back with a tech camera). This issue albeit not a show stopper is problematic since I tend to shoot a lot of pano's and do them with stitching. When this issue shows up, it just adds to the work flow as you have to crop down the remaining issues in the series. Once it shows in a series of images, I need to reboot the back with a power off/on.
5. 4150 is still buggy at times. I still see times where the back either freezes during a write to the card, most times causing a loss of file, and occasionally the back freezes during power up which requires a battery pull. Just mention this as in 2.5 years of use with the 3100, I never saw these type of issues.
6. 4150 does not correctly read remaining battery life. The 4150 shows 5% warning or less when there is easily 20% to 25% of real battery life remaining. I have confirmed this by charger info (pull the 4150 battery when it starts to blink and charger shows 20% left) and by putting same battery into a 3100, which did not show low battery and allowed me to use the same battery 15 more minutes.
Features that are Missing:
1. No adhoc wifi and Capture Pilot, enough said. Still amazing to me that nothing has been done for this. I still feel it's a tech package issue in that adhoc was left out of the design. I have been told this is not the case, but with wifi, most addressing issues are still hard wired to a card or board, so I am still curious to see why adhoc has not arrived. I guess since there is no support for Capure Pilot for the 4150, there is no need for adhoc, card leading or following the horse issue. For field use there is just no excuse for this. And please Phase One, don't blame it on the current iPad tech as the iPad has grown into a extremely powerful device, easily now capable of editing 4K video.
2. Power share between XF and 4150, only allows you to open the battery door on the back and replace the back's battery. It DOES not allow true power sharing between the XF battery and 4150. With the 3100 and power sharing, you could run easily for 1 hour to 1.5 hours on 2 batteries as the 3100 could pull power from the XF battery. This was a huge advantage for field use and I really miss this.
3. HDMI support for playback, again why is this not available? Any and every other camera that I know of that has HDMI support allows you to view the images in playback mode on an external screen. The 4150 only allows this for Live View, and not playback. I like that Phase finally allowed the user to move around the image during Live View when zoomed into 100% which was missing in the 3100, but it should just be a simple issue to let you preview the image on the same external monitor. Since there is no Capure Pilot support to allow this.
Please feel free to add to this list with new posts as each user has different needs and shoots in different situations.
Paul C
Based on the current posts on this site and others, I believe it's fair to state that the average owner of the 4150 is disappointed over either missing features or current firmware bugs. However after searching this site I really could not find a post dedicated to the issues. Not sure if Phase One regularly checks this site, but it's a good idea to list issues in a public forum.
I feel also that what many owners are concerned about are "missing" features that were available in the 3100 or earlier CMOS backs. Sure Phase One, never guaranteed that these missing features would be available with the 4150, but they did make a big deal about how the new technology in the 4150 would allow for so much easier integration of new features since it was a totally new platform to develop from.
I have listed my issues below in 2 lists, current issues I feel need a fix, and issues that were either overlooked from 3100 or I feel should be addressed. Please note, my first 4150 was very buggy, and seemed to have constant issues that required power on/off rebooting. I was able to replace it with a Value Add loaner back from Phase One and since I received that back the issues I had for card mis-writes or freezes declined considerably. I am grateful to my Dealer, Capture Integration for their assistance with this.
Bugs:
1. Live View is less contrasty and thus makes manual focus harder. I noticed this from day one, and did point it out to my dealer and asked other photographers using the 4150 that had come from the 3100. For me the Live view screen is much harder to dial in a tack sharp manual focus, due to the fact that you see much less contrast in the view. While I still had both my 3100 and new 4150 I did several comparisons and each time the view on the 3100 was much easier to use for me. The focus peaking implementation on the 4150 to me is not the same as peaking as other cameras by other brands, (Nikon, Fuji, Canon etc.) and I find that I don't like the green color used by Phase. (If there is a way to change it white as all other cameras offer, please let me know). Overall the Live View experience for me with the 4150, is nothing like using the 3100, which from day one was excellent and allowed me to quickly dial in focus on a shot.
2. Auto Exposure during Live View is terrible, as each time it's used the screen blooms from over exposed to under exposed at least 3 to 4 times before finally settling down on a exposure. The exposure slider (similar to the one on the 3100), also seems to need finer tuning for exposure delineation. I just find it a very tedious process, again coming from a 3100.
3. Exposure simulation issues. From day one exposure simulation won't work in low light unless you pop the ISO up to a very high rate. Phase's answer was frame rate so that in low light you just can't use it. Well for 50% of my work, low light is just part of the shot. Exposure Simulation on any CMOS camera I have is so much easier to use and in fact all other cameras I leave in that mode. With the 4150, I just can't use it as even in bright light I find the exposures shown on the backs' LCD are as much as 3/4 a stop under exposed from reality.
4. Frame cropping issue with ES, should have listed this first. Since the latest firmware I continue to see an issue with the top of several images being cropped, between 1/4" ro 1/8 of an inch. With a horizontal image the crop is top, with a vertical image crop is to the left (due to how I rotate the back with a tech camera). This issue albeit not a show stopper is problematic since I tend to shoot a lot of pano's and do them with stitching. When this issue shows up, it just adds to the work flow as you have to crop down the remaining issues in the series. Once it shows in a series of images, I need to reboot the back with a power off/on.
5. 4150 is still buggy at times. I still see times where the back either freezes during a write to the card, most times causing a loss of file, and occasionally the back freezes during power up which requires a battery pull. Just mention this as in 2.5 years of use with the 3100, I never saw these type of issues.
6. 4150 does not correctly read remaining battery life. The 4150 shows 5% warning or less when there is easily 20% to 25% of real battery life remaining. I have confirmed this by charger info (pull the 4150 battery when it starts to blink and charger shows 20% left) and by putting same battery into a 3100, which did not show low battery and allowed me to use the same battery 15 more minutes.
Features that are Missing:
1. No adhoc wifi and Capture Pilot, enough said. Still amazing to me that nothing has been done for this. I still feel it's a tech package issue in that adhoc was left out of the design. I have been told this is not the case, but with wifi, most addressing issues are still hard wired to a card or board, so I am still curious to see why adhoc has not arrived. I guess since there is no support for Capure Pilot for the 4150, there is no need for adhoc, card leading or following the horse issue. For field use there is just no excuse for this. And please Phase One, don't blame it on the current iPad tech as the iPad has grown into a extremely powerful device, easily now capable of editing 4K video.
2. Power share between XF and 4150, only allows you to open the battery door on the back and replace the back's battery. It DOES not allow true power sharing between the XF battery and 4150. With the 3100 and power sharing, you could run easily for 1 hour to 1.5 hours on 2 batteries as the 3100 could pull power from the XF battery. This was a huge advantage for field use and I really miss this.
3. HDMI support for playback, again why is this not available? Any and every other camera that I know of that has HDMI support allows you to view the images in playback mode on an external screen. The 4150 only allows this for Live View, and not playback. I like that Phase finally allowed the user to move around the image during Live View when zoomed into 100% which was missing in the 3100, but it should just be a simple issue to let you preview the image on the same external monitor. Since there is no Capure Pilot support to allow this.
Please feel free to add to this list with new posts as each user has different needs and shoots in different situations.
Paul C