Another benefit of the S2 lenses that should not be discounted is they are all fully weather and dust sealed, and allow for full time, clutchless manual focusing. Leica uses an optical sensor on the manual focus ring to disengage the clutch automatically and allow for perfectly geared and incredibly smooth manual focus operation.
Weather sealing - no argument. A strength. Though in four years I've only seen two customers with water damage to a Mamiya, Phase One, or Hasselblad and one of those was dropped in the ocean during a beach shoot. So the incremental value may not be extraordinary, but no doubt there.
I would respectfully disagree that there is any Phase One lens that would beat the quality of the S2-180mm lens. The 180mm is essentially perfect.
How does the S2 180mm perform at f/2.8?
Seriously - both the 150D and S2 180 are extraordinarily good lenses. Nitpicking between them would only be for bragging rights. The only real difference to me is the extra half a stop can come in handy for hand holding and ultra-thin DOF effects (especially considering the enhanced thin-DOF-effect provided by a full frame sensor).
In any case they are really not directly comparable as the 150D on a FF sensor is significantly wider than the S2 180 on the smaller S2 sensor. A fast portrait S2 lens would fill this gap if and when it ships.
Abobe worked with Leica to provide lens profiles for Adobe Lightroom 3, users will note there is no lens profile for the 180mm lens. When we asked them about this, their reply was simply "no profile is needed."
P.S. the Phase One 150mm D is also not provided any lens corrections in C1 (unlike e.g. the 45mm D and most of the other lenses) for the same reason. Not much to correct.
It is popular to say that the S2 is a "crop sensor." This is a misnomer, as the S2 and its lenses were built from scratch, so there is no comparable predecessor. The benefit of using a "full frame" medium format digital camera such as the IQ180 is so that lenses (many of which were designed in the film era), for example the 80mm, are actually 80mm instead of something a bit longer due to a crop factor. On the S2, the 70mm lens is a 70mm lens, and will always be as such.
...?
I think you're misnomering a bit yourself. But I guess it depends on your point of reference.
"crop" probably is unfair though as it does not recognize - as you state - that Leica picked this sensor size for this platform forever. "mid-sized" would work better except it could be confused with medium format which traditionally started at 6x4.5. What would you suggest we call it when comparing things like DOF and effective focal length? (keep in mind the forum will be viewed by a wide range of people with/without specific previous experience/knowledge about the various sensor sizes).
And just so we're clear there are four - four - lenses shipping for the S2, so the fact that some of the Phase/Mamiya lenses are older designs (e.g. the 35D which is only an "ok" lens) is not as important as the fact that there are no less than 8 (upwards of 10 depending on definition of "designed in the film era") lenses that were designed for modern digital backs and perform very well. So I don't think you want to make too fine a point of that
.
Doug, to comment on the tethering speed, the S2's tethering speed has improved considerably since its introduction. I will agree that early on, the tethering was very slow. With improvements in camera firmware and Lightroom, tethering speed is now a non-issue. Additionally, Leica Image Shuttle provides an instant preview using a small, 2 megapixel jpeg that comes up in about 1 second while the main DNG file is transferred over the wire.
...Tethering speed is a "non issue"? I think you want to be careful of marketing versus real world. I'll assume you meant "works very well for many photographers".
S2 Tethering has improved greatly and the Image Shuttle system is a great idea. Notably you cannot currently get this sort of low-res fast-preview using any other medium format system (though a near-full res preview on a fast computer with an IQ140 is available), and there are good camera controls from the computer which is useful in a small but important number of specific tethered uses (e.g. shooting a camera from a lift).
However, given that many photographers, used to Canon 5DII speeds, find the IQ140 and DM40 "slow" when shooting tethered despite being capable of 70+ frames (at 40mp) I don't think I'd ever say tethering speed is a "non issue". Speak to digital techs in LA, NYC, and Miami and they'll tell you that some (certainly not all) photographers can't possibly get enough speed.
Last time we tested S2 tethering it could not come anywhere close to the 70+ frames/minute of the IQ140 (or 70ish frames of the P40+ or even the 55+ frames/minute of the IQ160 at 60 megapixels). This test was run after the firmware update that provided compressed raws and the release of a few revisions of Image Shuttle. Perhaps you can provide a number of frames captured per minute with the absolute latest firmware on the S2 and a screaming computer?
I would strongly advise against using Capture One to process S2 files, as the default sharpening is far too high and I find that it tends to quickly introduce sharpening artifacts. Using Adobe Lightroom's sharpening settings will give you the perfect balance of detail and smoothness. As we have figured out the perfect recipe for S2 sharpening at all ISO settings, we have Lightroom presets for every ISO that we happily share.
The default sharpening in C1 is too high for the S2. I'd suggest creating you own set of presets. But it seems you feel that LR default settings are also not ideal and suggest creating custom presets (or using yours). So... why would "strongly suggest against" C1 on this basis?
S2 lens profiles and a better default color profile, along with great DAM and down-stream features (e.g. web galleries) are good reasons to use LR rather than C1.
HDR-Tonemapping (without leaving raw) to take advantage of the S2's great DR, a great interface to correct perspective to help with the lack of a Leica PC lens, the color editor (great for working with skin tones), and great mass-editing features (copying/applying to hundreds of images is much faster to fully render than in LR) are good reasons to use C1 rather than LR.
I'm not convinced default sharpening is a reason to use either for the S2.
Ultimately, I recommend testing out every system you are interested in. Perhaps you can even arrange getting both a Phase One back and an S2 at the same time, and do the head to head comparisons yourself.
Couldn't agree more!
Though in his post he stated he already has a Phase system. Josh, us, or a variety of other Leica dealers can get you a demo of the S2 if you want to see how it works for you.
Doug Peterson
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