dougpeterson
Workshop Member
The strange idea here is that focal plane shutters cause more vibrations than leaf shutters?I just went through your links. Many of them are not really discussing the problems of shutter vibration at all. And if they do, they are passing comments. As Darr noted, you are dealing with experienced photographers. I get your company is built on the idea of "absolute quality" and you need that with your price model. But marketing and actual applications are not the same. You have made valuable contributions at GetDPI, but, as noted above, you tend to mitigate the positive nature of those contributions by push strange ideas that are not accurate and are condescending in the face of other experience with products you are critical of.
quotes from me on those threads:
Sounds like you are discovering how carefully one must use a 60 megapixel sensor when dealing with shutter speeds like 1/20th of a second with a long focal plane lens. The Hassy H body uses leaf shutter lenses (and leaf shutter lenses only) - this has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that there is less net-motion caused by the shutter during the exposure (disadvantages would include a low maximum shutter speed, and increased weight/size/manufacturing-cost of the lens, and a tendency towards showing diffraction earlier in the f-stop range).
The DF body can use both leaf shutter lenses and focal plane lenses. When using a focal plane lens the motion of the shutter needs to be accounted for. The motion (or vibration/bounce) of the shutter is insignificant at most shutter speeds but when using a longer lens in the "danger zone" of 1/4th to 1/15th (or so) it will be a challenge. You'll want to be very careful of your tripod/head selection and increase your self timer (used after the mirror up) to be several seconds rather than 1 or 2 seconds. Carrying a high quality ND or polarizing filter can also help you jump the system down the stop needed to get out of that range.
Many many many of our landscape shooters use this lens and love it. All of them have had to learn through trial and error which tripods, which heads, and what settings will take full advantage of the P65+ 60 megapixel full-frame sensor.
By the way the "mirror-dampening" and "shutter-bounce-reduction" of the DF is already the best of any focal plane MF body I've used. I'm sure this will always be an area they work on (like every company always works on autofocus), but they cant' change physics.
I have 8000+ posts between here and LL and it's not as easy as you'd think to search for posts only from you. But the above quotes I found in a few minutes of searching are pretty clear.You need a GREAT tripod/head combination and great technique to ensure you get full use out of the (Mamiya/Team-Phase-One) 300mm. It's absolutely possible, but camera shake, shutter bounce, focus accuracy are all pretty challenging with that lens.
The point being that it's not new for me to point out that focal plane shutters cause more vibration than leaf shutters and that, in some cases this can be problematic for image quality.
I get that I'm biased so everything I say will be scrutinized extra carefully, but this is really not a controversial statement. In fact Christopher mentioned it earlier in this very thread.
Notably, in many cases you can now (as of the last couple years) use sensor-based shutter (“ES”) on systems that normally use a focal plane shutter. In other cases you can use the leaf shutter rather than the focal plane shutter, when the camera/lens combo allows. So having a FPS does not always mean you must use it; obviously when it’s not in use it does not cause any vibration.
This is neither here, nor there, but the larger organizations we work with are, by far, the most technically challenging to satisfy.Yes, it is easy to sell to larger organizations with boatloads of money and no real knowledge of the photographic process
For example, we made a custom film scanning rig for the Library of Congress FSA collection. There were several pages of very dense technical specifications along with specific testing methodology that would be used to evaluate them (plus another several dozen pages worth of vanilla government contract wording; don't get me started on that). Even at initial delivery I'm very confident saying we had delivered the best performing film scanner (at least within their use case). But we had to revise/improve the system twice (over the course of many months of R+D and testing) to pass every one of their tests.
Individuals often ask about sharpness, and want to see raw files, and do their own tests (these are very valid ways to test a camera and we are very glad to oblige). Large institutions usually want to systematically benchmark performance through a series of methodologically rigorous tests such as those outlined in the FADGI guidelines. That too is a valid (though very different) way of testing gear and we are also glad to oblige it.
I may have responded with less than full generosity to Gerald. He has directly insulted me several times in this thread. But I choose to be here and given that choice it's my job to take that kind of direct and personal abuse on the chin. He indeed had some valid points which I feel I've now addressed and incorporated into my response.I guess what I don't get is your response to the obvious frustration with your comments. Perhaps it is just misunderstanding. But as a representative of a company, your default position is to double down rather than to try to clear up the misunderstanding.
In retrospect I think I was also needlessly dismissive of Narikin, and (assuming you'r reading) I apologize to you, Narikin for that.
I appreciate you calling me out on it; though, I do not think it's a consistent trend ("default position") you seem to. In general I think I respond quickly to corrections or requests for clarification. That's my goal in the very least. I acknowledge I respond to corrections and requests for clarifications far more readily when they come packaged as something other than a personal attack, which is a human failing of mine.
I do find it rather annoying when I'm given zero benefit of the doubt and instead someone jumps immediately to a "you're a dirty rotten liar" but I need to learn to suck it up, move on, and see if there is any factually accurate point underlying that fairly awful veneer.
This is certainly not how DT operates.This is one reason I don't use dealers. Every time I had a problem with something I bought, the dealer that was so nice during the purchase, suddenly changes and forgets all about the support that was offered. And when I was in charge in institutional purchases (item budgets approaching the million mark), dealer behavior was very much noted and sales were lost to those that did not measure up.
Can you be specific: have you had this experience with DT? If you have please let me know when so I can look into the details to see if we can learn any lessons and do better in the future. If you have not had this experience with DT I would appreciate you clarifying it so we are not painted in that broad brush.
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