routlaw
Member
Shelby
Allow me to throw my two cents worth in, not as an MFDB owner (though I have had a somewhat morbid fascination with them albeit a financially unjustifiable one for a long period of time) but rather as a user of virtually all of the Nikon pro DSLR's since the classic D1 and the Betterlight scan back. Having photographed a plethora of product catalogs dealing with all sorts of fabrics from cordura, pack cloth and various clothing garments over the years, often acts of technical desperation needed to be implemented.
Putting camera gear of all sorts aside for a brief moment, please understand eliminating moire at the camera level is only part of the battle. Moire can also occur during pre press depending on a number of factors such as angle of screen, stochastic screening vs line screen, the "pattern frequency" of the cloth being screened, and the size of reproduction for garment or product will all come into play. Years ago we shot a well known backpacking companies product catalogs on 4x5 and MF film but the drum scans/screening wreaked moire havoc with the packcloth. The offset printing industry at the time apparently had not quite dialed in the stochastic screening method. Even downsizing for web usage can create moire patterns where it did not even exist before. I have had this happen on numerous occasions with canvas paintings photographed with the Betterlight, go figure.
Back at the camera level one method I have learned to virtually eliminate all moire when it crops up with my Nikon cameras including the D3 (9 micron pixels) is to stop way down with an aperture in the neighborhood of F22. It never ceases to amaze me what cloths will or will not moire for a given sensor and sure enough this week while photographing some cloth products we immediately had a colorful zebra pattern to deal with. Curiously it came from a very unsuspecting cloth. Using the D3 with an 85 macro T/S lens I moved in closer cutting the shooting distance in half, stitched two frames together (via PS merge) and stopped down to approximately F22, and virtually if not completely eliminated all moire.
To my surprise the loss in resolution or detail due too diffraction loss with such a small aperture was not to noticeable in this case. I see no reason why the same would not hold true with an MFDB system either.
Sorry for the long winded post but hope this helps.
Rob
Allow me to throw my two cents worth in, not as an MFDB owner (though I have had a somewhat morbid fascination with them albeit a financially unjustifiable one for a long period of time) but rather as a user of virtually all of the Nikon pro DSLR's since the classic D1 and the Betterlight scan back. Having photographed a plethora of product catalogs dealing with all sorts of fabrics from cordura, pack cloth and various clothing garments over the years, often acts of technical desperation needed to be implemented.
Putting camera gear of all sorts aside for a brief moment, please understand eliminating moire at the camera level is only part of the battle. Moire can also occur during pre press depending on a number of factors such as angle of screen, stochastic screening vs line screen, the "pattern frequency" of the cloth being screened, and the size of reproduction for garment or product will all come into play. Years ago we shot a well known backpacking companies product catalogs on 4x5 and MF film but the drum scans/screening wreaked moire havoc with the packcloth. The offset printing industry at the time apparently had not quite dialed in the stochastic screening method. Even downsizing for web usage can create moire patterns where it did not even exist before. I have had this happen on numerous occasions with canvas paintings photographed with the Betterlight, go figure.
Back at the camera level one method I have learned to virtually eliminate all moire when it crops up with my Nikon cameras including the D3 (9 micron pixels) is to stop way down with an aperture in the neighborhood of F22. It never ceases to amaze me what cloths will or will not moire for a given sensor and sure enough this week while photographing some cloth products we immediately had a colorful zebra pattern to deal with. Curiously it came from a very unsuspecting cloth. Using the D3 with an 85 macro T/S lens I moved in closer cutting the shooting distance in half, stitched two frames together (via PS merge) and stopped down to approximately F22, and virtually if not completely eliminated all moire.
To my surprise the loss in resolution or detail due too diffraction loss with such a small aperture was not to noticeable in this case. I see no reason why the same would not hold true with an MFDB system either.
Sorry for the long winded post but hope this helps.
Rob
...I'm almost onboard as a general creative director for a small clothing company I've shot for (meaning I'll be shooting, laying out the catalogs, designing the website, running the blog, getting everyone coffee )... and we're looking to improve the equipment we're shooting with.
I'm presently on track towards a p30/-30+... but have recently seen that original p45 backs go well below $9K and p25 backs at around $5-6K.
So, speaking in terms of resolution, how do the 22mp backs fair against the canons/nikons/sony ... and is there a huge difference between the 22 and 31 mp backs?...