Brad i am working on this right NOW . LOL
I came up with a neat idea that already exists but with a few modifications to save money and come up with a P&S MF back. I'm probably going to sell my Horseman sliding back with finder and get this Alpa 12 TC idea instead. Getting prices now
I just don't do a lot of stitching and shifting so this makes better sense for me because I like to shoot street
Brad - I'm a great advocate of using equipment for other than its intended purpose - I've been using an M8 as an MF for a year plus by stitching. The light weight and mobility are fabulous. On the subject of using MF for street my limited experience, however, suggests some caution - you might consider renting or borrowing first. Here are the issues:
1. Camera choice - I agree with Guy that the Alpa 12 TC is the better choice than the Horseman in this application, but you won't be getting a two for one (if you're interested in view camera movements) because the Alpa has very limited movements. Its advantage is that it's more compact and lighter.
2. Lens choice. You have to go wide here because you'll be using zone focus or hyperfocus - you'll need all of the depth of field you can get. Wide works for my shooting style so I tried doing a hand-held walk around with my Horseman, a 35mm Rodenstock Digitar and a Hasselblad 39 back. I practiced with rocks, trees, furniture, pictures and other inanimate objects, as well as my long-suffering wife, to try to get a sense of how the combination works. I decided not to tackle the streets of New York with this unfamiliar combination.
3. Color shift. As a result of 2 (shooting with a wide) you need to deal with color shift. I found that a single reference "flat frame" shot at the beginning of the session did the trick. Of course this doesn't matter if you're shooting for B&W.
4. Depth of field. This is the key issue. Sean Reid has done a great job of educating us to the fact that small sensor cameras have greater depth of field than you would expect. The converse is also true: large sensor cameras have less depth of field than you would expect - in the case of the H 39 back, much less.
5. Limited f stop selection. One of the consequences of item 4 is that you probably can't consistently shoot faster than f8 or f11: depth of field is just too narrow to deal with close and moving objects. On the other hand you can't really stop down to f16 or a higher numbers to help on the focus issue because the effect of diffraction degrading sharpness becomes very obvious - at large f numbers the back provides dramatically better resolution than the lens can deliver. The Rodenstock's sweet spot appears to be about f8.
6. Focus. As a result 4 and 5 focus is hit or miss. Try this yourself: put your widest lens on your MF, set it at f8 and manual focus and exposure, lock the mirror up and walk around shooting every-day objects based on zone focusing. Most of my shots were at least somewhat out of focus. You can probably do better.
7. Poor low light ability. Because of item 5 above you can't open beyond f8 and my back limits me to ISO 400. This means that in an urban setting even in daylight you will have situations that require hand-holding at very slow shutter speeds.
8. Exposure. In general I used a rule of thumb to get close on exposure, or an incident light meter for tough situations, took an exposure, waited 750 milliseconds for the buffer to clear, read the histogram, made an adjustment and then fired a second, real shot. Not the best way of going about "decisive moment" street photography. The alternative is to set the camera up to expose for the average lighting in your situation, leaving some headroom against overexposure, and correct on post processing. Of course with most of these backs to the extent that you try to dig shadow detail out of underexposed files IQ suffers badly.
My bottom line is that I might be able to make this work if I spent a lot of time practicing on focus and worked to bring back my exposure "guestimate" skills from my M3 days. There is someone out there who is doing this (there was a reference to the body of work on this board but I can't find it - sc John may be able to point us to it) but only, I am certain, after a long and focused effort to master it and using it for a look that doesn't depend on razor sharp focus and the resulting three-dimensionality for its impact.
I'm in awe of those who are making this work - for now I'm sticking to using the Horseman as a "view camera" (it excels at this) and an M8 for walk around street stuff.
PS - if you're interested in shifting to make panoramas or parallel vertical lines buy Guy's Horseman!
