Don Libby
Well-known member
80mm f/8 1/125 ISO50
As many of you already know I switched using a Leica M9 returning to the Phase DF as my walk around camera November last year. It's 7-months and countless images later (although if you really must know I can provide a near exact total). Up until March I had been using 3-lenses as a primary setup to compliment my 3-lens Cambo WRS kit of 35, 72, and 120mm with a Phase 80, 150 and Mamiya 300. March I added a wonderful Mamiya 120 MF macro lens. Side note is that the entire kit was provided by my dealer Capture Integration. That is after testing, I then paid for it.
80mm f/2.8 1/250 ISO50
There's been a few here who for whatever the reason think digital medium format isn't any good and I seen a long list of complaints of how the DF just isn't any good. I don't know about others however after 7-months and close to 50GB of images I'm just as pleased now as I was when it was delivered to test.
80mm f/2.8 1/250 ISO50
I added the new battery in the DF while visiting Dave Gallagher in March and that very same battery is still sitting in the body. I haven't needed to charge it and have had no issues using it.
I will confess to doing a stupid thing on my part. I use the P65 on both my WRS and DF and I switch the shutter settings according to the camera. I spent last week in Jackson WY in meetings and shooting landscape switching back and forth between the 2-systems and forgot to change my setting which when moving back to the DF caused a problem which in turn almost caused me a meltdown until I stopped and thought it out. Just goes to prove you really need to know and be familiar with your gear.
80mm f/2.8 1/250 ISO50
All this brings me to the topic of focusing with the DF. We had stopped by Jenny Lake in the Grand Teton Nation Park our last shooting day. I had the P65 reattached to the DF and had the Phase One 80mm lens. We stopped and walked by a rock outcropping where we found the little guy included here. No processing has been down other than to resize each original file to fit into a Jpeg and then including a 100% crop of the original image. I'll readily agree that the first image sucks. Call it buck fever. You can also call it operator error. Anyway look at the samples and I think you can see there's little to no problems focusing. I'm within 3-feet of the little guy and he refused to stop moving, darting back and forth in the rock crevasse behind him.
80mm f/2.8 1/250 ISO50
I almost forgot to add - these were all auto focus.
Don
I'll be the first to say that not all of these are super clear/sharp. I'll also add that I could of fudged a couple of images and done some processing which would have sharpen them however I wanted as always to share real world actual hands on experience vs anecdotal.