achromatic

[danlindberg]

I have googled as much as I can, but do not find a lot. The P45 achromatic has been around for some time and I have not read or heard anything about a 'new achromatic' anywhere! Imagine an IQ180 or Credo80 achromatic! :thumbs:

I for one think it is great with the introduction of the Leica M B&W. Hopefully that means the concept is not forgotten.

If everything was up to me (which ofcourse it isn't) then I would choose a modern, big, achromatic back and never look back. Imagine the image quality of an achromatic 80mp back and at the same time no worries about colour casts A dream!

Do you think the achromatic concept is going to continue and get updated or has it already died?

By the way, have you ever seen a used achromatic back for sale. I havn't.

 

[dougpeterson]

I have googled as much as I can, but do not find a lot. The P45 achromatic has been around for some time and I have not read or heard anything about a 'new achromatic' anywhere! Imagine an IQ180 or Credo80 achromatic! :thumbs:

I for one think it is great with the introduction of the Leica M B&W. Hopefully that means the concept is not forgotten.

If everything was up to me (which ofcourse it isn't) then I would choose a modern, big, achromatic back and never look back. Imagine the image quality of an achromatic 80mp back and at the same time no worries about colour casts A dream!

Do you think the achromatic concept is going to continue and get updated or has it already died?

By the way, have you ever seen a used achromatic back for sale. I havn't.

In my opinion the chances are slim to none you will see an aChromatic IQ180 or Credo. It was primarily produced for the scientific/industrial/aerial market and they have been very happy with the aChromatic. In those markets the camera is tethered and remotely operated 99% of the time so the improvements in the UI, LCD of the Credo and IQ are not of very much value.

The vast majority of sales are to companies operating in those markets, so no, you're not likely to see a lot of aChromatics up for sale used. And I'd imagine you could pry it from the cold dead hands of any individual that chose to spend $40k on a black-and-white-only digital back.

The "purity" aspect of shooting a black+white only camera is appealing only to a small number of shooters. But that's a very small market which I think is well served by the Leica brand. The vast majority of shooters, even relatively die hard B+W shooters prefer color systems for the obvious post-processing flexibility, especially when talking about systems which are $30k+

If the consumer market for the M9 Monochrom is small then the consumer market for a $50k+ IQ180 Monochrom is even tinier.

On the other hand we (Digital Transitions) have already taken an order for a Credo 80IR even before the Credo is shipping. So the consumer interest in being able to capture infrared and UV is there, and the appeal of using a system with a good UI, live view, and great 100% review of focus is huge since IR and UV have special focusing and composition challenges. These IR-capable versions of existing backs are FAR easier to produce than a fully-monochromatic back, still allow standard color capture, and can be converted back to a standard-color digital back should the user want to (e.g. to sell it used).

 

[danlindberg]

Thank you very much Dough for that very detailed answer :salute:

Most of what you say (deep inside) I did guess already (but wasn't sure), and all you say makes perfect sense to me.

I think my hopes went up with the Leica M special....

Oh well, I can always tick 'convert to greyscale....'

 

[yaya]

To make things easier to grasp, the big Dalsa sensors are designed as RGB sensors and as such do not have a monochrome version. The largest B&W "photographic" sensor is the Kodak 50MP and this one doesn't present a big enough improvement over the 39MP which is in the P45+ Achromatic...

Hope this makes sense

Yair

 

[GrahamWelland]

I haven't ever seen an achromatic+ on the used market but I have seen and held one in the flesh, or more importantly had a chance to see up close some amazing prints from one @ Bear Images. Pretty interesting piece of equipment and certainly very interesting if you want full spectrum imaging support vs just B&W. Without seeing a side by side B&W print taken of the same subject under the same conditions it would be tough to gauge just how much of difference the achromatic back is vs. a B&W image from an equivalent P45+.

However, I can certainly see the appeal ... :thumbs:

 

[Stefan Steib]

Dan

there are several choices to get a large pure BW chip.

Once in a while there are Dicomed Bigshots sold on ebay. While this is certainly a pest using and real vintage technology, the pure BW images under controlled lighting are definitely worth looking at. I did several portraits back when we had our Bigshot and these really looked great.

now the Achromatic - hard to get- from the discussed reasons. Nobody not having a very good reason buys these.

alternative: 50 Mpix Megavision E7 BW back see

MegaVision E7 Professional Camera Backs

using a blank Kodak chip probably THE actual best way to do all kind of scientific repro- especially multispectral.

then there is a variety of scientific cameras e.g. these
(up to 29 Mpix also interline)
SVS-VISTEK - The Focal Point of Machine Vision

regards
Stefan