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Return of the Warrior

tashley

Subscriber Member
So after several months sojourn at my dealer, for sale, the IQ180 and Phase DF body return to base unsold.

I think the problem was that the dealer is unofficially constrained as to what price they can offer 'nearly new' gear at, so as not to p*ss off Phase. In any event, I heard of a few nibbles but no bite. They did manage to sell my extension tubes, my SK TS and 110LS and Mammy 28mm. So now I'm left with all the meat and little sauce - just an 80mm kit lens and a Cambo with Schneider 35XL.

Mind you, after nearly a year of trying to get wide angled shots that are sharp across the frame on a D800e, my feelings about the boomerang's return are ambivalent rather than negative. Imagine how many crappy lenses I could buy with the cash it would raise if it sold!

;-)
 

Paul2660

Well-known member
Tim

You should try out a Rodenstock 32HW or 28HR on your cambo/IQ180. You should be able to get corner to corner sharpness with either. I would recommend the TS mounts.


Paul Caldwell
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
Tim

You should try out a Rodenstock 32HW or 28HR on your cambo/IQ180. You should be able to get corner to corner sharpness with either. I would recommend the TS mounts.


Paul Caldwell
I was thinking of that a while back but it's just another spend and fundamentally I think the game is over for medium format apart from a small number of people who need the falloff rendition of that sensor size - which I don't. And I think that the number of people who do is likely so small that the economies of scale won't be there to make it feasible at a reasonable price. Not that the current prices of IQ180s new are reasonable my most sane standards!

With care and frustration there are lenses that can do what I need on the D800 but boy is it a long ride away from those sunlit uplands I envisaged a year ago where one could imagine just point and shoot!

In short, we've left one place and not yet quite got to the other - but I don't see any great use in turning back....
 
Is your D800 the plain or the "E" Tim...? I also have both D800s, but never considered selling my Contax 645 neither The Fuji GX680, nor the back (Imacon 528c)... Sold the Sinar P2 though...
 
I always believe in very thoughtful and long term choices... kept my Bronica ETRS/i system for 20 years before I married Contax 645 for the digital age and only divorced the Zinar for the Fuji when the image area shrunken to two inches (almost) width due to the MFDB! Guess what... my Nikkor 16mm f/e, 24 AI-s, 28 AI-s and 35P/C are now from 26 to 30 years old...
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
Is your D800 the plain or the "E" Tim...? I also have both D800s, but never considered selling my Contax 645 neither The Fuji GX680, nor the back (Imacon 528c)... Sold the Sinar P2 though...
Theo, it's the E and I honestly prefer the files to IQ files: the colour maybe not quite as good by a tiny margin but the DR notably better, the ISO performance from another planet, and I so very rarely need to print larger than 40"...
 
Theo, it's the E and I honestly prefer the files to IQ files: the colour maybe not quite as good by a tiny margin but the DR notably better, the ISO performance from another planet, and I so very rarely need to print larger than 40"...
Do you process your "E" with C1P1 or is it with another processor?
 

PeterA

Well-known member
MFD ? ....Death by a thousand cuts T...death by a thousand cuts I am afraid...

May sound like heresy - but the sweet spot for me are the 33-40 megapixel sensors if one wishes to use wides in MF - .. Made that decision a few years ago now - and am glad I saved msyelf a few more tens of thousands in the meantime - although I must admit - not owning an elephant gun was a severe blow to my ego at times.
 

danlindberg

Well-known member
If I was in your shoes I would use the 35XL as a fixed lens, thus no movements on the iq180. If this lens is calibrated to perfection it really should shine even on an 80 mp back without movements. With centrefilter, correct exposure and LCC applied, then this is a small/light killercombo to enjoy and hard to beat!
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
I agree partly Dan: but at ISO 50 and with a CF and the sorts of apertures I use for landscape on it, the 'small and light' goes out the window because of the need for a tripod. I also never quite recovered from a C1 upgrade some time back where many of my LCC shots went AWOL - a known fault apparently. After nearly a year of shooting without LCC on the D800 I really feel that I am 'done with that'. There may be significant problems finding really good landscape wides on the D800 but I would rather concentrate my efforts in that direction!
 

weinlamm

Member
Which leses do you use...? Which angle do you need...?

The Zeiss 21-er, for example, is better than Nikon 14-24 and should work on the D800 very well.
 
MFD ? ....Death by a thousand cuts T...death by a thousand cuts I am afraid...

May sound like heresy - but the sweet spot for me are the 33-40 megapixel sensors if one wishes to use wides in MF - .. Made that decision a few years ago now - and am glad I saved msyelf a few more tens of thousands in the meantime - although I must admit - not owning an elephant gun was a severe blow to my ego at times.
I agree on this... all P1 45+, Sinar 75, Aptus 75/7 and CF39 provide superb images and a great balance between ultimate quality and flexibility... I also love the (now discontinued) Kodak 22mp sensor backs... especially if they are of the 16x MS type (microstep), they do provide the absolute TOP in terms of IQ in stills, while only lack some resolution in single shot, which IMO is the least important factor for great photography.
 

danlindberg

Well-known member
I agree partly Dan: but at ISO 50 and with a CF and the sorts of apertures I use for landscape on it, the 'small and light' goes out the window because of the need for a tripod. I also never quite recovered from a C1 upgrade some time back where many of my LCC shots went AWOL - a known fault apparently. After nearly a year of shooting without LCC on the D800 I really feel that I am 'done with that'. There may be significant problems finding really good landscape wides on the D800 but I would rather concentrate my efforts in that direction!
Point taken.
My last 'outing' I only used my SK72L which means no LCC and that does spoil you. I agree fully that LCC is a pita workflow!
When it comes to tripod and long exposures, this I am so used to that I don't give it a second thought, but can absolutely see people finding this cumbersome and slow...

Still, imho I think that in the right condition it is hard to beat a tech cam/35XL(fixed)/IQ180/tripod....and I for one would 'seek' conditions suitable for this setup ;)
 

tashley

Subscriber Member
Which leses do you use...? Which angle do you need...?

The Zeiss 21-er, for example, is better than Nikon 14-24 and should work on the D800 very well.
I have that lens. Good on a D800e but not great by any means. It is part of my 'meta-thesis' that the D800 is a place towards which we are headed rather than somewhere we have arrived: the camera (as long as you don't expect the AF to be reliable across its offered range of uses) is great but there are very, very few lenses that can keep up. I have a thread in the Nikon forum about the Sigma 35mm F1.4 - which, unless mine is a spectacularly bad copy, can't keep up. The Zeiss 21 can't keep up. Even the Zeiss Makro Planar 100mm can't keep up.

The D800 is very, very demanding and it leaves most of the lenses we think of as amazing looking lacking... but when future lenses catch up (new ranges from various people) and if someone has the balls to make something in the range between 24 and 35mm which has a max aperture of F5.6 and which places all its emphasis on across the frame performance, then it will really mark the point at which, for me, MFD is just totally dead...
 
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