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Alpa 12 Plus Announcement

f8orbust

Active member
I think the days of movements being a necessity for any kind of photography are at the end of their lifetime.

Victor
I think there's a lot of truth in that statement - stick a wide angle lens and a 150MP DB on the camera and you have a lot of room to crop and yet still retain a high resolution image - higher in fact than MFDBs of just a few years ago (though you really need to be rigorous in terms of your technique to get close to realising all those 150MP).

That said, I still like to do as much in-camera as possible because i) time in the great outdoors is worth far more to me than sitting in front of a computer tweaking things that could have been sorted in the field, and ii) it just feels ... right.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Exactly - whilst you can crop/bend images the original 100mp will always be better.
 
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MrSmith

Member
I think the days of movements being a necessity for any kind of photography are at the end of their lifetime.

Victor
i have to disagree. 90% of my work is shot with a cambo actus. i wouldn’t want to change the way i work and make compromises by using a non-movement camera system.
i shoot mostly tabletop still-life and for that movements are essential and often for reasons a landscape photographer might not realise.
for example when shooting bottles/glasses the eye/camera viewpoint and the curve of the glass rim and if the bottle is ‘grounded’ with a shallow curved base are all part of the composition and can not be done in post. and why would you when you can do it with movements? also you often have to hide the camera reflection in a matt label not shiny glass and shift to fit the frame. and lets not start on the movements used in watch photography which i do a lot of.

if the industry decides it’s no longer viable to produce cameras with movements then i guess i’ll be shooting on the cambo until i retire.
 

Abstraction

Well-known member
And with the correct Short barrel lenses and tilt adaptor.
I don't get its utility then. If the tilt options are so limited and my understanding is that there's no swing, then why not just slap at TSE lens on the camera or get an Actus DB? What am I missing?
 

JeRuFo

Active member
I don't get its utility then. If the tilt options are so limited and my understanding is that there's no swing, then why not just slap at TSE lens on the camera or get an Actus DB? What am I missing?
The beauty of the Alpa system is that you can choose where you want to insert adapters and in which direction. You can use one between the camera and the lens for tilt and another one for swing between the camera and the back, or both on the front, or both on the back.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Alpa have tilt adapters for lenses. You aren’t losing anything here other than the cost of their 6/12 degree tilt adapters.

The camera body provides all the required shift/riser/fall needed. The tilts come from an additional adapter.
 

dchew

Well-known member
I don't get its utility then. If the tilt options are so limited and my understanding is that there's no swing, then why not just slap at TSE lens on the camera or get an Actus DB? What am I missing?
There is swing; you just mount the tilt adapter axis vertically, just like you would rotate a TSE lens axis for swing.

Vs Slapping on a TSE lens:
You can only tilt/swing/rise/fall the TSE lens, not all your lenses. With this setup: 1) all your lenses will tilt/swing/rise/fall as long as you have one tilt adapter. The limitation is you cannot tilt or swing Rodenstock lenses wider than 32mm, or SK lenses wider than 60mm. 2) You can rise/fall AND shift at the same time; can't do that with a TSE. 3) You can tilt/swing/rise/fall the back instead of the lens if you want to. A TSE lens is much more limited in options. My tilt adapter is essentially permanently mounted to the STC so all my lenses tilt or swing. The one exception is if I use the sk 35xl.

Vs an Actus DB:
In my opinion, as long as you have a back with live view for accurate focus, the Actus is the better option for most starting from scratch. More versatile and once you get to ~4 lenses it is lighter. I suspect most of those interested in the Alpa 12 Plus will be people who already have a stable of Alpa helical-mounted lenses. In my case, even though the price is ridiculous it is cheaper than remounting my lenses for an Actus, not to mention buying the Actus too. I have an STC which I love, but it cannot rise/fall AND shift at the same time.

As pointed out above, there are other software ways to accomplish the results of rise/fall/shift. I like to see and frame the finished image while in the field, but that is just a personal preference.

Dave
 

vjbelle

Well-known member
To digress a little….. it has been my experience that shifting, swinging or tilting takes its toll on the image in the form of lost resolution. There isn’t a lens made that can shift even 10mm and not show some loss of detail on the edges. That’s my main issue with movements. If I need straight lines I would much prefer to pan three or four portrait images with a wider lens and then stitch and crop. I will have all the pixels I need and the image will be, for sure, sharper with more micro detail than if I had shifted. Software solutions for correcting keystone are almost as bad, if not worse, than shifting. Of the two I would probably shift.

Granted…. There will always be some image that just can’t be taken with this technique but then there are images that can’t be taken with any amount of shifting.

No matter what it makes no sense to me to throw away resolution if there is another solution.

YMMV

Victor
 

Geoff

Well-known member
Interesting discussion. Each of us have different ways of finding the moment, or the vision of the shot.

I grew up looking at classical architectural compositions from the early masters, and so for me there is something fundamentally satisfying about getting the shot composed and set up in the field. Movements are key to that way of working.

Yet others do more of their work in post - is that just correction, or is it an extension of the original vision? Hard to say. Perhaps a sliding scale? Cropping and stitching could be seen as honoring the original composition, whereas more aggressive work in post, such as adjusted alignments, special panoramics or other "assemblies" possibly move the creative moment to the computer? That's probably just fine, each their own, but its still satisfying to get it right in the field...
 
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jng

Well-known member
Be careful, Dave, or next thing you know you'll find the "need" for an IQ4 150 to handle the extra shifts! :D

At ~1000 grams I'm interested. I've always wanted a Max but couldn't get over the size.

Dave
 

dchew

Well-known member
Be careful, Dave, or next thing you know you'll find the "need" for an IQ4 150 to handle the extra shifts! :D
Yeah, as usual my wish list is ten times the size of my wallet. IQ4 150, Rodi 138mm f/6.5, Alpa 12 Plus, 44" printer to replace my 9-year old Epson...

Ain't no way much if any of that is going to happen.

Dave
 

jotloob

Subscriber Member
Yeah, as usual my wish list is ten times the size of my wallet.
. . . . .

Dave
Dave , not only your wallet is giong to suffer . Mine too . DANTE is hardworking , really . He must have a contract with ALPA . My ALPA 12 PLUS is on order . The first lot is already sold . So mine will be shipped mid NOVEMBER .
 

danlindberg

Well-known member
Dave , not only your wallet is giong to suffer . Mine too . DANTE is hardworking , really . He must have a contract with ALPA . My ALPA 12 PLUS is on order . The first lot is already sold . So mine will be shipped mid NOVEMBER .
Congratulations :clap: I'm sure it will be great! Don't forget to show us your setup when it arrives :thumbup:
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
I transitioned to the Actus DB which gives me every movement I’d ever need, but, a bellows camera has its disadvantages in bad weather, wind etc. That’s where I miss having a solid body technical camera with helicoids etc.

There’s no perfect set up for every situation alas.
 

Phase V

Member
Looks nice, but the cheap plastic knobs ruin the outift IMHO and 20mm rise and shift
is standard on my Cambo WRS 1600 not to mention the built in flip from horizontal
to vertical which is really handy. And for the record, NO, the Swiss DO NOT have any
better CNC than the DMC MORI Cambo uses, so it´s a little bit overpriced for what it
has to offer, (100% to be clear) but that´s just my irrelevant opinion.
 

jotloob

Subscriber Member
Congratulations :clap: I'm sure it will be great! Don't forget to show us your setup when it arrives :thumbup:
Thank you Dan . There is still a little chance to get a "PLUS" from the first lot .
I will know more by tomorrow evening . Exiting times are coming up .
And yes , I will show my setup with the "PLUS" when available .
 

narikin

New member
Looks nice, but the cheap plastic knobs ruin the outift
They are certainly not "cheap plastic" - pretty tough stuff, of high quality. Been standard on Alpa Tech cameras for years now, and I've never heard of any issues.

There's a line of thought that plastic is cheap and bad, and metal is automatically good. Have to say that isn't so. Try cold weather, for one random example. Metal expands and contracts by temp, affecting tolerances, for another. It's heavier, for a third, etc...

I vaguely recall some quote by by Mr Toyoda, the genius who founded Toyota about "heavier than needed is bad design"

(not picking on Cambo, they make excellent products, just sayin'...)
 
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