It’s a very niche product, I’m sure it has its uses but for the work I do I can’t see any advantages and only things that would hinder how I work.
How much do they charge for one?
Hello Mr Smith -
I'm not sure what current pricing would be. I purchased mine back in 2015.
I'm sure that if you contact them they could provide a quote, but if it doesn't have any advantages for you and you would view it as a hindrance, I'm not entirely sure why you would be interested in what they charge.
It's the only camera system on the planet that enables focus stacking of a tilted and swung focal plane, with lens tilts and swings automatically adjusting as necessary through the stack.
99.99% of my photography is in the 1:1 to 1:1.3 magnification range on FF MFDB (although I am hoping to extend this well into the "true" macro range using the new Rodenstock 105mm in the coming months, hence I wanted to reach out to
other owners to see if they were addressing a similar requirement already).
Depth of field of a single image is typically of the order of a few hundred microns. Every single image I take is titled and swung. I can take a single photo of a watch dial placed at an angle to the focal plane, and get the entire dial in focus in one shot. Again - I stress that I am operating in the 1.1 to 1:1.3 magnification range here.
I'd be intrigued to hear from anyone operating at this kind of level who is doing it all manually, and how long it takes them to focus a single image, let alone execute a 20-30 image stack.
I was toying with the idea of moving to the ALPA focus stacking kit based around the FPS and the Rodenstock 105 simply to get hold of a solution that uses that lens, but quite frankly there is just no way I would be prepared to move away from the functionality of the CapCAM. I don't want to have to focus stack every single image I take, and I don't want to have to shoot up to 10x the number of images in order to get the same result if I can't focus stack with a swung and tilted focal plane.
Life's too short.
As you allude to in your signature - at the end of the day, they're just tools for a job.
Kind regards,
Gerald.