As have I, since the new MBP came with it installed. The point is...no thanks to or help from Capture One.
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Phase One XT Camera Revelations and Considerations
- Thread starter Steve Hendrix
- Start date
Mexecutioner
Well-known member
I get your point, but since there is not much we can do about that (whether you just got an answer from an incompetent employee or because Phase One may really be in shambles) I wanted to share my experience with the aforementioned OS in case it was useful.
buildbot
Well-known member
There are some actual issues with Catalina as well with large imports, Capture One eventually crashes with a segmentation fault when enumerating many files.
Long term tech user here. Had an XT demo the other day.
It's all about the shutter, nothing else is remotely that special.
The shutter is great - quite, quick and very minimal. The one and only reason to consider this 'system'.
The XT body - quite honestly I feel Alpa has a better range of tech bodies.
some things clearly wrong:
- No cold shoe, and nowhere to put something like, oh... an optical finder?!
- The silly rotating mount that gets in the way 90% of the time.
- Small range of movements: No body option with more, no body option with none/less.
The lens choice is abysmal right now. Badly need to ramp that up, or at least announce the pipeline - this is not a 'system' as it stands.
Roddy 50mm and 90mm are badly needed.
Glad to hear the shutter will be released to Alpa, Arca and others. Hope that is true.
But just to repeat: the shutter is the star. If that lives up to the promised reliability, then it's a real positive.
It's all about the shutter, nothing else is remotely that special.
The shutter is great - quite, quick and very minimal. The one and only reason to consider this 'system'.
The XT body - quite honestly I feel Alpa has a better range of tech bodies.
some things clearly wrong:
- No cold shoe, and nowhere to put something like, oh... an optical finder?!
- The silly rotating mount that gets in the way 90% of the time.
- Small range of movements: No body option with more, no body option with none/less.
The lens choice is abysmal right now. Badly need to ramp that up, or at least announce the pipeline - this is not a 'system' as it stands.
Roddy 50mm and 90mm are badly needed.
Glad to hear the shutter will be released to Alpa, Arca and others. Hope that is true.
But just to repeat: the shutter is the star. If that lives up to the promised reliability, then it's a real positive.
Steve Hendrix
Well-known member
I agree the X shutter is the real hero. There are no other shutters! Copal is gone, Sinar e250 is in limbo ... We needed a shutter, and this is a very good shutter.
There is the ability to mount a cold shoe to the XF with the Cambo Accessory Shoe Holder:
https://www.digitalback.com/product/accessory-shoe-holder-with-2-point-fixation/
I suspect they discussed the top mounting options, for an optical viewfinder, for example, and chose to not include that option, given that size seems to have been a driving force behind the design. I feel that optical finders are valuable for some of my clients, but I have sold very few in recent years.
What "silly rotating mount" are you referring to that gets in the way?
I do agree that Phase One would benefit by announcing a lens roadmap sooner than later.
Steve Hendrix/CI
Last edited:
40mm is a waste as there is a 32mm already!
The 50 and 40mm Roddie's are both workhorses (same generation, same design), and both excellent.
23, 32 and 70 are what there is now. so put a 50mm in the middle. And a longer lens - the 90mm HRSW ideally.
the 70mm is an old design currently being re-formulated by Rodenstock so I would avoid that for now.
50mm acts as a gentle wide standard, and becomes wider when stitch-shifted, covering your 40mm wishes.
I think we can agree the lens "range" is laughable at present.
Steve, thanks for your responses.
1: The accessory shoe needs to be mounted onto the camera body, not onto a 'compendium lens shade' that is just a plain bad design. (and ridiculous that you have to buy a $655 !! hood that you likely don't want, in order to attach a $105 accessory shoe!) Oh and it isn't simply for a finder - you may want an iPhone, a video monitor, a level, or... a finder ! Major oversight.
2: The rotating mount is, (am I really having to explain this?!) the tripod mount that rotates through 90degrees when you want to do a vertical. Why not simply attach the back in a vertical orientation!!, like you can with Alps, Arca, etc? Its an over-engineered solution for a non-problem. Plus it makes the body heavier and ungainly and its fugly as heck. (You say they probably didn't put an accessory shoe on there as 'size was a driving force'... yet they put this on there?!)
I like the lens shutter solution. It's great, but please don't over-sell it: we all managed fine with out Copals, and continue to. More importantly, people are mostly using ES now, and that will just get better and better. This shutter is quiet, with minimal vibrations, but ES has none and is totally silent.
Would have been better if the digital back (mount) could rotate, this way rotation would be independent of any shift movements. Now any shift moments also rotate. (More of an issue if tilt would have been possible.)
Being only be able to reverse the digital back has the drawbacks that the digital back has to be taken off the camera (dust?) and in that only two positions, vertical or horizontal, are available.
(Terminology: "rotating back" - revolves in place; "reversible back"- can be unlatched, turned 90 degrees, and latched back.)
I’m a little perplexed by this.
A rotatable back adapter for the Fuji GX680 has been available for years (decades?) from Kapture Group.
As engineering challenges go, it’s hardly rocket science.
Kind regards,
Gerald.
alatreille
Member
Yes - a complex piece of engineering, but like so many things Phase does, I think it has a purpose that may not be initially seen.
I think the rotating body has been used to enable simpler recording of the movements. For anyone who owns the 32Rod and photographs Architecture it is a darn right pain in the backside recording the movements and keeping track of vertical/horizontal movements. I do it 20-30 times a day sometimes. And when I'm stitiching for a wider view...
By allowing the entire camera plate to rotate (with the shifting dials) my guess (Steve, please correct or chime in here) is that the system doesn't care if the back is in horizontal or vertical orientation, it records the movements as positive or negative regardless of X or Y.
I think it's quite clever in this case, but I'd love to hear if this was part of the design intent.
And of course with the Schneider glass or my 180 Rod (yes, Architectural and landscape photographers do use long lenses) distortion and recording of the movements really doesn't really matter.
A
Steve Hendrix
Well-known member
The Accessory Shoe does not require the Lens Hood to attach to the XT. It can attach directly to the side of the body. See attached image.
I don't understand your viewpoint on the rotating mount. I think that is one of the best aspects of the camera. Yes, you can rotate a digital back to any tech camera body by removing it and turning it 90º and then re-seating it. But many of my clients have expressed apprehension at this over the years. I've never dropped a digital back when rotating it in this manner (knock very very heavily on wood), but it makes users nervous. And you do certainly expose the sensor to the elements (to some degree). In certain conditions it would be a great thing to not have to remove the back to rotate it. I think it is an elegant execution of a wonderful idea.
I certainly didn't mean to "over-sell", as you say, the X Shutter by calling it a very good shutter. But they solved a problem that needed solving. And it is an extremely robust shutter - we've been told that they have never experienced a failure below 900,000 actuations. Aperture Mount for Electronic Shutter works great for many, but not for everyone. And copal shutters are history. Yes, everyone got along fine in the past with copal, but they're gone. What does someone buy if they want a new lens and need more than the Aperture Mount offers? I feel that the development of the X Shutter is very important.
And this is all early, the lens lineup is the starting lens lineup, just like many other newly introduced cameras, and more lenses will follow. Again, what I would like to see is more transparency about what that roadmap would look like.
Steve Hendrix/CI
Christopher
Active member
Steve of the shutter is so great, why no great warranty... I still think a 12k lens should have a 3 year warranty as STANDARD!
Steve Hendrix
Well-known member
If purchased as a full kit with IQ4 (not an upgrade kit), then the XT lenses come with 5 year warranty (as does the XT body).
If purchased as an upgrade, the XT and Lenses have 1 year warranty (IQ4 always has 5 year warranty, regardless).
This has always been a sore spot for me, because Phase One has at times made a big deal of marketing the 5 year warranty without transparency on the terms (upgrade vs non upgrade). If they were more transparent on the terms when marketing the 5 year warranty, and if they offered an option to add the 5 year warranty when upgrading, I would feel less sore about it. Why penalize existing clients who have already purchased by taking away the 5 year warranty option for the XT and lenses?
It's not the price of the products that makes me feel there should be 5 year warranty all the way around standard. There are tons of expensive products throughout many industries that have minimal standard warranties. What I don't like is not offering an option for existing customers to also have a 5 year warranty (even if there is an extra cost). In contrast, the XF Camera does offer this option (when upgrading).
Steve Hendrix/CI
alatreille
Member
Steve, please see my note above regarding the design/movement recording. Do you have any comment on this please? I'm genuinely interested in the other reasons other than 'weather exposure'
Cheers
Andrew
Jacob Buchowski
Member
Although I don’t have the PhaseOne XT, I do have a Cambo 72/50 which allows rotation from vertical to horizontal in a manner similar to the XT (at least as best as I can tell from various snippets). I find this feature to be extremely useful as I don’t like the idea of having to take off the DB and then to reattach it in the other position. As I’ve never used the XT though, I could be wrong...
Jacob
Smoothjazz
Active member
I agree; I have the Cambo 1600, and the rotating back is awesome. Not having to remove the digital back in the field is worth a great deal to me.
BFD
Active member
Is the grip made out of Crayon or wax?
Steve Hendrix
Well-known member
Your's is a good question so I just tested, and looked at how C1 is handling the movements with rotation...
First, the way the camera records movements, the top dial is for lateral shifts in Landscape orientation and let's call it the "X-dial" and the right-side dial for vertical movements in Landscape orientation let's call it the "Y-dial". What's really nice is that they are located well under one's thumb when holding the handle, so one can easily shift in 4 directions by only moving the thumb and rolling either dial, and all while keeping the index finger on the shutter button.
Here's how the camera is accounting for the +/- movements. In Landscape orientation moving the DB down for rise is recorded as a "+Y" (+ actually doesn't appear) and the DB moving left for a right shift is a "-X" (the - does appear). In Portrait orientation, when the DB moves down, the "X-dial" (is now the vertical movement dial) records the same +/- info as in Landscape orientation; i.e., a downward movement of the DB is recorded as "+X" (not Y), and a left movement for a right shift of the Y-dial is recorded as a "-Y".
*So what the camera is not doing is switching the vertical to Y and lateral to X to account for the 90-degree rotation, but it is appropriately honoring the +/- movements.
So because of the X,Y not switching when the orientation goes from Landscape to Portrait, how does C1 handle the movements when the camera was rotated...?
The X,Y movements shown on the DB are as though the back is in Landscape orientation; i.e., X = lateral shifts using the dial on the camera body's top, and Y = rise/fall using the dial on the XT's right side, and the amount of movements appears in C1 in the Lens Corrections > Movements (but are not dimmed so one can change) in the corresponding X, Y boxes.
As described above, if the XT is rotated to Portrait orientation, the X-dial is now on the left side of the camera body for rise/fall but it still records an X movement, and the Y-dial now on top for lateral shifts still records a Y movement. And, in C1 the X and Y same movements are recorded as such. BUT, in a Portrait oriented image in C1, I found by altering the recorded X movement, it corrects for the rise/fall as one would hope, and same for the Y movement, it now corrects for lateral movements. So while they appear as X and Y, which we are accustomed to understanding since childhood math class as lateral and vertical respectively, the actual corrections are switched in C1 for Portrait oriented images.
Considered from a different perspective, what the camera is not doing is switching the dials' X,Y record, such that if in Portrait orientation the vertical movements would then appear in the Y. They still show up in the X, but C1 is handling the lens correction as though it had made the switch due to rotation. For further proof, I moved one of the X, Y dials off of 0, and then while still in LV rotated the camera and the movement remained in the same X or Y.
In thinking about how P1 chose the treatment of the X,Y, it makes sense to me for the camera to honor the dials rather than the orientation, and let C1 handle the movements for corrections. If an X-dial movement in Portrait orientation suddenly appeared as a Y vertical movement, yet made with the X-dial, I, for one, would get really confused!
Not sure if this answers your question, but it caused me to learn how the camera and C1 interact with rotation and movements, and I consider the outcome to be positive.
_Robert