Re: Considering the H3DII-31 (Nearly there!)
The Sunday shoot.
Busy week, so it has taken me a while to find time to write about my experiences with the three systems lent to me for testing. First of all I feel really priviledged to have been able to test these systems out as thoroughly as I have, I know some of you guys would have to travel far just to be able to handle these cameras.
Below are some notes on my experiences and on my decisionmaking process when choosing a back. I am not a professional reviewer, nor is it my business to declare one system better than another. I am relating a real life experience with these backs relative to my way of shooting and my particular needs. You could find that another back suits you better and I cannot stress enough the importance of testing the equipment before buying, if at all possible.
I did a shoot with four kids modelling, a make-up artist, a stylist and an assistant, exactly as I would do on a job. We shot outdoors in perfect shooting weather, almost no wind and a slightly overcast sky with occasional rays of sun.
Handling three camera systems at once was only slightly confusing
and I had decided that rather than 'test', I would 'shoot' with the cameras. All the cameras and backs are very intuitive, I had set them up in advance, so it was really just a matter of shooting away. Once in a while a back stopped and I had to figure out why. On most occasions (see below) it was a matter of feeding the back a new CF card or a fresh battery. Not being familiar with the back, I needed to stop and look at the backs to figure out which it was, but that is just a matter of knowing the camera.
The only actual problem that I had was with the Leaf back ‘freezing’. Twice in a 2½ hour shoot it just froze. I couldn’t turn it on or off and had to remove the battery and restart the back, at which point it worked fine again. I asked the dealer about it and he knew of the problem but suggested that it didn’t happen very often, it was easily fixed (by removing the battery and restarting the back) and that Leaf would probably fix this in a firmware update in the future. He suggested that it probably happened when shooting too fast. I must say that this rocked my impression of the Leaf back somewhat. Anyone with A75s experience who recognize this, or is it this specific back? I have heard before that shooting too fast can corrupt files, from someone shooting with a P30+, but all my files from the day were fine. And I shot fast!
The Contax camera felt good, most of my images were sharp using manual focus. I also missed a few, but so does my Canon autofocus. I didn’t run out of battery once and I used the battery grip. Whether I ‘dare’ to invest in and base my MFDB choice on an obsolete system, I haven’t quite decided yet, but it did feel great. The battery’s position under the Leaf back rendered the vertical grip useless, stealing the place where the base of the hand would sit, only slightly annoying, but one up for the P30+.
The Hasselblad H3DII-31 was the camera that felt the most effortless to use. It just works. It shoots fast and makes no fuss. This is in
MY case both good and bad. Ofcourse it is great that everything works so well, and it really does, but what I wanted from a medium format camera is a little ‘resistance’. I feel that I have lost a bit of my shooting style with the Canon, simply because the camera runs away with me during the shoot. This may sound a little silly, but that’s how I feel. If Hasselblad’s intention was to build a camera that works as well as a DSLR they have been very succesful. The user interface on the Hasselblad back is also by far the fastest, nicest and most intuitive to use.
The PhaseOne back on Mamiya made it clear that the Mamiya camera system is not for me. It doesn’t feel as nice as either the Contax or the Hasselblad and it suffers from one terrible design flaw that I hope Mamiya/PhaseOne will fix in the first possible firmware update. In between shots the display in both finder and top LCD flashed DB BUSY, which means that in the 1.25 seconds between each shot, I can’t see the camera settings. If I wish to use that 1.25 seconds to change aperture and be ready to shoot when the back is ready, I have to do it blind or count clicks on the wheel. There is no aperture ring on the lens that I could look at. This feature was surely designed by an engineer whos concern was to prevent the photographer from shooting to fast and corrupting files, not by a photographer. The P30+ back worked a treat although I find it a little fiddly to check focus, using the alternating directional buttons. Hasselblads solution is far superior for this. The leaf back zooms in via taps on the screen, but it is my impression that it is a lot slower than the Hasselblad at zooming (the files are also slightly larger).
Reviewing the files from the shoot was a bit of a headache, using three different pieces of software. I am a pc user (and a happy one), I like to process files in ACR, I use Iview Media Pro on the shoot to review files as I load them onto the laptop from the cards. The reviewing of files is
a) to make sure I have what I need
b) to see what works and what doesn’t and
c) to show the client that we are good.
Iview (or Microsoft Expression Media as it is now called) is really good and fast for that. The Leaf files crashed my Iview Media Pro. I downloaded Expression and got a preview without a crash, so I would need to upgrade to Expression Media ($200). With the Phase files I got a preview in Iview but the Hasselblad files didn’t even load into Iview. The Leaf and Phase files I can process in ACR but not the Hasselblad files (unless I first turn them into DNG files, but I am a working pro, not an occasional snapper, I often produce 1-2000 files a day on my Canon, so one less step is a BIG step ahead).
I processed similar shots from all three backs in their proprietary software (Leaf Capture, Capture One 4 and Flexcolor…Hasselblad offered that I can try Phocus at the dealers place or wait until Photokina and get the full version software for free).
I really like the Leaf files straight out of the back. The colours are really soft and smooth. The Phase files were a bit too crisp at the default settings, much nicer when the default sharpening was switched off. The Hasselblad files had some of the softness that I like about the Leaf files. Now, I am not a digital tech guru or a pixel expert. I printed all my own work for 15 years, so I know what I like, and that is what I base my findings on. It is quite possible that you might hate the Leaf files and love the Phase files. BUT and here it comes: Once I had processed the files, with no sharpening, pulled them into Photoshop, adjusted them to my liking and sharpened them…there was
virtually no difference. Even while working on them I had to check the metadata to remind myself which back I had shot the image on. The Leaf files were slightly larger being a 33 megapixel back, but the difference is very, very small. So fotografz (Mark) was absolutely right, when he commented, that there is really not much difference in the quality of the files the backs can produce.
Choosing a back has more to do with preferences in user interface, software and camera system, than with file quality. I am not saying there is no difference...I am saying that it is the least important factor, in my opinion.
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