tashley
Subscriber Member
I picked one of these up yesterday at a very good price from my dealer - brand new and still fully packaged.
Been playing with it this morning with IQ180 and Phase DF body, using a Gitzo CF three series with a cube and cable/MUP.
It feels to me well made, less intuitive and less easy to use than the Hartblei 45 TS, lighter than it looks but with the shift ring incredibly stiff and hard to turn.
It is quite hard to focus (OK, impossible to focus accurately with the viewfinder) but you can get close enough for a file to look good at 50% if not 100% on screen.
The tripod collar is on the lens so as to minimise the iterations of tilt/refocus/reframe needed to get what you want - which is an advantage. The disadvantage is that there is less stability this way and even with MUP there is clear evidence of motion blur at all speeds less than 1/80th or sometimes 1/60th if you are lucky. This is problematic because you really need the extra DOF of F16 in order to compensate for the difficulty in iterating focus when tilting. I tried Live View but without the correct sized ND filter to hand, that didn't help much.
I can't find any graphs of the lens's performance on the Phase or SK website but I would say that diffraction is just visible at F16 but is not enough to nullify the DOF advantage. However diffraction is more of a problem at smaller apertures, which I would not therefore use.
I am absolutely no expert at these sorts of lenses though I have of course used movements before. I will try to get the right sized ND filter so I can improve my Scheimpflug via live view and then report back but for now, I have no verdict other than that I knew it wouldn't be easy and it isn't!
Has anyone else tried one?
T
Been playing with it this morning with IQ180 and Phase DF body, using a Gitzo CF three series with a cube and cable/MUP.
It feels to me well made, less intuitive and less easy to use than the Hartblei 45 TS, lighter than it looks but with the shift ring incredibly stiff and hard to turn.
It is quite hard to focus (OK, impossible to focus accurately with the viewfinder) but you can get close enough for a file to look good at 50% if not 100% on screen.
The tripod collar is on the lens so as to minimise the iterations of tilt/refocus/reframe needed to get what you want - which is an advantage. The disadvantage is that there is less stability this way and even with MUP there is clear evidence of motion blur at all speeds less than 1/80th or sometimes 1/60th if you are lucky. This is problematic because you really need the extra DOF of F16 in order to compensate for the difficulty in iterating focus when tilting. I tried Live View but without the correct sized ND filter to hand, that didn't help much.
I can't find any graphs of the lens's performance on the Phase or SK website but I would say that diffraction is just visible at F16 but is not enough to nullify the DOF advantage. However diffraction is more of a problem at smaller apertures, which I would not therefore use.
I am absolutely no expert at these sorts of lenses though I have of course used movements before. I will try to get the right sized ND filter so I can improve my Scheimpflug via live view and then report back but for now, I have no verdict other than that I knew it wouldn't be easy and it isn't!
Has anyone else tried one?
T