ondebanks

I dispute "equivalent performance" here. The DSLR-DB examples you gave have CCD sensors. These have poor performance at medium and high ISO; in most cases (bar the P45+) they offer only limited long exposures; and only laggy Live View, if any. Whereas the CMOS-sensored Fuji is superior on all those counts, and for the same sort of money, as you noted. Only one thing disappoints me about the GFX-50R: the way that Fuji used undersized microlenses, trading a sharpness gain against a signal to noise loss. The Pentaz 645Z, with the same underlying sensor, has better low-light sensitivity for this reason. See M42 2020 (inital and final comments) and http://group.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/whwang/old/misc/M42_GFX_vs_645z.jpg

Not to worry, Lou - I just found the original emails between myself and you, on which you based that document! So I've saved our email thread as a PDF, and it can be accessed here on Dropbox. Ray

I'm another fan of the Fuji S5 Pro. I picked one up 5 years ago. As well as its already mentioned advantages (colour, DR, spot-on SOOC jpgs), there are others that matter to me: For a CCD sensor, the S5 has really well behaved dark noise in long exposures - far less noise than MFD backs with CCDs. It also lacks the sneaky RAW filtering that Nikon incorporated in their DSLR firmwares up to a few years ago, giving them a "star eater" reputation - a mantle which has now unfortunately passed to Sony, who make the same mistakes in their full-frame A series. Finally, the stock S5 has extended red spectral sensitivity over other brands of DSLRs and CSCs - about the same as the special astrophotography variants from Canon (20Da and 60Da) or Nikon (D810A) - although none of these is quite as good on nebulae as an aftermarket spectrum-modded body. Here's my S5 take on Orion: That's interesting info on the Fuji batteries. 3rd party batteries and chargers (single or dual batteries) are plentiful and cheap on ebay. I got a dual charger, and a second-hand Nikon MB-D200 battery grip, and I use it with alternating pairs of batteries (1 original Fuji + 3 new 3rd party batteries). Well, we've swung massively off-topic, but such is conversation...

I'm glad that you chose well and are happy. I noticed several respondents advocating the Hasselblad SWC. I can see why this is such a well loved camera - or perhaps such a well loved lens is more appropriate, since the whole thing is basically a 38 mm Biogon with a film back. 90 degrees diagonally of top sharpness on a square format...yum! The one downside of the SWC is that it doesn't play that well with digital backs; some of the ultrawide magic is lost with the hefty crop factor, and then there are issues with corner softness and colour casts because of the "optically true wideangle" design of the Biogon. I found that I can emulate the SWC in a whole other digital manner: a 37 x 37 mm digital back, a Mamiya 645 AFD, and a Mamiya 24mm ULF fisheye. When "de-fished" to rectilinear format, you do get "90 degrees diagonally of top sharpness on a square format".

Sony has had a 55x41 (more exactly, 53.7 x 40.4) "full frame" CMOS sensor for a couple of years already (backs using it were introduced in 2016), but in 100 MP not 150 MP. Phase One and Hasselblad both use it.

My usage of film is very, very rare nowadays. I'm still in the very protracted process of selling off my 35mm, 6x6, 6x9, and Polaroid gear, and slimming down my Mamiya 645 gear a little. My keeper film bodies are just two: the very first M645 1000s body I got second hand in 1992 [my intro to medium format]; and my current 645 AFD. But even the latter is used 95% of the time with a Kodak DCS645M digital back. The 645 AFD gives me the best of both worlds: native square-format digital imaging with medium format lenses on a medium format body, with all the processing ease and cost-free running that digital affords; and good ole' 645 4:3 film images for that 5% of the time when I want something different. And the circumstances when I shoot 645 film over digital? When technical issues other than resolution arise. Spectral response for example; nothing (bar a modded digital) has the huge red sensitivity of Kodak E200, of which I have a frozen stash. Or when I want to get the full 180 degree field of view of the awesome Mamiya 24mm fisheye. Or when taking a very long exposure, without long exposure noise. Niche reasons, certainly.

Q.G.'s absence has been so long that I assumed it was permanent; I actually feared he'd "shuffled off this mortal coil"! Arguing the finer points of medium format gear with him here on Pnet has been at times amusing, at times educational, but mostly exhausting; even when he'd clearly lost a point, he never conceded. At such times, he reminded me of !

This was my finding with Vuescan multi-pass as well. However, Vuescan multi-sampling has no such drawbacks and I always use it on dark slides.

I am not a studio shooter, but I mainly use 645 manual focus lenses on my 645 AFD, and a digital back. In autofocus, I only have the 55-110 mm AF zoom. I guess it depends a lot on what sort of studio photography you do. Product/still life? Then absolutely use the MF lenses. Vivacious models? You could struggle to nail manual focus often enough, especially if you want to use shallow dof. You have electronic focus guidance (arrow LEDs show which direction to turn the focusing barrel) and confirmation (another LED between the arrows) when using a manual focus lens, down to f/5.6. I rely heavily on this. I also switched to a focusing screen with a microprism centre, which helps manual focus. But I found that I had to slightly de-tune the dioptre correction in the viewfinder to make my estimation of focus, using the screen, match the electronic focus confirmation of the AF sensors. This says to me that the focusing screen does not sit at exactly the right plane. The design of the focus screen holder - "hanging" from the roof of the mirror box, with just a small metal clip determining its fixed position - is inferior in my view to the older M645 bodies, where the screen was supported from beneath and was rigidly pressed down onto 4 corner contacts. In lens choice, the MF 120/4 macro is excellent. It's not quite full-APO like the 200/2.8 and 300/2.8, but it's damn close. Mamiya could certainly have stuck an "ED" label on it. Lovely "melt-away" bokeh in portraits too. Example below.

Hi Vick, Rules of thumb: If a digital back has an LCD screen, it doesn't have to be tethered to a computer. But it generally can be, if desired. Tethered-only backs are usually the oldest of all. Of the main players, only Sinar are recently making any tethered-only backs. Some of the earliest moves away from tethered-only backs were portable, although not fully without encumbrance - there'd be some other sort of box that had to hang off the back. I list them here as "not tethered", but you should be aware of this. The V-fitting Kodak Probacks were first to market with an LCD screen and CF card, but they were wired to a big external Quantum battery; the Imacon ixpress captured to a big external hard disk/battery ("Imagebank"), and in early versions their LCD only showed a histogram, not the actual image; the Leaf Valeo and C-MOST series captured to a hard disk/battery ("digital magazine") mounted under the camera; they lacked an LCD but could send images to a Compaq/HP iPAQ device (the Valeo used a wire, the Valeo Wi used Bluetooth). So here's a summary of what is and isn't tethered: Phase One: P, P+ and IQ series. H series have to be tethered. Leaf (now Mamiya-Leaf): Valeo and C-MOST series, Aptus and Credo series. Volare/Cantare series have to be tethered. Hasselblad/Imacon: ixpress, CF and CFV series. Flexframe series has to be tethered. Sinar: eMotion and eSprit series. eVolution and Sinarback series have to be tethered. Kodak: Proback and Proback Plus (not Proback 645 series) Some of these models are long discontinued, but still give a great image; do a bit of research.

Rollei 6000 series cameras are like Hasseblads in many ways (6x6 SLR, Zeiss & Schneider lenses, leaf-shutters, interchangeable backs), except they handle better (for me anyway) and have better features and automation for the same price. The 6008 line is excellent, and is within your budget for a camera and 80/2.8 lens. Since you say you are looking for "something different" to your mechanical 6x6 Mamiya, the automation (with manual over-rides, of course) of the Rollei SLR sets it apart from the mechanical Hasselblad 500/501 line. The Rollei 6008AF is over your budget, but it was the first 6x6 camera with autofocus (and there's only been one other since, the Rollei/Sinar/Leaf Hy6); I include this information since this was one of the questions you asked.