zonghou_xiong1

High contrast is one of the major indicators of a high quality lens.

If this inadvently makes your image too saturated, you may need to

use other types of film. High contrast means good coating. If you

point your Fuji toward the Sun, you may not see flares, whereas if

you point cameras of other brands even close to the Sun, you may be

affected by flares. I bought a Hasselblad Xpan primarily because

it was equipped with Fujinon lenses.

Fuji may be cheap in the US and Japan, but not really so in other part

of the world.

Zonghou Xiong

Sydney, Australia

You can get a Hasselblad Xpan with the standard 45 mm lens for about $1990. Bill-board-size blowup is no problem. You also have the advantage of scan your slides using 35mm scanners that cost ten times less than medium format film scanners should you go digital.

Zonghou Xiong

The major advantage of Xpan is the availability of the 30 mm lens.

Zonghou Xiong

It's a bit hard to tell the difference on my screen (21 inch).

Probably I don't have the proper graphic card on my computer. I do

quite a bit Ilfochrome printing at home. For print size of 8x12 inch

I can hardly tell any differences between prints made from my Nikon

(with AIS Nikkors 35/1.4 and 50/1.2) or my Fuji 690s. At 11x14 prints

from 35 mm slides begin to show slight sign of grain but I doubt

scanned images can tell any differences at that size at all. Beyond

that 35 mm does look helpless if image quality alone is concerned.

Lens flare has never been a problem for me using a Fuji GSW690III.

This is quite amazing because I often experienced flares with my best

Nikkor AIS lense for the same shot. Fuji has a unique coating:

Electron Beam Coating, or EBC in short. Experts claim EBC coating

layers are extremely accurate. This perhaps explains the high

optical quality of Fujinon lenses. The DOF scale looks accurate to

me. The GSW comes with a 65mm/f5.6 lens. In practice I think the

widest aperture you can use is f/8 because at f/5.6 vegnetting is a

problem. For landscape use I normally ensure the infinity is in

focus. This pretty much guarantees the greatest depth of field for

all f-stop settings. I once in a rash forgot to focus, leaving the

camera focused at about a couple of meters, the picture was ruined

despite that the aperture setting was f/11.

Be warned that Velvia will turn some underexposed night objects

including clouds to green. Bright light spots vs. dark building

will be fine, though. You might have to use a red filter and

extend the exposure by one stop.

Just wondering the implication of this lens test against the sharpness

of films. Nearly all films are capable of doing over 100 lpmm. Velvia

does 160 lpmm for high contrast objects. Ilforchrome paper resolves

over 60 lpmm. Yet most of your numbers are below 60. Is there any

difference in the definition of lpmm? If a MF lens resolves only

half the number of lines per mm than the film, there is hardly any

gain using MF gear against a good 35mm system except for the grain

issue.

Flash does freeze movements. I believe most commercial flash lights

have durations of about 1/1000 second, which is equivalent to a

shutter speed of 1/1000 s. There are flash lights that stop bullets.

Thus the shutter speed is irrelevent when flash light is the dominant

source of light. Otherwise you have to worry about blurring caused by

a slow speed you choose for the room light. In your case, I would

imagine, 1/60 would be the bottom line.

Richard Misrach, one of the great photographers of the American West

uses a 8x10 field camera with a 300 mm Fujinon lens, exclusively.

This is equivalent to 80 mm for 6x6 format or 42 mm for the 35 mm

format. Some of his work can be view at a Kodak features site:

http://www.kodak.com/ppiHome/kodakProfessional/features/rMisrachIndex.shtml

Yes, you can. In fact it is very easy to print your own photos. You

don't even need a darkroom. A small space where you can seal off

lights, or just covering the window (of your bedroom) in the evening

would suffice. And you don't even need ventilation or running water

in that space, because you just need to expose your paper in a dark

area. Processing is done in a drum which you can take to anywhere with

light and fan and water. Thus in practice you can use your bedroom

or study or living room or garage to work with the enlarger and

process your exposed paper in your bathroom. Ilford designs their

stuff particularly for hobbists use at home. When I first started

printing Ciba (=Ilfochrome) I never printed color before, just a

couple of rolls of B/W some 15 years ago. I thought I need to sign up

for a course or something or buy an introduction book. None of that.

I talked to a clerk in a photo shop if he could recommend me any books

on color printing, he sold me an Ilfochrome printing manual ($10).

That's all. Follow the instructions you soon would become master once

your eyes were trained sharp enough to tell density and filtration.

Just remember one more problem: exposure time and filtration curves

are most-likily wrong in those manuals as Ilford keeps change the

characteristics of their paper (for the better). You have to download

those curves from their homepage which can be found by searching the

web. I wasted quite some paper until I found that my downloaded

curves were different from what they printed on the manual. Must be

an old manual I have. A manual is a must to begin with. As for

enlarger and lenses and other accessories, you can get them suiting

your budget. After all that, a 8x10 print costs about a couple of

bucks and 20 minutes.

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Good luck

Zonghou Xiong

There is a review article on this camera with the 45 mm lens on the

June 1996 issue of Photon magazine (UK). The article is available

on line @ http://www.Photonpub.co.uk/photon/jun96/horseman612.html

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Not sure if the 45 mm Grandagon is the best on the market. It's pretty cutting-edge. 45 mm for a 6x12 format is indeed much wider

than a 20 mm for the 35 mm format. The 55 mm and 65 mm lenses might work better for the equivalent of a 20 mm lens on the 35 mm format.

I never had any problems with focusing my Fuji GW690III. I think

someone mentioned testing focusing Fuji sometime ago (this year?) in

the old MFD discussions. If there is indeed a focusing problem, it

is likely to be caused either by the finder or by the lens unit. You

can test both. Finder error can be easily identified by checking the

distance indicator on the lens focusing ring: you can measure if the

distance of an object in focus is right or you can compare the reading

with other cameras. If finder error is eliminated, you can open the

back and use the white plastic sheet that comes with the camera (or

any transparent sheet if you've lost the original) to see if things

are in focus. Use "T" to open the shutter and the camera would

work just like a view camera with a plastic "groundglass". You would

be able to tell if the film plane is accurate. I've done both tests

with mine and they were fine.