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.

Howdy, Rodeo Joe! Because people are still using them. I for one am still shooting with my Kodak DCS645M. And a big part of why is that, like all the Kodak 9 micron CCDs, its colour performance is absolutely beautiful, while 16 MP of "fat pixels" without an AA filter gives super sharpness, even with older glass. (Filters were click-on, click-off so if you absolutely needed an AA filter, you had that option too). Nope. The Kodak Proback series are all metal. I suspect you never handled, let alone used, one?

I can see the arguments for considering the long side only and dispensing with diagonal or short side considerations; it makes sense when shooting a portrait, building, or interior. However, there are circumstances where "long side thinking" doesn't help. 645 and 6x6 have the same long side dimension - 56 mm. As does 35mm full frame digital and some old square MF digital backs - 36 mm. But I select cameras and lenses for these formats quite differently. I consider the area, more than the width or height. Shooting landscapes, skies, or astrophotography, much impact comes from the overall spaciousness. Thus, although I mount the same set of Mamiya 645 lenses on my Kodak DCS645M and EOS 5DII, both with 36mm long dimension, if I were to select 55mm for the digital back, I'd tend to select 45mm for the Canon to achieve equivalent effect; it would seem cramped otherwise.

Hello Jay, and welcome. In your approach to handheld "documentary/travel/street style photography", do you like to shoot individual people/objects with shallow dof, or are you more of a "get all parts of the scene in focus" photographer? If the former, then SLR viewing helps, and the Pentax 67 has nice fast lenses from semi-wide to short telephoto (75/2.8, 90/2.8, 105/2.4, 150/2.8, 165/2.8). Wider apertures also mean faster shutter speeds, so mirror/shutter vibration is less likely to register on film. If the latter, then fast lenses don't matter while corner lens aberrations do matter, and stopping down forces longer shutter speeds, more prone to vibrations - the Mamiya 7 wins on these counts.

John, there are "modern" (1980s) Makina 67s with 80/2.8 or 55/4.5 lenses - which is it in your case? It can't be both 55mm and f2.8. The D lens will be a bit better wide open. After that, you won't really notice a difference. Not on film anyway. As for those two cameras themselves - apples and oranges. The 645AFDII is very easy to use; think top 35mm film SLR circa 1992. I use the version just before that (645AFD), mainly with an old digital back. When Rodeo Joe describes the plastic-bodied Mamiyas as unreliable, he probably means the 645 Super and Pro...the AF line eliminated the main problems that they had (mirror rest breaking, film-back interface surface warping, winder gearing). I think you have to decide first what you want from shooting MF film - convenience, or resolution? You have 6x6 systems; what tempts you away from them? The 645 film format is not terribly useful anymore; any modern full-frame 35mm DSLR or CSC can at least match it...it still has a niche with portrait shooters who rate their films a couple of stops slower than box ISO to get that 'bright but not digitally clipped' look. The 6x7 format of the Plaubel stands a bit better against sub-medium format digital, but only when a really good scanner is used.

For wideangle, you will be happy with the 45mm N as Rodeo says, or the less common 45mm S. The S has the same revised optics as the N, but in a metal barrel like a C lens. The older 45mm C design is very sharp centrally, but not as good as the others towards the edges. The S and N have 67mm filter threads, C has 77mm. I use a 45mm S, which replaced a 45mm C. The 55mm N and S (again, same optics) are super sharp, even more uniform than the 45mm N and S, but only as wide as a ~35mm lens in 35mm format cameras/DSLRs. I use a 55mm N. In the short telephoto range, longer than 80mm but shorter than 200mm, you have many options: 110mm f/2.8 C or N 120mm f/4 A Macro 145mm f/4 C Soft Focus 150mm f/4 (first version) C 150mm f/3.5 (second version) C or N or N/L 150mm f/2.8 (third version) A. The long end of the 55-110mm f/4.5 N zoom 105-210mm f/4.5 C zoom (first version, 77mm thread) 105-210mm f/4.5 ULD C zoom (second version, 58mm thread) I use or have used a 110mm N, 120mm A, 150mm f/3.5 C, 150mm f2.8 A, 55-110mm zoom (autofocus version only for the AF cameras, but AFAIK optically the same as the N), and 105-210mm ULD zoom. Both 150mm lenses were nice, but I expected better from the more modern f/2.8 design. The fixed 110mm does have a very nice look, as Rodeo says; it displaced the 150mm lenses in my affections. Both zooms perform well, with the 105-210mm ULD hitting peak uniformity at ~140mm. But my favourite is the 120mm macro - best optics of all the lenses listed, and most versatile: pinpoint sharp at infinity, creamy bokeh at portrait distance, crisp macro right up to 1:1. Also the most expensive, though!

Star trails are what you naturally get without a tracking mount. Just use a normal tripod. Exposure depends on the usual variables of f-stop, film ISO and exposure time...but the imponderable is sky brightness, varying greatly due to factors such as light pollution, haze, and moonlight, which makes it difficult to give any set rule. Reciprocity failure is less of a factor than this...it is fairly mild with modern slide films like Velvia (it is generally worse with negative film). So you'll have to experiment and bracket. In a dark rural sky, try ISO 100, f/4 or f/5.6, 20 or 30 minutes. Stop down more for brighter skies or for longer exposures. Some people shoot for several hours at f/11 - you lose the fainter stars with the smaller aperture, but the trails are much longer. If you point at the Pole Star, you get circular arcs of circumpolar trails. Elsewhere in the sky, you get more gradually curved arcs. Use a wideangle or normal lens for best effect.

Sanjay, As Rick says, film is no longer the first choice for shooting faint objects through a telephoto lens or telescope, but it can give nice wide-field results, especially with a tracking mount. One of the easiest and best ways to use medium format film for astrophotography is in shooting longish (many-minute) star-trails. They are difficult to shoot "cleanly" on digital, without having either gaps between the typical stacked moderate exposures (30-60 sec) or an accumulation of long exposure dark-noise, and the colours in the stars can be better with film. You also do not need a special tracking mount.

Great results in your gallery, Rick! You have a shot "NGC 7000 - First Light" - with good red nebula response from a Nikon D750. Was it a modified camera?

Nothing made since about 2010 will fit. You are limited to discontinued backs - fair enough, since you have a discontinued camera :) Phase One only made one single back for the Rollei - the DB20 which was a version of their P20. It has a square 37 x 37 mm sensor with over 16 MP. The other options are Sinar (Sinarback, and later, eMotion and eVolution backs), Imacon (Flexframe, and later, iXpress backs), and Jenoptik (Eyelike backs) - they had systems of interchangeable camera interface plates/cables, including for the Rollei. The Sinarbacks, Flexframes and Eyelikes have good sensors, but the disadvantages that come with only being usable tethered to a computer (the backs have no LCD, no memory card, no battery to power them). The eMotion/eVolution and iXpress backs are self-contained and as portable as a (heavy) film back - they are probably your best bets. These go up to 49 x 37 mm in sensor size and 33 MP. The final iXpress backs are badged Hasselblad, after they absorbed Imacon.

Bronica also used West German manufacturers to fill some specialist needs in their leaf-shutter medium format systems - a couple of different Carl Zeiss (Oberkochen) Variogon zooms, and a Schneider-Kreuznach PCS-Super Angulon shift lens. (Rollei had the same lenses for their 6000 series cameras). But Bronica did not re-brand these lenses as Zenzanon - they were stamped with both Bronica and Zeiss/Schneider identifiers. Unless Nikon silently continued to provide Bronica with lenses and agreed to have them exclusively rebaded as Zenzanons, I think it's likely that Bronica started making their own lenses for their later cameras. After all, Mamiya produced all their own optics; the quality was always good, improving with each generation, and from the late 1980s on they were world-beating. Bronica users also comment how for say the 6x6 SQ cameras, the Zenzanon PS lenses released in the 1980s were a step up from the previous Zenzanon S line. And if you look at what other Japanese companies might have been subcontracted to make such high-end, nichey, medium format optics - Mamiya, Fuji, Pentax, Contax - they all had their own camera lines competing with Bronica, so why would they help a competitor?