All manual, 16mp, 1.5xff, wide angle street shooter

[Jacob]

I saw an for sale ad re. a Hasselblad SWC last night and thought it might be a nice walk around camera. I browsed into the Hasselblad site and found out about the CFV digital back that works with allmost all old Hasselblad models. Hmmm...
-1.5 crop factor gives You ~32mm (35mm eq.)
-Sensor 50% larger than 35mm full frame.
-One of the best wide angle lenses ever made.
-All manual operation.
-Wonderful timeless design.
-Bright acc. finder.
-Compact. Well, in a way.
-Quiet shutter.
The ideal street digi?
Oh, the price? €7500 for the back only...

 

[vha]

Interesting thought, but the really great question is ; is it available in black ?
Think I have to buy a lottery ticket soon.

vha

 

[rxmd]

Interesting thought, but the really great question is ; is it available in black ?

No, the really interesting question is: will the back work on a Kiev 88?

Philipp

 

[einolu]

how about this one?


http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/P45-SWD.shtml

;-)

 

[Jacob]

Why don't you just load a molecular scan plane* into the back?

* = film. Example: Fuji Provia 100F or Velvia 50.

Then scan it either with a Coolscan 9000 or Imacon - both are substantially cheaper than a digi back and deliver a much higher resolution and dynamic range.

Nice side effect of film: if your HD and backups turn into smoke and debris, you still have the slides.

Just my two cents

Hmm, You've got a point. Well, You are describing my present method, except that I mostly use Portra NC in a Leica. It's just that scanning makes me crazy. I am probably to lazy and/or stressed up to sit down and learn how to do it right.
I just thought I had found a nice combination of my Coolpix and my Isolette III...

 

[v3cron]

It's just that scanning makes me crazy.

if you have a coolscan 8000 or 9000, vuescan lets you batch scan 12 35mm frames at once. i set it up, and then go have a drink or two.

 

[rxmd]

No cripple factor and you can even shift the lens - a nice feature no digital stuff can give you.

Of course it can. Shifting aka perspective correction is rather trivial now in software. Tilting is what can't be replicated in software.

Philipp

 

[rxmd]

Seems you've never seen a photograph taken with a shift or LF camera (sample here: http://tinyurl.com/2jetjr The original has a size of 13.026 x 8.681 pixels. No editing, just scaled down). Besides the inevitable distortions the final image just is a crop (depending on the distortion) of the original with a different aspect ratio and a pixel mud in the stretched and compressed areas.

In fact I have seen and taken photographs with shift lenses and LF cameras. The picture you linked to doesn't impress me all that much. "Pixel mud" is rather irrelevant anyway as long as we are looking at downscaled 843 x 562 pixel images, where it's easy anough to avoid pixel mud either way. And because perspective distortion is distortion, too, the "inevitable distortions" in a digitally-modified image are rather similar to what you get with a shift lens (look at the Peugeot in the lower right corner of the linked image); as far as lens distortions are concerned, software nowadays is quite good at correcting them.

Don't misunderstand me - of course there is a field of applications where cameras with built-in lens movements excel. When you really need that resolution, because you want to produce large exhibition- or reproduction-quality prints, then nothing beats a large format camera and a drum scanner. But then again, if Andreas Gursky can do his work on a Hasselblad H2D 39, then I can certainly do mine. And again then again, doing architectural documentation with a LF camera and a drum scanner takes a lot of time to the final image, while with a good wideangle prime on a good DSLR an experienced photographer can go, shoot quickly and correct later. That's why I think shift lenses are overrated as of 2007, while tilt lenses aren't, because their effect can't be replicated in software.

I really don't want to talk about barrel distortion of even 'the best' DSLR lenses here. It makes me sick when I see images taken with these bottle bottom glasses, really.

Well if you speak about "DSLR lenses" (what's that?), I guess you're talking about 10-20mm zoom lenses and the like, at the short end, most of them optimised for price. Well it's hardly surprising that they have distortion when compared to first-class primes. But a classic LF wideangle like the 90mm Angulon on 13x18 looks roughly like a 20mm lens on 35mm film (or a 35mm sensor), and in that range we already have some quite good lenses. And shift lenses on 35mm tend not to be very impressive focal-length-wise; the Canon 24mm TS is an extreme, 35mm is more like the norm, so if we compare these to zooms at the short end we're deep in apples and oranges territory.

Philipp