Can digital MF survive the D800?

I hate to keep banging on about the S2 but when it was released I remember one article I read saying that they didn't see that it had a huge advantage over the current crop of high end full farme DSLRs which were good and getting better.

That was at least a year ago and now we have the D800 which appears to be a leap ahead of what was available at that time!
 
Sarcophilus Harrisii said:
Bentley.
Is that a quote by W.O.? I've not heard it, but could believe so, he was not a fan of supercharging motors.
Regards,
Brett
Click to expand...

The great Mario Andretti says 'there ain't no substitute for cubic inches' and it really represents the bottom line point of view of 'do what you know and do it well'.

I think the bottom line in the case of sensors is that even with the D800 the only person that will generally see the benefit of a 36mp sensor is the photographer pixel peeping in post processing. Just like the paddock banter about the figures your engine produces on the dyno. But a better photograph made with a 10mp sensor will still beat a badly made 36mp image, just as a well driven small engined car can still beat a badly driven big engine big buck car.

Steve
 
Keith said:
I hate to keep banging on about the S2 but when it was released I remember one article I read saying that they didn't see that it had a huge advantage over the current crop of high end full farme DSLRs which were good and getting better.

That was at least a year ago and now we have the D800 which appears to be a leap ahead of what was available at that time!
Click to expand...


Here's a comparison, and comments:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1021&thread=40902419&page=1
 
The amazing side of the new sensor is the dynamic range being better than the top DMF gear: PhaseOne IQ 180. With 14.4 Evs only films can be compared against.
 
My logic might be off but... the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If S2 owning pros will indeed find the D800 or D800e makes the more expensive Leica irrelevant, then we'll soon see a lot of S2's being dumped onto the secondhand market, and at dirt cheap prices to boot (cos, you know, they are irrelevant to the market like the R system was 5 years ago).

Somehow, I doubt that would happen. And hence we will have our answer of what this new hi-res DSLR signifies to the medium format shooters.

Personally, I think it's the same as 645 was to 35mm - you just can't beat the physical size, not matter how good the increased resolution are (in that case, from the supefine 35mm lenses). Besides, 645 has a "look" that 35 just can't match. There are more to images than megapixels alone.
 
Nothing I've seen from the D800 so far makes me think that it even comes close to good digital mf backs. The images still have that 35mm look, just with a bit more resolution.

I recently did a shoot with an IQ160 back on a P1 camera and was stunned at the smooth gradations this thing delivers. It's almost like shooting large format film. And I'm not talking about resolution. I was shooting mostly at 1/60th with plenty of motion blur so I didn't really care about sharpness. Resolution isn't everything.
I've also worked a lot with P45+ backs which are much closer in res to the D800. They still are worlds ahead of what I've seen from the D800. Granted, under the right (i.e. wrong) lighting conditions and with lots of destructive pp work you can make the file from an IQ160 back look like one from the D800 but it doesn't work the other way.
 
I have never used a MF digital camera, but they appeal to me for the fact that the cameras seem like real cameras, and you can put a back on an older camera. All the movie modes and faff of a modern DSLR don't appeal to me, so a simple MF camera sounds good.

I'm not a pro though, so I don't know if a professional uses MF digital for the resolution or the "look" or both, or the glass, or some other reason.
 
I've hired the S2 for two shoots now and the files it produces are stunning and miles ahead of shooting the same scenes with a 5d markII, not necessarily in the detail recorded, although it was much better there as well, more in how the detail rendered with much more of a 3d effect, skin tones were both more detailed yet smoother and with no blotches.
The greater detail I expected from the mp count, but my feeling was the other attributes are more to do with the sensor and pixel size than the mp count. I might be completely wrong about that and the sensor size was irrelevant, but I haven't seen files from any 35mm so far with anything like those qualitys.
One last thing, and I'm not out to defend the S2 here, it's obscenely expensive in my opinion, but the shot with the crossing red and green cloth, does that not look like camera shake?
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this point yet.

The lenses, they're mostly just not up to it. It's also only 14bit, once you've worked with 16bit it's hard to go back.

It's 14bit vs 16bit, along with sensor size, look, and feel of digital MF that wins it for MF. Also the potential for 1/800 - 1/1600 flash sync speeds.

If they ever come out with a 6x7 full frame MF back, then I think that will put this argument to bed forever. I remember, way back, when it was said to not bother with 645 as it's big enough over 35mm film.
 
The difference between the sensor sizes of digital MF and FX is not like what they are for film formats. A typical digital MF sensor is 44 x 33mm (645D, Leica S2, Hasselblad H4D-40), not 56 x 56mm as in the film days. Actually it is not that far from 36 x 24mm, the area ratio is more or less the same as the one between the FX and DX formats. Think about how the output from the Nex-7 compares to the one from the A900.. or the XP1 to the M9..Close enough?

Here's a sample from the D800E:

http://pcfoto.biz/images/testovi/Nikon_D800E_preview/050_T10p_galerija_n70-200_f2-8gVRII_raw.jpg


The original NEF files can be downloaded from here: http://pcfoto.biz/na-prvi-pogled-nikon-d800e
 
PKR said:
I honestly don't know much about any MF backs other than the Phase. The Phase is 6x4.5. It is a big sensor. It's covered with a glass plate for easy cleaning. It looks just like a 6x4.5 film frame in size.

http://www.phaseone.com/en/Camera-Systems/P-Series.aspx
Click to expand...

Not necessarily...

http://www.phaseone.com/en/Camera-Systems/P-Series/P-Specifications.aspx

BTW, the closest one to the 645 format costs over $40K and the least expensive one with the size I mentioned is about $20K.
 
BobYIL said:
The difference between the sensor sizes of digital MF and FX is not like what they are for film formats. A typical digital MF sensor is 44 x 33mm (645D, Leica S2, Hasselblad H4D-40), not 56 x 56mm as in the film days. Actually it is not that far from 36 x 24mm, the area ratio is more or less the same as the one between the FX and DX formats. Think about how the output from the Nex-7 compares to the one from the A900.. or the XP1 to the M9..Close enough?

Here's a sample from the D800E:

http://pcfoto.biz/images/testovi/Nikon_D800E_preview/050_T10p_galerija_n70-200_f2-8gVRII_raw.jpg


The original NEF files can be downloaded from here: http://pcfoto.biz/na-prvi-pogled-nikon-d800e
Click to expand...

The Phase One P65+, IQ160 and IQ180 backs are all ''full frame'' 6x4.5 (i.e. the size of a 645 film camera frame). Same goes for quite a few Hasselblad and Leaf backs. The P45+ back, while a bit older, still only has a 1.1x crop factor. Sure, a lot of the entry level digital MF cameras (and the S2) have a smaller sensor but they are still quite large.

The resolution of the D800 is certainly impressive but it still looks like 35mm. Interestingly, most of the people who think the D800 approaching medium format quality are people who have never worked with digital medium format. And I don't mean this as an attack, I just think that once you actually work with digital mf you just see the difference right away.
 
Jamie Pillers said:
Even so, I think medium format is not here for long. Digital is just becoming too good, and I don't see the pace of improvement slowing down at all.
Click to expand...

Depends what you mean by "digital is just becoming too good". The usual metric is always about resolution or ISO performance because that's where digital excels but that doesn't represent the entire characteristic gamut of an image. Im in no way considering commercial/professional pursuits as they run on different values again, but from a personal preference about what characteristics I want to see in an image, digital doesn't even come close to film (especially B&W). And I'm not trying to position this as a digi-film debate; just pointing out that the areas in which digital excels does not in itself constitute an absolute, especially when compared to the qualities of medium and larger format film.
 
BobYIL said:
Actually it is not that far from 36 x 24mm, the area ratio is more or less the same as the one between the FX and DX formats. Think about how the output from the Nex-7 compares to the one from the A900.. or the XP1 to the M9..Close enough?
Click to expand...

Actually, it *is* considerably larger. People used to make the same mistake when they used to say 645 film wasn't that much bigger than 35mm, because it was only 60% larger. Same applies in this case: with 645 vs 35mm, the difference is very often visible to the naked eye. I'm betting the same would apply here.
 
Ruhayat said:
Actually, it *is* considerably larger. People used to make the same mistake when they used to say 645 film wasn't that much bigger than 35mm, because it was only 60% larger. Same applies in this case: with 645 vs 35mm, the difference is very often visible to the naked eye. I'm betting the same would apply here.
Click to expand...

That was what I always reckoned: that 645 'tipped the balance' from just about OK to very good. Even so, I never liked the format much: if I'm carrying a larger camera, I'd rather have Linhof's 57x72mm version of 6x7cm, where a 3x enlargement can be indistinguishable from a whole-plate contact print.

Cheers,

R.
 
The big difference between MF and 35mm is that you are compressing the image into two different sizes. As with all information compression, you lose more data with more compression; you have to squeeze the light rays into a smaller area and it is harder to resolve the light rays. Now all things equal, sensor technology and lens quality etc., technically you still get more information from a larger sensor. Now if all things are not equal, then it's a different kind of comparison.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom