jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Yesterday I gave my R-D 1 its first serious tryout at studio photography, in a gruelling 5-hour session of promo photos for press use and (eventually) a 4-color brochure.
In the past I've done these sessions using a Nikon D100 and a 70-200 VR Nikkor, mounted on a tripod, dumping filled memory cards into a laptop computer as I shot.
This time, I decided to try shooting the whole thing with the R-D 1 (although I did have the Nikon stuff out in the trunk of the car, just in case.) Instead of the laptop, I took along my recently-acquired Epson P-2000 photo viewer. I got the P-2000 partly because it's easier to lug around than a laptop and card reader, and partly because (until more cataloging software gets updated to support the Epson ERF format) it's the only way I can do quick onsite reviews of shots in raw format!
I'm happy to say that the experiment seemed to work well, and I did not have to go get the Nikon out of the trunk!
[To see some sample shots, click here. ]
However, I encountered a few quirks and unexpected situations which I thought might interest other R-D 1 users. Here's how it went:
Basic setup: The client (I'll call them a client even though I volunteer my time for this group) wanted the shots done in a very simple environment with a plain white background. (Yes, the white background can be a bit drab, but newspapers love it because it helps conceal how lousy newspaper photo reproduction usually is!)
To get this effect, I used a roll of 9-foot-wide white seamless paper, lit separately from the subjects with three electronic flash heads. The subjects were lit with a main light in an octagonal softbox, positioned at a 45-degree angle, and a less-powerful fill light with a shoot-through umbrella over it, positioned at about a 45-degree angle on the opposite side.
The way you get the white-background effect is to first take incident flash meter readings at the backdrop, adjusting the heads until you get even lighting across the backdrop. Note the metered reading, and then open up 2-1/2 stops (no more, no less.) Adjust the power of the lights on the subject to give correct exposure at this opened-up setting. If you get everything balanced properly, this will give a correctly-exposed subject with a clean white background and an evenly gradated horizon in between.
Equipment: I used the R-D 1 with a 50mm f/1.4 Canon lens. I've learned from past experience that with the lighting setup described above, you need an effective lens hood to keep the background lighting from scattering into the lens, reducing contrast. Fortunately, I had the correct clamp-on hood, acquired some time ago in a swap from a friendly RFF member.
I took three batteries for the R-D 1. During the session, I ran down one battery all the way, and the second battery about halfway. I don't have a spare battery for the P-2000; its battery made it all the way through the shooting (about 3-1/2 hours) but began to poop out afterward while we were reviewing the shots (aboutr 1-1/2 hours.) Fortunately, I had its AC adapter, so it was no problem to plug it in and continue. In a "field" shoot, though, I would have run out of juice.
Procedure: I shot all the pictures in raw format. I have two 512-mb memory cards for the R-D 1; each of these holds somewhat less than 50 raw-format shots, so I wouldn't have been able to get through the whole session (about 280 shots before culling) without dumping them onto the P-2000.
In practice, I'd shoot a group of poses on one card -- maybe 20-30 shots -- then take out that card, put it in the P-2000, put the other card in the camera, and continue shooting. I kept alternating, shooting on one card while the P-2000 dumped the other; this gave a very fluid pace to the shooting.
Once we had finished the shots, I plugged the P-2000 into a handy TV set via its A/V output, so the directors and I could review the shots and select the "keepers" to be converted in Photoshop once I got back home. We made these selections by using the P-2000's "album" function, creating a new album and copying the selected images into it. More on this later.
Overall impression: Shooting the session with the R-D 1 worked out really well. It accomplished what I had hoped it would accomplish: making me more productive by letting me work handheld (which saves time when responding to changing shot situations) and helping me feel confident (it's a huge advantage to be able to watch the flashes fire while looking through the viewfinder, especially when trying to catch action shots.)
Now some problems, unexpected results, and "gotchas" --
Well, that's my "field report" on doing a studio shoot with the R-D 1! If anyone has any suggestions for the problems I encountered, I'd appreciate hearing about them!
In the past I've done these sessions using a Nikon D100 and a 70-200 VR Nikkor, mounted on a tripod, dumping filled memory cards into a laptop computer as I shot.
This time, I decided to try shooting the whole thing with the R-D 1 (although I did have the Nikon stuff out in the trunk of the car, just in case.) Instead of the laptop, I took along my recently-acquired Epson P-2000 photo viewer. I got the P-2000 partly because it's easier to lug around than a laptop and card reader, and partly because (until more cataloging software gets updated to support the Epson ERF format) it's the only way I can do quick onsite reviews of shots in raw format!
I'm happy to say that the experiment seemed to work well, and I did not have to go get the Nikon out of the trunk!
[To see some sample shots, click here. ]
However, I encountered a few quirks and unexpected situations which I thought might interest other R-D 1 users. Here's how it went:
Basic setup: The client (I'll call them a client even though I volunteer my time for this group) wanted the shots done in a very simple environment with a plain white background. (Yes, the white background can be a bit drab, but newspapers love it because it helps conceal how lousy newspaper photo reproduction usually is!)
To get this effect, I used a roll of 9-foot-wide white seamless paper, lit separately from the subjects with three electronic flash heads. The subjects were lit with a main light in an octagonal softbox, positioned at a 45-degree angle, and a less-powerful fill light with a shoot-through umbrella over it, positioned at about a 45-degree angle on the opposite side.
The way you get the white-background effect is to first take incident flash meter readings at the backdrop, adjusting the heads until you get even lighting across the backdrop. Note the metered reading, and then open up 2-1/2 stops (no more, no less.) Adjust the power of the lights on the subject to give correct exposure at this opened-up setting. If you get everything balanced properly, this will give a correctly-exposed subject with a clean white background and an evenly gradated horizon in between.
Equipment: I used the R-D 1 with a 50mm f/1.4 Canon lens. I've learned from past experience that with the lighting setup described above, you need an effective lens hood to keep the background lighting from scattering into the lens, reducing contrast. Fortunately, I had the correct clamp-on hood, acquired some time ago in a swap from a friendly RFF member.
I took three batteries for the R-D 1. During the session, I ran down one battery all the way, and the second battery about halfway. I don't have a spare battery for the P-2000; its battery made it all the way through the shooting (about 3-1/2 hours) but began to poop out afterward while we were reviewing the shots (aboutr 1-1/2 hours.) Fortunately, I had its AC adapter, so it was no problem to plug it in and continue. In a "field" shoot, though, I would have run out of juice.
Procedure: I shot all the pictures in raw format. I have two 512-mb memory cards for the R-D 1; each of these holds somewhat less than 50 raw-format shots, so I wouldn't have been able to get through the whole session (about 280 shots before culling) without dumping them onto the P-2000.
In practice, I'd shoot a group of poses on one card -- maybe 20-30 shots -- then take out that card, put it in the P-2000, put the other card in the camera, and continue shooting. I kept alternating, shooting on one card while the P-2000 dumped the other; this gave a very fluid pace to the shooting.
Once we had finished the shots, I plugged the P-2000 into a handy TV set via its A/V output, so the directors and I could review the shots and select the "keepers" to be converted in Photoshop once I got back home. We made these selections by using the P-2000's "album" function, creating a new album and copying the selected images into it. More on this later.
Overall impression: Shooting the session with the R-D 1 worked out really well. It accomplished what I had hoped it would accomplish: making me more productive by letting me work handheld (which saves time when responding to changing shot situations) and helping me feel confident (it's a huge advantage to be able to watch the flashes fire while looking through the viewfinder, especially when trying to catch action shots.)
Now some problems, unexpected results, and "gotchas" --
Flash gotcha: One unexpected problem I've discovered using the R-D 1 with studio flash equipment: its PC socket is polarized. That means that if you use flash gear that has a standard household-type "H" connector for the sync cord, the flash may work when the connector is plugged in one way but NOT the other! When I first plugged in the camera, the flashes wouldn't fire; at first I thought I had a bad sync cable, until it occurred to me to try it again with the connector turned around.
Previewing problems: The big advantage of digital photography vs. film is the ability to check your results on the spot. But I had an unusual amount of trouble with this --
-- For some reason, I found it really hard to evaluate the lighting on the R-D 1's display. Even when my meter readings told me the foreground/background lighting balance was correct, it didn't look correct on the LCD. The same shots viewed on the P-2000 looked okay, so I decided to grit my teeth and proceed, and fortunately they did turn out to be OK. I'm still not sure why this was happening; the very bright background may have had something to do with it, but I can't think what.
-- All the digital-photography articles say that if you want top quality, you must shoot in raw format. I understand the reason for that, and I endorse the theory -- but in practice, I'm beginning to waver. The problem is that there's no way to field-review raw images without going through the time-consuming process of rendering them out in Photoshop; otherwise, previewing -- whether using software or hardware such as the P-2000 -- only shows you the image's embedded JPEG preview image.
What you can do with these preview images on the P-2000 is pretty limited. You can't rotate them; when we were reviewing the images, I got around this problem by tipping the TV up on its side! And you can't zoom in on them -- which would have been very handy when we were trying to make sure people had their eyes open and didn't have goofy facial expressions. I'm still undecided on whether it's better to have the extra image quality of raw format, or the extra reassurance of zoomable, previewable images in high-quality JPEG format.
P-2000 frustrations: Speaking of the P-2000, it's a very slick little piece of hardware. But its software, particularly the file system, is abysmal!
Imagine if, when you downloaded or copied a file onto your PC, the PC operating system immediately assigned it a new, arbitrary filename. Now imagine that if you then copied this file into another folder, the operating system would give it a different filename. And suppose that you weren't allowed to edit these names! There's no way you'd put up with that -- yet it's exactly how the P-2000 works.
Another pet peeve about albums: You can name them on the P-2000, but once it's hooked up to your computer, they just show up as ALBUM001, ALBUM002, etc.
I still feel the P-2000 is a good device for dumping memory cards and handling ERF files, but I need to do some more thinking about an efficient way to manage files on it.
Image Quality Conundrum: Generally I was very satisfied with the quality of the images I got from the R-D 1; they seemed at least as good as the photos I've shot under similar conditions with the Nikon D-100.
If you look at the samples, though, you might notice that many of them seem to have a bluish cast in the areas away from the main lights, producing somewhat cold-looking skin tones. I had noticed this in my D-100 shots as well, but the effect seems more pronounced with the R-D 1.
I tried a lot of tricks for removing this bluish cast during raw conversion and in Photoshop, but didn't find a completely satisfactory solution. (I'm sure it won't bother the client, but I'm a little pickier...)
The only theory I can think of for this is that it's caused by UV radiation -- either directly affecting the camera's imager, or causing white materials in the shot to fluoresce in a way that the imager captures differently than film would do.
So next time, I think I'll try using a UV filter over the lens. (My 70-200 Nikkor does have a UV filter on it, so this may be why the effect was less noticeable with it.) That should reduce the effect if the problem is the direct action of UV on the camera imager.
Unfortunately, if the effect is caused by fluorescence of the materials in the shot, a UV filter won't help -- the fluorescence would be in the visible spectrum, not UV, so a filter wouldn't eliminate it. My flash heads do not have UV suppression -- and I can't afford to replace them with ones that do -- so if that's the problem, I'll just have to live with it. (I'd prefer to eliminate it by shooting in black-and-white, but the clients won't always sit still for that!)
Previewing problems: The big advantage of digital photography vs. film is the ability to check your results on the spot. But I had an unusual amount of trouble with this --
-- For some reason, I found it really hard to evaluate the lighting on the R-D 1's display. Even when my meter readings told me the foreground/background lighting balance was correct, it didn't look correct on the LCD. The same shots viewed on the P-2000 looked okay, so I decided to grit my teeth and proceed, and fortunately they did turn out to be OK. I'm still not sure why this was happening; the very bright background may have had something to do with it, but I can't think what.
-- All the digital-photography articles say that if you want top quality, you must shoot in raw format. I understand the reason for that, and I endorse the theory -- but in practice, I'm beginning to waver. The problem is that there's no way to field-review raw images without going through the time-consuming process of rendering them out in Photoshop; otherwise, previewing -- whether using software or hardware such as the P-2000 -- only shows you the image's embedded JPEG preview image.
What you can do with these preview images on the P-2000 is pretty limited. You can't rotate them; when we were reviewing the images, I got around this problem by tipping the TV up on its side! And you can't zoom in on them -- which would have been very handy when we were trying to make sure people had their eyes open and didn't have goofy facial expressions. I'm still undecided on whether it's better to have the extra image quality of raw format, or the extra reassurance of zoomable, previewable images in high-quality JPEG format.
P-2000 frustrations: Speaking of the P-2000, it's a very slick little piece of hardware. But its software, particularly the file system, is abysmal!
Imagine if, when you downloaded or copied a file onto your PC, the PC operating system immediately assigned it a new, arbitrary filename. Now imagine that if you then copied this file into another folder, the operating system would give it a different filename. And suppose that you weren't allowed to edit these names! There's no way you'd put up with that -- yet it's exactly how the P-2000 works.
Another pet peeve about albums: You can name them on the P-2000, but once it's hooked up to your computer, they just show up as ALBUM001, ALBUM002, etc.
I still feel the P-2000 is a good device for dumping memory cards and handling ERF files, but I need to do some more thinking about an efficient way to manage files on it.
Image Quality Conundrum: Generally I was very satisfied with the quality of the images I got from the R-D 1; they seemed at least as good as the photos I've shot under similar conditions with the Nikon D-100.
If you look at the samples, though, you might notice that many of them seem to have a bluish cast in the areas away from the main lights, producing somewhat cold-looking skin tones. I had noticed this in my D-100 shots as well, but the effect seems more pronounced with the R-D 1.
I tried a lot of tricks for removing this bluish cast during raw conversion and in Photoshop, but didn't find a completely satisfactory solution. (I'm sure it won't bother the client, but I'm a little pickier...)
The only theory I can think of for this is that it's caused by UV radiation -- either directly affecting the camera's imager, or causing white materials in the shot to fluoresce in a way that the imager captures differently than film would do.
So next time, I think I'll try using a UV filter over the lens. (My 70-200 Nikkor does have a UV filter on it, so this may be why the effect was less noticeable with it.) That should reduce the effect if the problem is the direct action of UV on the camera imager.
Unfortunately, if the effect is caused by fluorescence of the materials in the shot, a UV filter won't help -- the fluorescence would be in the visible spectrum, not UV, so a filter wouldn't eliminate it. My flash heads do not have UV suppression -- and I can't afford to replace them with ones that do -- so if that's the problem, I'll just have to live with it. (I'd prefer to eliminate it by shooting in black-and-white, but the clients won't always sit still for that!)
Well, that's my "field report" on doing a studio shoot with the R-D 1! If anyone has any suggestions for the problems I encountered, I'd appreciate hearing about them!
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sljm
Guest
Whao great shots !!! Gd job showing off the capabilities of the RD-1, but just a question. Is there any other camera with the PC socket polarised ? for i don't seem to remember any other camera that does it.
S
Sean Reid
Guest
Hi jlw,
How did you set the white balance in RAW conversion? Were you sampling from a neutral grey card? Michael Tapes came up with a good set of cards for this purpose, see http://www.rawworkflow.com
I've found that highlights sometimes look like they're over-exposed on the R-D1 LCD when, in fact, they're actually fine. The LCD seems to show a higher contrast than the actual RAW file has. The histogram seems to be accurate though, so I trust that much more than the LCD image. This has been true of many digital cameras I've used.
Cheers,
Sean
How did you set the white balance in RAW conversion? Were you sampling from a neutral grey card? Michael Tapes came up with a good set of cards for this purpose, see http://www.rawworkflow.com
I've found that highlights sometimes look like they're over-exposed on the R-D1 LCD when, in fact, they're actually fine. The LCD seems to show a higher contrast than the actual RAW file has. The histogram seems to be accurate though, so I trust that much more than the LCD image. This has been true of many digital cameras I've used.
Cheers,
Sean
tamerlin
Registered Newbie
Not all of the issues you had with RAW files are endemic to RAW files, though. I use RAW on
my DRebel, and it actually rotates images shot vertically automatically (unless you turn off
that option). Of course, my FlashTrax does not, but that's another story. I think it's a limitation
of the software on the RD-1, rather than of the format. Photoshop lets me rotate RAW images
also.
Nice report, and thank you also for your explanation on uing white backdrops.
my DRebel, and it actually rotates images shot vertically automatically (unless you turn off
that option). Of course, my FlashTrax does not, but that's another story. I think it's a limitation
of the software on the RD-1, rather than of the format. Photoshop lets me rotate RAW images
also.
Nice report, and thank you also for your explanation on uing white backdrops.
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
sljm said:
Lots of modern digitally-controlled cameras have polarized sync connections (hot shoe, PC socket, or both.) I know the Nikon D100 does, and so did some of my previous Minolta film SLRs. (On the top-of-the-line Maxxum 9, they went to the extra expense of adding additional circuitry so the flash circuit would not be polarized.) If I recall correctly, this situation first appeared when the Nikon F3 camera came out, so it's been around for quite a long time!
Going by what I've read, this behavior is caused by the use of a transistor, rather than a mechanical switch, to fire the sync circuit. The advantage of the transistor is that it isn't subject to mechanical wear; the disadvantage is that the flash's trigger current will only flow through the transistor gate in one direction (polarity.)
It seems that camera and flash manufacturers have more or less standardized a polarity for hot-shoe-mounted devices -- but if you're using a studio flash with an H connector, the polarity changes depending on which way you plug in the connector. Of course, if you guess wrong, it's easy to turn over the connector... as long as you're aware that's the problem!
Some studio flash units use a coaxial (headphone-type; also known as a Bowens connector because it's used on this brand) sync connector, and wrong polarity can be more of a problem with these because you can't just reverse the connector. Bowens used to offer a 'sync reverser' cable, and this may still be available.
Another option is to use a 'sync isolator' such as the Wein SafeSync. This is essentially an electronic relay that separates the camera's sync circuit from the flash's trigger circuit. Aside from eliminating polarity problems, it also protects the camera's sync transistor from damage that might be caused by the high trigger voltages in very old flash units; some of these are high enough to "blow the gate" in the transistor, permanently disabling flash sync!
(I don't know how valid this is, and if you're in any doubt it's safer just to buy a SafeSync and use it... but I was told by an old-timer that a crude way of testing the trigger current is to fire the flash by shorting its PC cord contacts with the tip of an ordinary lead pencil. If you see a spark at the pencil tip when you do this, your flash has a high trigger current; no spark means it should be safe. The old-timer said that some early studio flash power packs -- designed for the big, heavy sync switch contacts in Kalart-type external synchronizers -- had such a high trigger current that you'd see a big, bright blue spark like the one you'd see from a car's spark plug!
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jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Sean Reid said:
Hmmm, interesting point. I was sampling from a shadowed area on the white floor. Normally this seems to work -- if the white is neutral, then its shadows should be neutral as well.
But if the sensor is responding to UV, then I may be getting "skew" because the shadows are more UV-rich than the main subject -- the main lights hitting the subject are going through fabric diffusers (which probably reduce their UV content, same way your clothes protect you from sunburn by blocking UV) while the background lights, which are the only ones filling the shadow areas, don't have any diffusers over them.
If that's the case, then if I can't get rid of the extra UV, I should be sampling white balance from a neutral area on the main subject, as you suggest.
Agreed. What's tricky in this case is that to get a clean white background, but avoid having it so bright that it "bleeds around" the subjects, I have to get it right on the threshold of being overexposed. At the time, I wasn't sure what the histogram for this should look like.
Now I think I'll pick some of the most successful exposures, load their raw files back onto a memory card, put the card back into the R-D 1, and look at their histograms so I'll know what curve shape I should aim for.
Thanks for the suggestions!
S
Sean Reid
Guest
My pleasure. I'd grab that card from Michael Tapes and use it with each session. http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/whibal/index.html As for the white, why not move the histo over to the left a little and bring the background back up to pure white (if needed) in PS CS?
Cheers,
Sean
Cheers,
Sean
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Sean Reid said:
That's what I wound up doing. The reason it's ticklish is that if you've overexposed the original file, the subject highlights will be close enough to the backgroundhighlights that you start blowing out the subject as well.
I got away with it most of the time, but there were a few in which the tones were too close together, and I had to give up on those. Now that I know which original exposures produced separable highlights, I want to go back and memorize their in-camera histograms so I'll be able to reproduce them again.
Those cards look like a great idea! I'll have to check 'em out. I see that he does specifically reference UV reflectivity in his writeup, so evidently I'm not the first person to encounter this sort of thing...
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
tamerlin said:
I know -- they weren't really R-D 1 issues, either. More of a problem of other devices/software not yet supporting the ERF format very well. I should have made that clearer in my original writeup; thanks for pointing it out.
Larry Kellogg
Established
Good work! How do you like that Canon 50 f/1.4 lens? I have one coming to me in the mail and I can't wait to try it out. What do you think about it on the R-D1?
Regards,
Larry
Regards,
Larry
S
Sean Reid
Guest
jlw,
Are you converting from RAW in CS or PhotoRAW?
Sean
Are you converting from RAW in CS or PhotoRAW?
Sean
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Larry Kellogg said:
I like it a lot. I've owned one for years and it has always worked well for me. I would describe it as a lens without any specific "character traits" -- just an all-around solid performer that gets the job done. It's possible that the 50/1.8 might be a little sharper -- but the difference (if any) isn't dramatic, and the 50/1.4 is so nice and small that you pay hardly any size/weight penalty for the extra 2/3 stop of maximum aperture.
I've been surprised at how well the 50mm focal length suits me on the R-D 1. I've always shot a lot with a 50 on film, so logically I'd be leaning toward the 35mm focal length on the R-D 1 (since it's roughly equivalent to about 55mm) but it seems that I use the 50 more. That may be because my preference is to stand off a bit and crop tightly.
I'm looking forward to Sean's forthcoming review of high-speed lenses on the R-D 1, since he's going to include these Canon oldies along with several current 50s. I'm sure the latest $3,000 aspherical Summilux will outperform the old reliable Canon... but it will be interesting to see how much, if only because there's no way I can afford the Summilux, and it should be fun to know what I'm missing!
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Sean Reid said:
I'm using the Epson plug-in, which is the only option available to me using a Mac and Photoshop 7.
Although I use CS at the office, I haven't updated at home... and I'm not going to, since it was just leaked today that Photoshop CS2 will ship in May and I'd rather wait and spend my upgrade bucks for that. Among its new features (per AppleInsider): "Meanwhile, the new Camera Raw 3.0 workflow will support batch processing of raw files in the background and without forcing the user to launch the main Photoshop application. Additionally, the new version will allow settings for multiple raw files to be simultaneously modified, while new non-destructive cropping and straightening controls will allow raw files to be easily prepared for final output."
You probably knew all that, but most likely you were NDA'ed, and I ain't!
I see that B+W is offering a "stong UV" filter that removes almost all UV present. Might be useful for this situation? http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=98957&is=REG
jlw
Rangefinder camera pedant
Thanks for the pointer! Might be worth the investment, if only to try to localize the problem.
I wonder if anyone has done any research into distinctive effects of UV (if any) on digital camera imagers...?
[Follow-up: Yes, I guess someone has -- click here to read about it.
For the record, this experimenter says that a digital camera imager's UV sensitivity is so low that you have to go to great lengths to get it to register at all; I guess that shoots my theory that the bluish cast in my results might be caused by the direct action of UV on the R-D 1's imager. Fluorescence is still a possibility, but I don't know how I would test for that...]
I wonder if anyone has done any research into distinctive effects of UV (if any) on digital camera imagers...?
[Follow-up: Yes, I guess someone has -- click here to read about it.
For the record, this experimenter says that a digital camera imager's UV sensitivity is so low that you have to go to great lengths to get it to register at all; I guess that shoots my theory that the bluish cast in my results might be caused by the direct action of UV on the R-D 1's imager. Fluorescence is still a possibility, but I don't know how I would test for that...]
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RML
Guest
jlw said:
I've noticed the same thing with my Eos 300D and my 50/1.8. I shoot 50mm on my Bessa R (sorry, no R-D1 yet) and at first I was reluctant to shoot the 50 on the Eos. But now, a few months later, I find it suits me well. I'm not going over to an 85mm on the Bessa (though I do have one, which I occassionally use) but I doubt I'll shell out any money for a 35mm for the Eos.
Interesting... I suppose if it IS UV fluorescence, that puts the emphasis on removing UV from the light sources.jlw said:
S
Sean Reid
Guest
Odds are that nailing the WB in RAW conversion (using those card Michael Tapes came up with) will do the trick.
Cheers,
Sean
Cheers,
Sean
S
Sean Reid
Guest
jlw said:
You know, one thing that's interesting about that is that a 50 on the R-D1 is still a 50. People sometimes think of it as a 75 but it's really a cropped 50 and I make that distinction because a 75 has a different kind of spatial compression, a different abrubtness of transition from sharp areas to OOF areas, etc.. So the frame edges come in closer, of course, but the "drawing" is a 50mm kind of drawing, not a 75mm kind of drawing. I need to remember to talk about this in the fast lenses article. Erwin Puts talked about this aspect in his R-D1 review but I don't think he's yet made this distinction as clear as he could. It's an important point though. Wide lenses of course, expand the space in a picture (not just FOV but the sense of space as the eye works across the depth of the picture) whereas telephoto lenses, of course, compress it. So that tension or balance between expansion and compression of space that is inherent in a 50mm (and that I think appealed so much to Cartier Bresson, for example) remains the same when that lens is mounted on a body that crops its FOV. So, while a 35 on the R-D1 provides a similar FOV to a 50 because of the sensor's cropping effect, it still draws like a 35. In that sense, it can't replace a 50 in terms of many of the subtle cues a picture gives us about space as seen by a lens.
Some might see this as a drawback of sensors that are less than FF. I think it just opens some interesting doors.
Cheers,
Sean
R
RML
Guest
Sean, it can never hurt to make this distinction clear.