I think many of you will recall me being quite blown away by the power of the images and the quality of the printing/ presentation in my review of Nick Brandt’s earlier twin book On This Earth, A Shadow Falls (here). I’m fairly sure many of you were too, judging from my email traffic, the comments, and the number of orders via Amazon. I’ve turned into an enormous fan of Nick’s work: he is the photographer’s photographer, a man who clearly thinks about what he’s doing, photographs with integrity, for a reason, with an idea, with the most appropriate tool for the job, and presents the images in the best possible way. Across The Ravaged Land, the final volume in the trilogy, raises the bar even further. I spent an hour with the book and felt like I’d been smacked upside the head with the Pentax 67II he favours. Allow me to explain why.

Note: in this article, I’ve attempted to reproduce the tonal feel and colour of the images as accurately as possible, but reality is that it’s simply impossible to do so via a screen and a JPEG. Just buy the book, and from the print quality alone you’ll see why every photographer should spend some time making prints. I can’t even begin to imagine the impact of the large format images.

Linen cover and plastic dust jacket replaced with a rubbery, urethane-based paint cover with linen spine and conventional semi-matte dust jacket.

The book arrived before I left for Tokyo, but I wanted to set aside sufficient time to do it justice, so I didn’t open it until recently. I’m glad I did; though we’ve come to expect both compositions and presentation of a certain level following the first book, it was the emotional impact of the book that did me in. The tilted enlarger lens (I think) printing and infrared film of the previous book is gone; so too is the impression of idealism, lightness and hope. Across The Ravaged Land is a very appropriate title: you really feel as though you’re witnessing the struggle for survival of Nick’s subjects.

It’s a very different sort of wildlife photography to the kind you find in National Geographic; it’s not so much reportage as the conveying of an idea and the desperation and hopelessness you feel for the animals and the people trying to protect them. Even the majestic beasts – the lions and rhinos – appear to be not so much on the attack as making one final stand. In the first half of the book, we move from a series of very intimate, human moments punctuated by some of Nick’s signature ‘side on’ style to a centre section where it appears as though the animals are trying to come to terms with what is happening to their home; elephants pondering a skull of their number. I can’t help but feel distinct shades of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother in places, especially in the photographs that include the interactions between parent and child. The end portion is simply quite depressing – animals killed and preserved by the caustic salts of a lake; game trophy heads looking out over a landscape where they once really lived; and finally, the emptiness and finality of old footprints.

Bleak and helpless doesn’t even being to describe the way you feel at the end; this is a triumph of editing* and one of the best demonstrations I’ve seen of the power of the photographic medium. It’s also clear that an enormous amount of thought and dedication has gone into the creation of the images; not just the process, but more importantly, the idea. There are two essays in front: one explaining the context of the situation in Africa and just how fast wild animal populations are declining due to poaching and infringement by man; many of the subjects in the first book are now dead, killed by poachers mainly for their ivory, but also hides or as trophies. It’s immensely sobering, but also a little hopeful since there also appears to be a strong support for the cause both on the ground and internationally, through Nick’s work.

*The proper use of the term: selection and sequencing, not postprocessing

The second essay – I am the walrus – is more interesting to the photographer, for many reasons. It’s full of insights into the creative and technical processes, no doubt questions that were posed after the impact of the first two books. Nick was a former film director who’d worked with Michael Jackson for several videos; but found that creativity-for-pay was pretty much an oxymoron (sounds familiar? Read this essay.). He struck out on his own to shoot as he pleased, with the vision of creating an elegy to the majesty of the creatures he found in Africa. I’d say he succeeded in On This Earth and A Shadow Falls. Across The Ravaged Land is both a tribute and a warning: this is what will happen if we are not careful, but there is still a chance. I feel that the three books really need to be viewed together or in close succession for the full message to come through – even in the titles: “On this earth, a shadow falls across the ravaged land.” As always, it’s proven harder to convince people upfront that there is merit – usually financial – to an idea; if you have the confidence, go out and do it, and if you try hard enough, success and awareness follow. Usually.

Much like the first book, the printing in this one is absolutely superb (see the crops). I was told** that no compromises or expense were spared in the making of these books, and it shows. Those of you who are used to seeing dithered halftone dots on photo books printed via the offset method will be very, very pleasantly surprised when you open either of Nick’s books – they’re entirely gravure, including the text pages. This means the very finest detail structures and tonal nuances are preserved, and there is an overall impression of depth and richness to the images; no doubt the choice of inks and paper (Phoenix Motion 170, I’m told) plays a big part here, too. It feels like the same baryta paper as was used in the first book; silky, smooth, with a hint of bite that compliments the grain of the film used.

This portion is approximately 2″ high in the book. Note lack of individual halftone dots

Print quality of the text is pretty impressive, too.

Nick also uses a hybrid film-digital workflow to produce the images: they were shot on film with a Pentax 67II, and 50/100mm equivalent lenses; the negatives were then scanned and the tonal manipulations and darkroom processes (i.e. dodging and burning) made digitally in Photoshop. Interestingly, Nick tried photographing the same way with medium format digital, but abandoned it (and the much higher hit rate, which is the opposite of my experience with MF digital so far) because it felt ‘too easy’, but more importantly because “…the images were too clinical, too sterile, too devoid of atmosphere. Just too…perfect. In fact, had I photographed with a digital camera from the beginning, I’m not sure I’d have liked a single photograph that I had ever taken.” Readers of this site will know that I’ve been using this kind of workflow for my Hasselblad 6×6 negatives because of the tonal quality and degree of control/ consistency achievable; it’s nice to see that I’m not imagining things. Clearly, doing something different has resulted in something rather special. (And yes, my DSLR film scanning rig is still in the works. We’ve made some improvements to tolerances, rigidity and materials, but these of course have to be thoroughly tested before release…)

I want to end with a short thought on art – we touched on it first here, and again in this article. Nick’s work is unquestionably art. Why? Because it conveys a strong idea? Because it’s well executed? Because it’s aesthetically pleasing? All of the above, really. But because it was created without the inattention of ever being art; it was created without restriction by the photographer simply because he wanted to do it. Fortunately, he had the means to do so – and in the end, the purity of the idea comes through, unfiltered. “I have sought to photograph them not in action, but simply in a state of being.” I’d say he’s done just that. MT

**Coda: After the first review, I received a very complimentary email from Nick thanking me for my review and expressing something between relief and gratitude that the lengths he went to to get to prints right were being appreciated. A short correspondence developed, and he has very graciously agreed to an exclusive interview for the site, which will be published soon. I admit that writing the questions for that interview made me somewhat nervous, because Nick is one of my few true photographic heroes; a rockstar with integrity, talent, and beyond that, passion. In advance – thank you very much, Nick, from myself and all of the readers of my site.

On This Earth/ A Shadow Falls and Across The Ravaged Land are both available here from Amazon, and signed copies here from Photoeye.

____________

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

I’ve used a lot of 50mm and near-50mm lenses in my time*. I’ve had the privilege of owning or having on long term loan some of the legends – the Leica f0.95 Noctilux, for instance, the 50/2 APO-Summicron-ASPH; the Nikon 58/1.2 Noct-Nikkor; the Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar. However, I can honestly say, hand on heart, that the Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 APO Distagon is quite possibly the best of them all.

Insert gratuitous lens p*** here.

Note: there are others who have done a good job of far more comprehensive formal and technical tests, such as Lloyd Chambers, DXOMark etc. – this will not be that kind of review; I’m going to approach it from the point of view of what this lens was designed for: making pictures. I won’t be posting full size samples because I do not want to lose control of any images; and images that have no real merit shouldn’t be posted at all in any form. In any case, a large print is really required to see what this lens can do; no screen can do it justice. All images were shot with a Nikon D800E.

*Not even counting the equivalents on other formats: Nikon AFS 50/1.4 G; AFS 50/1.8 G; AF 50/1.4; AF 50/1.8 D; AI 55/2.8 Micro; AIS 58/1.2 Noct; AF 60/2.8 D Micro; AFS 60/2.8 Micro; AI 45/2.8 P; pre-AI 55/1.2 SC; Leica 50/2.5 Summarit-M; 50/2 Summicron-M; 50/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH; 50/2 APO-Summicron-M ASPH; 50/0.95 Noctilux-M ASPH; Sigma 50/1.4; Zeiss ZF.2 1.4/50 Planar; ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar; ZM 2/50 Planar; ZM 1.5/50 Sonnar; Otus ZF.2 1.4/55 APO-Distagon; CF 4/50 Distagon FLE. I’m sure there are others, but I honestly can’t remember them right now.

This is not a small lens. That’s an AFS 85/1.8 G in the background, and the image was shot with a 120mm equivalent – no perspective tricks!

Balances reasonably well on a D800E body, but still definitely front heavy. Similar to a 24-70, actually.

You could probably stop reading at this point, but I think such a bold statement deserves some explanation, and the lens itself is worthy of much more serious consideration. Firstly, this is not a lens that will make sense or appeal to everybody; size, weight, manual focus and price will see to that. It is not any one property of the Otus that makes it outstanding over the others, at the expense of something else – an f0.95 maximum aperture, for instance, traded off against some serious lateral CA, moderate corner softness and a 1m minimum focusing distance; or a focusing helicoid that covers the last 2m to infinity in ten degrees – it is the fact that it not only holds its own but thoroughly embarrasses the competition at every single measurement; in fact, the lens’ measured MTF outperforms the theoretical maximum MTFs of most lenses. That’s quite some achievement.

Only the clouds are truly free. Taipei. This image will be available in a limited edition print run to be announced in the next couple of days – stay tuned.

Of course, charts and numbers are not everything. There are lenses that test very poorly – Zeiss’ own 2/28 Distagon is one of those – due to aberrations such as severe field curvature; however, in practice, the way the lens renders is extremely three-dimensional and very, very pleasing. It therefore matters greatly how the lens renders in actual use; there are no numbers to describe quality of bokeh, for instance. Other qualities, such as microcontrast, are very easy to see but not so easy to measure. Some lenses have high resolution but harsh rendering – the Nikon AFS 50mms when stopped down, for instance – others are relatively low in fine structure/ microcontrast, such as the 58/1.2 Noct-Nikkor and late generation 50/1 Noctilux-M, but have very pleasing artistic qualities and ‘sufficient’ gross resolution.

100% crop here: note how the lens renders specular highlights in the water. Impressive.

It is very difficult to accurately describe the ‘Otus look’, but it’s definitely there, and quite distinct. I’ll do my best. I think it takes the best qualities of the modern Karbe-era Leica ASPH lenses (when their QC is on form), smoothes them out a little, and then adds the Zeiss three-dimensionality. Specifically, it splits an image very nicely into planes – at nearly any distance; there is a very fast transition between in- and out-of-focus areas. (I’ve always thought of that as a Leica ASPH signature.) The bokeh, however, is much smoother; it has the character of the ZF.2 1.4/85 Planar and ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar, but without the spherochromatism, longitudinal and lateral chromatic aberration. There are tiny trace hints of longitudinal CA, but you have to look very hard to find them and shoot bright sources to provoke it. Microcontrast at every aperture is stunningly good – very distinctly Zeiss – and this ability to differentiate between the most subtle of real tonal gradations means that subjects have a very three-dimensional quality, but with accurately rendered ‘bite’ and texture.

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall and moon, Taipei

What this means is that even the most ham-fisted and photographically untalented reviewer on the internet can instantly see that they’re holding something very, very special. In the hands of a master, this lens is a lethal weapon: it is both utterly transparent and emphatically revealing. What the lens lacks in aberrations and flaws manifests as this clarity and transparency that’s very unique because so few other lenses can do this – the only few that instantly come to mind are the Olympus 75/1.8, Contax 2/45 Planar, Leica 35/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH FLE, Nikon PCE 85/2.8 Micro and Nikon 200/2 VR, but even the latter is somewhat overshadowed by its extreme bokeh. If there’s any coloration added by the Otus at all, it’s that it adds a tiny bit of pop and sparkle through the way it handles contrast and tonal transitions.

A tribute to the late Saul Leiter.

You’ll notice I haven’t said too much about the optical properties of the lens: that’s because there’s nothing much to say. Wide open at f1.4, the lens matches the resolution of the D800E’s sensor, even in the corners. Beyond that, you gain a little more microcontrast and of course depth of field; I think things plateau from around f4-f8, beyond which we start to see the effects of diffraction kicking in on the D800E’s sensor. The lens however delivers as close to theoretically perfect DOF as I’ve seen. I suspect that if we used a larger pixel-pitch camera such as a D4, we’d see consistent results to f16.

Highway overhead. 100% crop here.

The way this remarkable resolution is achieved is through a two-pronged strategy: firstly, making a truly apochromatic design means that all wavelengths of visible light focus on the same point. The lack of smearing means that very fine detail structures can be resolved, which in turn creates the impression of clarity. On top of that, the lens’ focal plane is nearly flat – no eccentric field curvature like the 2/28 Distagon, but a more realistic rendering, too. The optical formula is a 12/10 design with a rear telephoto group to ensure telecentricity of the outgoing ray bundle. The Distagon design is one that’s typically used for wide angle lenses to allow sufficient clearance for the mirror; ‘normal’ 50mm-e lenses use more symmetric double-Gauss (‘Planar’) style designs for simplicity. It’s also one of the reasons good wides cost so much more, and reasonably good fast 50/1.8 lenses can be had for very little money. I was told by the people at Zeiss that the Otus is in fact derived from a medium format lens design – the already excellent 4/50 CF FLE, which has a 9/8 formula – with additional corrective elements. Its image circle is in fact much larger than 35mm, hence the behemoth 77mm front thread.

Moon and clouds, shot handheld at f2. 100% crop here: this is a normal FOV lens that’s resolving craters on the moon.

The Otus’ bokeh puts it amongst the best lenses I’ve seen, of any focal length, period. There is simply nothing offensive about it other than the occasional polygonal diffusion of sources if the lens is used stopped down (it has a 9-bladed diaphragm, but for some odd reason it isn’t perfectly round when stopped down), and with very bright lights. It’s generally a smooth wall with no bright edges, and a gradual transition between zones.

Bokeh.

Flare performance is pretty impressive, too: point light sources leave no ghosts, there’s no resultant veiling flare, and I can’t see any coma, either. Even with a source hitting the front element obliquely and slightly out of frame, there’s almost no visible lowering of contrast. I have to take the hood off and position the light source very deliberately before seeing even the smallest hints of flare. I’m told this is because of the way the sides and edges of the lens elements are coated: not only is the T* coating applied to the main incident surfaces, but over 100 different types of lacquer are applied to the edges of the glass to absorb any stray light.

To be continued shortly in part II.

Taipei 101: Verticality IV

The Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 APO Distagon is available in Nikon and Canon mounts here from B&H.

____________

2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Melbourne, Sydney and London – click here for more information and to book!

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Continued from Part One

Clearly, no expense was spared in the making of this lens. Unfortunately, this is also reflected in the price and size: a rather steep US$4,000, and a kerb weight (it actually sometimes feels like you’re aiming a tracked weapon) of around a kilo. It’s the size of a 24-70/2.8 from any of the big brands, and somewhat fatter, too. What you get for that money – aside from the outstanding optics – is a smooth, curved, all-metal housing and hood that mates flush with the front of the lens; rock-solid build, and quite possibly the best focusing ring I’ve ever used. This is of course very important for a manual focus lens, but it really is something else in terms of feel, feedback and haptics. Throw distance it’s perfect; it has enough resistance to stay put, but turns smoothly and has zero backlash – you can adjust focus with a fingertip. It also has a pleasingly tactile and grippy rubber ring, which is duplicated for the aperture setting ring. The mechanical aperture ring is of course only present on Nikon mount versions, which means that it’s also back-compatible with other mounts via adaptors – though you’d need a pretty darn good adaptor not to interfere with the planarity of the optics. Both Canon and Nikon mount versions have full electronic communication with the camera.

Truck geometry. Note lack of color bleeding, and resolving power that still stays at f16 – way past the D800E’s diffraction limits; there is some loss of microcontrast, but this is still an impressive performance. 100% crop here.

Just because I have waxed lyrical about everything thus far doesn’t mean the Otus is a perfect lens; there are a number of things I don’t like about it (aside from the size, weight and price). Number one is that it’s very, very difficult to nail focus accurately and consistently with today’s DSLR focusing screens; the lack of an appropriate focusing screen really holds this lens back – especially wide open; I’ve got a couple of replacement ones on order. A lack of resolution is almost certainly due to user error. On my F2 Titan and F6 (with Type A screen), focusing is significantly easier than the D800E, and it’s nearly impossible to do it precisely with the D600. The focusing dot is useless too – it stays lit for too much travel of the focusing ring. Zeiss should really think about making a decent focusing screen so people can make the most of their lenses; I bet they’d sell boatloads.

Things on a stick

There are a couple of performance issues, but I think only one (noticeable wide open vignetting) is the fault of the lens. The other is that I’m seeing some red/purple fringing overruns of a pixel or so on very high contrast areas – specifically in focus and very overexposed hard edged highlights. I’m told that the focal plane is so thin that what we’re seeing is a bit of residual second order CA; in practice, it disappears if we meter for the highlights, or stop down a little. To put things into context: my Noct-Nikkor (and 2/50 Macro-Planar) both do the same thing at f2, but with several pixels worth. It’s effectively not very noticeable in practice.

However, it is worth taking some time to consider an accurate definition of what the ‘APO’ designation actually means from a lens design standpoint. I quote Dr. Nasse at Zeiss:

The word ‘apochromatic’ has been originally used for the first time by Prof. Ernst Abbe related to his new type of microscope lenses which were much improved with respect to chromatic correction and appeared on the market during the 1880′s. He defined that lenses should match two conditions to be called Apo:

1. Have three identical focus positions for three colors within the visible spectrum, or in more mathematical terms, the longitudinal chromatic aberration curve should have three zero crossings in the visible spectrum. From this follows, that then between these special points the focus deviation can only be small, resulting in a very soft secondary spectrum, so just small fringing occurs.
2. In addition the spherical correction should be corrected for two colors within the visible spectrum instead of one in ordinary lenses. This means that condition 1) is not sufficient (especially in high speed lenses like the microscope lens with f/0.5 and more); not only the focus position is important but also the focus quality. In ordinary lenses also in the best focus e.g. of blue light the image is less sharp than for green or yellow light.

This definition is in the literature and in the minds of many people. However, condition 1) is nearly never fulfilled in photographic lenses. The basic reason is that they have much larger field angles than microscope lenses. In most photographic Apo-lenses the LCA curve is much more flat, but has just two coincident focus positions in the visible spectrum. Thus when one moves into the IR-range the focus deviation will increase so that a focus correction is necessary with a fast lens. Low chromatic aberrations with visible light do not mean that focus is constant also for extremely distant ‘color’. Zero dispersion exists with mirrors only.

The finish is my other bugbear: though it looks fantastic, like the regular ZF.2 lenses, it’s far too easily dinged and scratched, and impossible to keep clean. The front of the lens and front of the hood really needs a rubber bumper to stop it from getting nicked. I’ve taped up these high-risk edges with electrical tape so I can put the camera down without fear. The rubber focusing and aperture rings concern me in the long term: though they feel great, I have no idea how durable they’re going to be. Mine already shows some scuff marks from where it rubbed against other things in my bag – the camera strap’s hardware, for instance. I suspect you’re going to be able to tell how much a second hand Otus was used by the state of its rubber rings (if you find a second hand one at all, that is). The fluorescent yellow markings (all engraved and filled, including the hood) are a personal preference – I like them, but I know many who do not. Visibility under all light conditions is excellent. I’d really like to see weather sealing, though; especially around the little cutout where the distance and depth of field scales show: I’m really quite afraid that water is going to get in through what appears to be an open hole. It seems a shame that the lens is so ridiculously overbuilt on one hand, but a little vulnerable on another. And I’d like to use it under the same conditions which my camera would survive, of course.

The price and specifications of the Otus draw natural comparisons to its nearest rivals: the new Nikon AFS 58/1.4 G, and perhaps also the classic AI-S 58/1.2 Noct-Nikkor. The Leica 2/50 APO-Summicron-M ASPH is also mentioned, but it’s a stop slower, only available in a different mount, and nearly twice the price. I’ve shot extensively with the latter two lenses, and tested several samples of the 58/1.4; the Otus is still the best of the bunch. It doesn’t have the flare problem of the APO-Summicron, and focuses closer. I’m sure somebody will have tested both the APO-Summicron and Otus on a Sony A7r body and come to the wrong conclusion due to irregular adaptors; they’re designed for very different uses, which I feel makes it an unfair comparison.

The 58/1.4 G is not very sharp wide open – it suffers from some coma and flare – and never really gets perfect in the corners; I think the AFS 50/1.8 is actually slightly sharper. Both lenses lack the microcontrast and bite of the Otus; they also suffer from both lateral and longitudinal CA until stopped down. The Noct-Nikkor is spectacular past f2.8, excellent at f2, and merely good in the center at f1.2 (and a disaster in the corners). It was a remarkable achievement for the day, and still has a very pleasing painterly rendering quality, but it is no match for the Otus, even at its optimum aperture it never quite delivers the same level of microcontrast. I believe the new 58/1.4 G was designed to deliver similar pictorial qualities to the Noct-Nikkor; and in that it succeeds. Both 58s would make excellent portrait lenses, but I’d be very, very careful whom I turn the Otus on. I don’t have enough experience to say for certain, but the look and rendering style of the Otus is as close as you’re going to get to the look of the Zeiss Master Primes used in cinema – right down to the lack of any visible focus breathing. This is not a coincidence: the same team who designed those Master Primes also designed the Otus.

This has turned into the longest lens review I’ve ever written; so long I had to break it up into two parts to make it readable. It wasn’t by design; there’s simply been a lot to say. The Otus is a benchmark lens in many ways: it is really the first lens designed from scratch to make the most of the D800E’s sensor at any aperture and thus extend the creative envelope; the next lens in the line will be a 1.4/85, with a wide and possibly macro to follow soon after. I am personally hoping for a 21mm tilt shift or 1.4/28, but that’s almost certainly not going to happen. At any rate, the current ZF.2 2.8/21 Distagon is an excellent performer on the D800E, if not quite up to the standards of the Otus. It is a lens that is currently without peer for many reasons, and in many ways. I can only hope that a substantial portion of the price goes towards quality control; other brands are capable of outstanding designs, but sample variation kills resolution in practice. However, the consistency of responses amongst those who have tested and seriously put the Otus through its paces makes me think that this is not the case with Zeiss, and my personal experience with 20+ lenses in different mounts and of different vintages further supports this.

Did you know this building has a fine tile facade? Neither did I, until I examined the file at 100% – see here. Yes, it has such high resolving power that it will induce moire. This is about as bad as it gets, actually; I haven’t done anything to correct it.

I think it’s pretty obvious that I really, really love this lens; not just because its resolving power enables me to step up a level in my fine art printmaking, but because of the transparency in the way it renders. It really is quite possibly the best lens I have ever used, for any format. Comparing the three days of intensive shooting in Taipei to excursions with previous equipment, I’ve never quite produced as many images that I’ve felt really captured what I saw; I don’t know if it’s the lens closing that gap or something else, but I feel that level of clarity over other lenses is definitely noticeable on-screen, and really jumps out at you in a large print.

If you have the means and opportunity to own one, do it. Learning the shot discipline to extract its full potential can come later. Yes, it’s not a cheap lens, but then again, when you compare it to its nearest competition performance-wise – the Leica 50/2 APO ($7,350) and to a lesser extent, the Leica 50/1.4 ASPH ($4,000) – it’s actually not that bad. No other brand has anything that comes close, especially on the 36MP+ cameras; that said, you really do need to have outstanding shot discipline, good eyesight and a D800E or better to appreciate the full difference. But if you do, I think you’ll find it’s so outstandingly good that you too will feel a small pang of disappointment when you have to use anything else. I am fairly confident that it will be remembered as being a modern legend. Who’d have thought I’d fall in love with a normal-angle lens? MT

The Zeiss Otus 1.4/55 APO Distagon is available in Nikon and Canon mounts here from B&H.

____________

2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Melbourne, Sydney and London – click here for more information and to book!

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

My initial thoughts on the Nikon Df (which can be found here) were not positive, mainly due to the way the camera was marketed and executed. I’ve changed my mind somewhat after using it for the last week or so. However, it is simply a camera that does not work for me, even though it should tick every single box – I love my F2 Titan, D800Es pay for most of my bills, I’ve used or owned just about every lens produced in the last ten years, and I admit to secretly coveting the D4′s sensor – but there you go. It is a camera which doesn’t quite make up the sum of its parts.

Note: This is not going to be written in the style of my past reviews. For a start, there aren’t any images. And there’s a good reason for that.

Let’s start with the long list of things Nikon did do right:

• Put a very sensible choice of sensor in: the D4′s 16MP FX unit makes the most sense for most users. It’s more than enough resolution for most people’s output needs, providing pixel integrity is high; it’s a forgiving sensor both for camera shake/ shutter speeds and lens resolution thanks to its relatively low photosite density. It’s also capable of excellent dynamic range, great high ISO performance; the HI1 setting (25,600) is actually usable, as is HI2 (51,200). This of course means that it has the same excellent image quality as a D4, or perhaps slightly better given the intervening development time on the sensor between versions.
• Made it back-compatible with pretty much everything: the aperture coupling lever even folds away so it can mount pre-AI lenses without damaging the body.
• Made just about every important control an external switch or lever – ISO, exposure compensation, metering, shutter speed, aperture (with the right lenses), drive mode, exposure mode.
• Made almost all of those controls lock: it’s a good and bad thing, though. The interlocks are small and not consistently or obviously positioned. I suppose one could get over this with time. You are also forced to use their chosen increments for ISO and exposure compensation though: 1/3 stop is overkill and slow for modern cameras; 1/2 stops are better and often whole stops are adequate. You’re probably going to do more push/pull than 1/3 stop just by manipulating the exposure curves afterwards anyway – and the sensor has far more latitude than a measly third of a stop. It’s not slide film.
• Threaded the shutter for a good old-fashioned screw in cable release.
• Left the autofocus in: I was initially on the fence about this, but I think it’s a good thing. Options are always a good thing.
• There’s no video: that’s fine; DSLRs a poor choice for video use anyway simply because you have to use the LCD, and few have adequate stabilisation.

The problem is, there’s a lot of bad, too. Most of it is a comfort/ ergonomic problem: the vestigial grip is simply too small to be useful in supporting the camera, and too large to allow you a flat-fingered grip in the same way you’d use a mechanical Nikon. (Not having a film winding lever to nestle your thumb in on the back doesn’t help, either.) The camera itself is too physically large to be gripped in this way; the shutter position is too high/ flat and uncomfortable to use for any period of time except with the very smallest (think pancake, or 50/1.8) of lenses. The shape of the grip just makes my hands cramp into a claw, and various protrusions dig painfully into my digits – I may well have odd-shaped hands, but given how ‘right’ previous Nikons felt to me, I was surprised by how physically uncomfortable it was to use. On top of that, the strap lugs are poorly positioned: the right side one digs into your fingers. And here I was thinking only Olympus made this mistake.

Secondly, the feel of the body doesn’t match the price point – especially the silver version. Though the knobs and dials are metal, the top plate and lens surround look and feel like cheaply painted thin-section plastic. (If it actually is metal, why not finish it like metal?) The black (an odd design choice on a silver body, given the lines do not flow with the front ‘leatherette’) back and base plate are slightly cold to the touch, suggesting magnesium. Some switches, specifically the AF/MF selection lever, are really quite low quality. The battery door is prone to detaching and falling off when open. Other things simply don’t make any sense aesthetically: the retro-design might be beautiful in minimalism – such as the F2 – but somehow the proportions don’t quite work ergonomically, nor do they suit the thickness required by the additional electronics over a film body. It also doesn’t help that it appears a D600′s rear panel was grafted on en bloc. Finally, the Df is both larger and lighter than you’d expect, giving an impression of hollowness rather than solidity. Build quality is about the same or slightly worse than my D600, and not on the same level as the D800E (which sells for the same price in most parts of the world). It simply lacks that feeling of ‘specialness’ or the sense of occasion which the designers undoubtedly intended.

Thirdly, the control paradigm is confusingly mixed: you need to consciously pause and think for a moment to remember what’s done through the knobs/ levers, and what’s done through the menus. This will of course cost you shots. Even the mechanical control operation is not consistent: you have to lift some knobs to unlock them (exposure mode) and press and turn to unlock others (all exposure compensation and ISO settings) but some others still require unlocking only sometimes (shutter speed) or not at all (drive mode). And there is nothing preventing you from setting 1/2000s, wonder why the camera is showing a fluctuating exposure reading and then only realizing that the little mode dial is set to aperture priority – whence the camera of course ignores the shutter speed dial. But in M, the shutter speed is set from the shutter speed dial unless it’s in the 1/3 STEP position, upon which you have to use the very stiff and poorly positioned front dial. See the problem?

It would just have been easier if they’d followed the control paradigm of say the FM3A, which does a great job integrating ease of manual override with automation.

The biggest disappointment, however, is the viewfinder. Design aside, the large prism hump – without a flash – suggests that there should be an excellent finder inside. The folding AI coupling pin suggests that the focusing screen should be well suited for manual focus, since somebody took the time to engineer mount compatibility. But no: it only has the same 0.7x/ 100% specification as the D600/D610, and the focusing screen is also a standard one. It should really have a a coarser matte for easier focusing of manual focus lenses, or at least an option to interchange them. Worse still, my (new) camera arrived with a misaligned mirror straight out of the box. What the camera thinks is in focus (both by AF system and rangefinder) does not look at all in focus in the finder. Needless to say, any attempt at manual focusing yields consistently backfocused results. I tried three other samples – one store demo and two friends’ cameras – they were also similarly misaligned to varying degrees. If you can’t focus it consistently, it may well be your viewfinder*.

*I suspect the LCD viewfinder overlay doesn’t help, either: pull the battery out, and the finder never comes into focus. Only when the battery is back in and a current is being applied to the overlay does it become transparent.

This suggests one of several things to me:

• The product was designed and specced by a marketing team who never takes pictures; they merely chucked a spec sheet at the engineers
• It was designed to a price, but that price still landed up being high
• After the resurgence of the digital Leica Ms, and the success of the Fujis, management thought retro was the flavour of the month and had to have something in that segment too
• Whoever signed off on it has never used an F or even an FM3A, and as a result does not understand haptics, tactility or viewfinders

But the funny thing is, through some strange combination of fate it appears they’ve gotten the mix right for most consumers; every dealer I’ve spoken to says they’re selling well. I’m seeing them appear in the bags of people I know, too. I expect many buyers people will do no more than pair it with the faux-retro AF 50/1.8 G ‘special edition’ kit lens that has an extra silver ring around the middle and wear it over their shoulder while looking cool in horn-rimmed glasses sipping lattes in trendy cafes. They might even take pictures with it occasionally, or try an old manual focus lens, but viewfinder misalignment won’t matter because they won’t use any output sizes larger than what hipstagram requires anyway. And they certainly won’t print, or have used a proper camera from the era the Df is meant to resurrect – so the difference will be lost. Perhaps it was a marketing masterstroke after all.

Call me biased, traditionalist, misogynistic, haemorrhoidal or whatever you want, but I cannot help but think that the Df was a missed opportunity. It does not feel or operate like the Digital F that Nikon no doubt intended.  If you’re going to make a properly retro camera, do it properly: I understand the need for controls for the digital bit, but don’t overcomplicate things – again, look at an FM3A – don’t tease with that folding AI coupling pin, a forgiving sensor and then spoil the viewfinder. Especially not when you’re charging nearly the same money a a D800E for it. If you’re sitting on the fence, I’d recommend buying a real mechanical camera and a lot of film instead. Not only will it be cheaper, you’ll be getting a far purer photographic experience. This is a camera whose initial rumor and announcement made me very excited, until I saw the final design and handled one in person. After a week of using it, that unfortunately has not changed.

This brings me to the reason why there are no images: on the occasions I’ve gone out to use it, it either rained very heavily (the Df is not at all weather sealed) or gave me cramps after holding it for half an hour. I didn’t produce anything I was happy with during those periods. The last thing I need to do is contribute to the visually mediocre rubbish already polluting the web. After a week, I admit I’ve given up. I don’t have the time to spend trying to find a new way of holding it or to realign the mirror. (It’s also not my camera, so I’d rather not take it apart). Put it this way: without some curiosity at some level, I wouldn’t have requested one to test. This is one of the very few cameras I felt really did not work for me at all – and it wasn’t because of image quality – that has never been in question. It’s not even a near miss; the simple fact is that haptics and tactility do matter, and matter a lot. Especially when the package and hype are trying to promise so much. Evidently though, I must know nothing whatsoever about cameras: the Df appears to be backordered pretty much everywhere. MT

Thanks to B&H for the loan; if you want a Df and it doesn’t give you hand cramps, they have them available to order in black and silver here.

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Does a fairly bulky/ heavy, expensive – $1,300 – fixed-lens, (relatively – 1″) small sensor camera have a place in the current camera ecology? Sony seems to think so. The RX10 is all about its lens: a fixed-aperture 24-200/2.8, Zeiss-branded unit that’s about the size of an 85/1.8 for a full frame camera. It is definitely not small. Sensibly, Sony have scaled the rest of the camera to match. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure out whether this is perhaps one of the smartest products of late, or fighting an uphill battle. The sad reality is that it probably will disappear as a footnote, overshadowed by its illogical A7 and A7r brethren.

Note: Welcome to the new review format. I’m going to tell you what I think, nothing more, nothing less. I shoot raw and process with ACR/ PS CC with the intention of subjecting the files to my normal workflow and finished-shot standards. If you’re looking for rigorous technical tests, there are other sites who have the time and resources to do it more comprehensively than I do. What I do is actually use the equipment to make photographs – after all, isn’t that the point of a camera?

This is not a small camera with everything fully extended/ deployed. Think consumer DSLR size, almost. Unlike consumer DSLRs and kit zooms though, this lens is excellent and f2.8 through the entire range.

In designing the RX10, somebody sensible probably actually sat down and thought about what the average consumer or hobbyist actually needs. Decent lens range and quality; doesn’t matter if fixed: check. Decent low light performance: check. Stabilizer: check. Good image quality: check. Ability to blur backgrounds (sigh): check. Manual controls, even if they never use them other than for bragging rights: check. Good LCD/ EVF: check. Good movie mode: check. The problem is, by the time they put everything together, it cost too much – or they realized how good a product it should theoretically have been – and then some corners were cut to maintain margins control the overruns. Unfortunately, these are very visible.

The camera has the same 20MP, 1″ sensor from the RX100II that’s capable of 1080p video, 10fps RAW and a surprisingly clean ISO 3200 (on par with the E-M5, and the last generation of APS-C cameras); it punches far above what you might imagine a sensor of that size should be able to do, and comes quite close to M4/3 at lower ISOs. This is a good thing, and one of the camera’s strengths. It’s paired with a Zeiss-designed 24-200/2.8, which offers very good resolution and microcontrast at all focal lengths and apertures – despite being a very ambitious zoom range and aperture. No, it’s not perfect, there’s probably some software correction being applied to even the raw files (knowing Sony) – and the corners could be better, but it’s good enough, the center is excellent*. It even has decent bokeh, if you use a longer focal length wide open and have a reasonably distant background. There’s a close-focus mode too, which doesn’t have to be separately enabled. Focusing is fast under pretty much all conditions and focal lengths – never mind that it doesn’t have phase detection photosites. It doesn’t need them. Mind you, it still can’t track moving objects though. In short: the camera’s image quality potential isn’t going to be the limiting factor in your photographs, and I know from experience with the RX100 that the sensor is capable of 24×36″ prints.

*Bear in mind this is coming from somebody whose new reference lens is the 55mm Otus.

Bathroom gamma

So far, so good. Then we get into the controls: what Sony did leave on the mechanical side made a lot of sense: aperture ring (with switchable detents, smooth for video work, clicky for stills); a fly-by-wire lens ring than switches between zoom and focusing; exposure compensation and mode. Throw in a couple of control dials for good measure – even if the one under your thumb is far too stiff and buried to be easily usable. Again, all this is fine and good – a sensible choice. The menus are the usual unintuitive Sony disaster; however it might just be me not having spent much time on a Playstation recently. Even then, there’s a lot of configurability and customization built in; enough that you could mostly stay out of the menus once you’ve set it up. And I’m sure it’ll be a lot more familiar to a regular Sony user; there’s even NFC (whose symbol looks confusingly like a Nespresso machine, though I couldn’t figure out how to get it to make me a coffee) and wifi for the hipstagram crowd. One thing they do deserve a commendation for is making the instant review mode a full-fledged playback mode, so you can zoom, scroll, delete and compare images (like the Nikons) – I’m looking at you, Olympus and Canon.

Negative positive negative positive

The RX10′s movie mode is worth mentioning. Video quality is quite impressive; there’s very little to no rolling shutter; linear control over exposure via an aperture ring that can be de-clicked; focusing and zooming can be done smoothly via the lens ring or lever around the shutter, and on top of that, you get focus peaking and zebras too. As a bonus, the stabilizer works very well, and is a definite cut above the RX100′s. Video exposure can be fully manual or fully automated, as you please. It even has stereo mics built in, and external sockets for both external mic input and audio monitoring. I think the 1″ sensor size is actually in a sweet spot for video work: big enough to do well in low light and offer decent depth of field control and reasonable dynamic range; but not so big that focusing becomes a challenge. In all honesty, if my partner and I didn’t already have three E-M1s between us, we’d probably be looking at one of these for video work; in fact, we might do so anyway.

The cameras’s feel and haptics are a mixed bag. Some things are great: the grip is a masterpiece of curved comfort and sticky rubber; the dials have the right amount of clickiness and damping to not move accidentally but still be easy to turn; including a backlit top panel status LCD is a refreshing and useful change – but if only you could turn off the back LCD completely and use the EVF only. Design wise, I think it’s minimalist, well-proportioned and attractive; there are hints of Leica S about its left flanks. The lens cap is the first one that I’ve found to be an improvement on the Nikon design; it’s secure and easy to pinch open. Both LCD and EVF are of good resolution and refresh rate, but aren’t bright enough when the sun’s out outdoors. The eyecup isn’t deep enough to shade your view, either. And from here, we start going slowly downhill: there are so many near misses on this camera, it’s frustrating. The buttons are well laid out, but they’re flush flat and lack travel, making them difficult to locate by feel. There are two control dials for exposure, but the one under your thumb is so small, stiff and recessed you can’t easily turn it.

And it goes on: the (far too small) flash pops up in a very cool way like an aeroplane’s air brakes, but unlike an aeroplane’s air brakes, it’s a bit tricky to fold back down – I predict many broken flashes. The right side strap lug digs into your shutter finger; it should be 5mm further towards the back. There’s a dedicated and customizable AE-L button, but it’s too low; it should be where the movie button is (under your thumb) and the movie button should be where the AE-L button is. The shutter button is threaded for a cable release, and has nice springing, but far too much travel to the first intermediate position (AF) and almost none thereafter to full release, accompanied by a stiff break point. That’s a shame, because the leaf shutter on this thing is astoundingly quiet and smooth; it makes a pin drop seem loud and echoey by comparison.

There really is nothing to give away the fact that this was shot at ISO 3200. Not even dynamic range.

However, the biggest disappointment in my book is the build quality. This simply does not feel like a $1300 camera; the main body itself is fine, and the plastic’s texture does a great job at imitating metal (helped by the weight of the thing, most of which is in the lens). It’s the details that fail: the tilting LCD has a little notch to help you get it out of its recess; except when you pull it by this notch, you also discover that the cover is only secured by two screws at the bottom, and the top is simply snapped into place. Result? It separates from the panel itself. Design fail. Hold the RX10 in your right hand, and you’ll feel comfortable and at home. Until you move it around a bit, then the lens barrel starts clunking (it’s wobbly – try moving it with your hands). Said lens barrel is also plastic, which is fine, except you can also see – and feel – the rough moulding lines in places. And then – again, on a $1300 camera – you don’t get a charger, you have to charge it over USB; which means you either have to spend even more on an external charger, or be limited to one battery. Good thing it lasts a while. But oh, so close, Sony, so close!

An inexplicable scene.

I think nobody can question the fact that Sony has a history of both innovation and pushing the technological envelope – from the first walkman to cramming ever larger sensors into smaller bodies (too bad the rules of optics mean that the lenses can never follow). The only problem is that sometimes these designs can be so left field that it’s not only unclear who they’re aimed at, but it also appears that sometimes things were done for the sake of it – not because they needed to be. The F828-series and R1 are cameras in this mould; in many ways, I think the RX10 is, too. It is definitely a much more mature and conventional design than the other two; it is probably meant to appeal to the same user group, too. Except that user group has now moved on to full frame or mirrorless, and has been conditioned by both Sony’s own and other marketing departments that more is always going to be better. In effect, the reason their products don’t succeed is because their marketing people continually shoot themselves in the foot. A good example: I requested an RX1 to review from Sony Malaysia after it was released. More than a year later, nothing. I followed up when the RX1R was announced, to be told, ‘we’re working on it’. Never mind the fact that there are definitely review samples out – all the local magazines already published theirs – or the fact that my monthly readership is several times more than all of the print magazines’ circulation combined.

Everything is relative, including time. Note bokeh – 100mm equivalent, f2.8, approx. 2ft subject distance.

And that’s the problem with the RX10: sufficiency. It is far more capable in every way than most people will ever need; to be honest, I could get away with using one of these for almost all of my professional work, and even the workshop videos. It will even do things that my other cameras will not – leaf shutter with full flash sync up to 1/1600s at f2.8, anybody? I wouldn’t need to carry 20kg of gear. I wouldn’t need to worry about lenses. I could have a few in case one broke, without breaking the bank. The RX10 is a camera that does many things very well, has some annoying niggles that you can probably overlook in light of the fact that none of them are really major. It is something that really makes you question the ‘more better’ philosophy being perpetuated elsewhere – in effect, an extremely refined Swiss Army Knife. An obsidian scalpel may be better for heart surgery, but let’s face it: how many really actually need that? In fact, I’m seriously considering buying one myself. Ironically, my biggest challenge in justifying it is also sufficiency: if I’m using this, what is all the other gear doing? MT

The Sony RX10 is available here from B&H.

____________

2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Melbourne, Sydney and London – click here for more information and to book!

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Sony are known for pushing the technological envelope; the first NEX-5 showed us just how small an APS-C camera could be – with decent frame rates and AF speeds, no less. However, the rules of optics are not so easily breakable: lenses still have to be a certain size to cover a certain image circle at a given aperture and focal length. The NEX kit lenses were no smaller than APS-C DSLR lenses – because that’s pretty much what they were. Unfortunately, Sony are also known for serious attention deficit disorder when it comes to products and systems; recently one of their executives (Kimio Maki, GM of Sony’s Digital Imaging Business Group) was quoted as saying he wanted to do something new every six months. A good example is the RX1, superseded by the RX1R a year later, and effectively killed by the A7 and A7R now; new RX1Rs that sold for approx. US$3,300 in Japan plummeted to just US$1,300 or thereabouts in used value the day after the A7 twins were released. I don’t know whether that represents a relentless commitment to innovation at all costs, or whether it’s just sticking it to your customers. Nevertheless, the like the NEX-5 (which I owned, didn’t mind the limited controls, but found pretty good except for tonal palette) – the A7R pushes things a bit further; far enough to be in interesting territory. We now have full frame – and the best full frame sensor at that – in an E-M1-sized body. Surely there has to be a catch somewhere?

Images in this review were shot with the A7R and Zeiss 55/1.8 FE. An extended set on flickr with more samples is here.

You’ll notice a lot of still lifes in this set: it’s because this is the kind of subject that seems to suit the A7R best. It doesn’t AF track well enough to keep up with moving objects, and DOF is shallow enough and the camera sensitive enough to shake that it isn’t the best choice for street or reportage work. All images in this review were shot with an A7R and Zeiss FE 1.8/55 Sonnar.

During my initial thoughts piece, I said that neither camera would make sense with adapted lenses. I stand by that, for several reasons: firstly, you lose autofocus. Even though the EVF with peaking and magnification makes it easier to focus than a modern DSLR without focusing aids, autofocus for critical work and moving subjects is definitely valuable. More so when it’s the on-sensor variety that doesn’t suffer from back or front focus issues (as with systems involving mirrors) since you are focusing on the actual imaging plane. Beyond that, the moment we bring additional mount surfaces into the mix – two more with an adaptor – you’re going to start introducing planarity and decentering issues. Even with the best adaptors, there are a range of acceptable tolerances; that applies to the camera’s own mount, too. You could land up with a combination that cancels out, or becomes worse. And with a high density sensor like the A7R’s, you’re going to notice that. After some testing with various adaptors I had handy from the NEX-5 days – I came to the conclusion that unless your adaptors are perfect, you really will not see the difference. Adapted lenses will generally not perform the same as native ones.

The reasons go beyond planarity of adaptors: there’s also the lens-sensor interaction to consider. The reason why fixed-lens large-sensor compacts like the Ricoh GR, Nikon Coolpix A and Sigma DP Merrils are so good is because the lens was designed specifically for the sensor; the optical formulae are typically telecentric and take into account the fact that the sensor may or may not have offset microlenses to deal with very short back flange distances. Legacy adapted lenses do not; and something designed 20 or 30 years ago certainly did not have digital in mind. Even the modern lenses that are designed for digital are designed to work well generally with one system – witness how consistently good the designed-from-scratch lenses are for the M4/3 system, or Leica S tend to be. Or even the new Zeiss Otus. On top of that, you really have to ask yourself if it makes ergonomic sense to put an enormous SLR lens on the front of a very small body; it simply doesn’t balance or handle well. And remember, it will also have to be manually focused, too. Small RF lenses would make more sense, but these tend to be a lot more particular about which sensors they will play nice with; they are almost always short-flange non-telecentric designs that require offset microlenses and hue shift/ vignetting compensation. We can correct for some of this digitally, but it will not solve edge softness and resolution issues. At this point I’m sure somebody is going to ask about use with Leica M lenses: I can’t comment as I no longer own or have easy access to any.

The good news is that the one native lens I was given to test along with the A7R a very, very pleasant surprise – the Zeiss FE 1.8/55 Sonnar. It is not quite up to Otus levels, but then again, at this price and size, I wouldn’t expect it to be. I’d say it has much of the character of the ZM 2/50 Planar. By f5.6, the differences shrink between the three (2/50 MP or 1.4/55 Otus on D800E, FE 1.8/55 on A7R). The 28-70/3.5-5.6 kit zoom, on the other hand, is a dog, and a large one that feels imbalanced on a body this small. The corners are a bit of a disaster at any aperture; they never fully resolve nor do they rid themselves of CA. So far: with the right lenses, this camera can sing. The problem is, there are only two of them – a 2.8/35, and 1.8/55. I can only hope that we eventually get a wide – maybe 21 or 24 – and a tele of some sort to at least make for more of a complete system. These lenses were designed for the A7 from the ground up, and it shows – especially in corner performance.

However, the A7R is a very, very demanding beast to shoot in the field. The small size, relatively low mass and very loud/ rough shutter mechanism mean that you need higher than expected shutter speeds to yield perfect pixels; we’re talking 1/125 at an absolute minimum for the 55mm, and ideally 1/200+ for consistent results. Below 1/200 you may well see very faint double images; it’s as though something ‘jumps’ halfway through the exposure. Compare that to 1/90 minimum for the D800E/ Otus, and 1/125+ ideal. Curiously, at lower speeds – below 1/30 – and on a tripod, it’s fine. I personally found that the A7R tested my shot discipline to the maximum; a tripod is really required to make the most out of the available resolution. Note: the A7R lacks the electronic first curtain of the A7, which makes things worse. It also trades PDAF on-sensor and an AA filter for no AA filter, some magnesium in its frame and 12 MP more. Otherwise, excluding price, both cameras are identical.

This brings me neatly to the question of ergonomics, haptics and tactility. I recently conveyed my thoughts on the Nikon Df and received a lot of heavily polarized comments and emails; that is one camera that either ‘works’ for you, or it doesn’t. Despite being a long time Nikon shooter, I fell squarely into the latter camp. The A7R is less contentious: whilst opinions may vary on the aesthetics of the design, handling is actually very, very good, and it’s comfortable in my hands. It does balance much better with smaller lenses though; the native 1.8/55 is perfect. In fact, it felt remarkably like an E-M1; so much so that psychologically I kept expecting the stabilizer to kick in when I half pressed the shutter. Dials and buttons are in similar places, even if they don’t do the same things – but you can always change a custom function for that. Build quality feels similar – both are all metal and feel like they’re all metal, though I don’t see any gasketing/ weather seals on the A7R other than around the left-side ports. They both also put their right hand strap lugs in an uncomfortable place…

So then, I set up my A7R to behave like my E-M1 – which was reasonably easy given configurability of most of the buttons, and an extra two control dials – one for exposure compensation, and one for…well, it seemed to duplicate the function of the other dials. In any case, other than navigating the confusing menu system, the camera is pretty cooperative in use. On the menus: although Sony is self-consistent amongst its cameras with the horizontal tabs, what doesn’t make sense is that most other cameras use a downward-scrolling list for the functions, with a right arrow press giving you sub-options. The Sony uses a list that scrolls both down and across, with enter giving sub-options. This is confusing, though I suppose you’d probably get used to it if it was your only system. I have to give them several huge credits in the UI though: you can have live overexposure zebras in any mode (not just video); playback is not only fully-functional, but the one-press zoom takes you straight to 100% actual pixels view. In short: there are a lot of things to like about this camera.

A word on the EVF: it’s good enough that I didn’t think ‘oh, this is a small LCD panel’ in practice; showing actual depth of field and overexposure means it’s easy to nail focus and exposure. The viewfinder optics aren’t quite as good as the E-M1’s, and that’s obvious at the edges; they just aren’t quite as crisp. The one problem is when you try to use it in very bright (i.e. tropical, where I live) sun: though it maintains pretty good color accuracy and tonal separation, it’s just too dim, even turned up to the maximum setting. I haven’t had this problem with the E-M1.

As ever, nothing is perfect. And there are a few fairly big gotchas with the A7R: firstly, the shutter vibration problem we’ve already talked about. The next problem is related to that: you could theoretically work around it if you could set auto-ISO to a minimum shutter speed above 1/125; you can’t. It defaults to 1/focal length, or as near as it can get to it. The only way I’ve found around this is to enable auto-ISO and shoot manual; this way you can set shutter and aperture, and the camera chooses the sensitivity. If you need exposure compensation, the separate dial on the top plate still works. It’s a bit slower, but usable; in practice, I’ve set the 1st custom position on the mode dial to aperture priority, and the 2nd one to manual with 1/125s, which I flip over to the moment the light gets too low. The final major issue is the fact that a camera of this price does not include an external charger. You have to plug the camera in to the USB charger, or a computer; this of course means you can’t shoot with it while it’s charging batteries – and that’s made doubly worse by the small battery, long charging time, and very limited battery life; 200 frames was about my absolute maximum. Sony, for a camera that costs $2,300, this is just cheapskate.

Note: My evaluation on the A7R’s image quality isn’t going to be as comprehensive as I’d like, simply because I only have one native lens. And it’s also clear from tests with the adapted lenses that something in the optical system – adaptors, lens formula, sensor microlens array – just isn’t doing the sensor’s potential justice, especially in comparison with the single native lens I have. It would therefore be unfair to come to any conclusions off this.

However, there is no question that under optimal conditions, this camera is capable of matching the current king of full frame 35mm cameras, the D800E. (I will be conductiong a more detailed direct comparison when I find some time, specifically between the D800E/ Otus and A7R/ 1.8/55.) Resolution and tonality are pretty much identical; that isn’t surprising as they probably have the same base sensor design. Color reproduction is different, however. I personally prefer the D800E, though this may well be because I’ve got a lot more experience in dealing with its files. Dynamic range and noise are also identical, as far as I can tell; and if they’re not, they’re pretty darn close. The A7R certainly shares the D800E’s seemingly never-ending deep shadow recoverability. Assuming similar level optics on both, I would have trouble distinguishing results from the two cameras in a blind test. In short: this is a D800E body in a much, much smaller size.

Now comes the contentious bit: how does it stack up against its competitors? Note firstly that the A7R has no obvious direct competition because it sits in a niche of its own. I’m just guessing from my own needs and thoughts that buyers may well also be considering (or moving from) these cameras, and more importantly, systems:

Vs Nikon D800E: Here, it all boils down to the system of lenses and flashes: if you need any special purpose gear at all, or longer lenses, then the balance tips heavily in favor of the D800E. I think the shooting envelope is a bit wider, too – given the much better shutter mechanism. Of course, if you’re travelling on a strict weight budget, then I’d go with an A7R, 55mm and Ricoh GR.

Vs Leica M 240: From what I understand from people who do use the A7R and M glass, not all lenses are great; you need to try individual ones to see what plays nice and what doesn’t. And be prepared to do software correction on all images. However: if you have trouble focusing your rangefinder, use the EVF more, or are adapting lenses to your M 240 anyway, it may well make more sense to go with the Sony option to gain some resolution – if the lenses you want to use agree with the sensor.

Vs Olympus E-M1: Same size, same weight, very different image quality. Quite a big difference in price, though; less so to the regular A7. The E-M1 has three aces: firstly, its stabilizer is so good that you claw back most, if not all, of the high ISO advantage of the A7 and A7R for handheld shooting in low light. It also means that you don’t have stability issues – my ‘technical’ hit rate with the E-M1 is close to 100% because of this. You can shoot at pretty much any shutter speed with impunity. Ace number two is weather sealing: I’m sure you’ve all seen [what I did to the E-M1 in the shower]. The final, largest ace is the lens system: not only is the M4/3 lens system arguably the most mature mirrorless system with the greatest diversity of options – the lenses were all designed specifically for digital from the ground up. Even the kit lenses are pretty good, and the excellent glass – like the [60/2.8 and 75/1.8] is really special by any standards. This one is a tough choice, to be honest. I think it’s like doing a present value calculation and trying to figure out a discount rate: do you want images now, or later, and how’s your nerve (or how shaky are your hands)?

Vs Sigma DP Merrills: Now, this is an interesting question: from previous tests, we’ve determined that the D800’s sensor and a good lens will match or slightly outresolve the DPMs. However, there are only three focal lengths – 28, 45 and 75mm. The A7R’s native primes split the difference with 35 and 55mm. High ISO is unquestionably better with the A7R, you get a viewfinder and much better ergonomics, and on top of that, there’s more depth of field control, but if you need to stop down – the Sigmas handle small apertures better with later onset of diffraction. Both have poor battery life. An individual choice, I think.

Vs Sony A7: Perhaps the A7R’s biggest competition is going to be its sibling. I haven’t said much about the A7, because I think the two cameras are aimed at very different markets. The A7 has a much more forgiving sensor and shutter mechanism; it will tolerate lower quality lenses, adaptors etc and not show as much compromise at the pixel level due to its lower resolution. It will focus faster due to PDAF. The files will be easier to handle, etc. I suppose the answer boils down to your end intentions for the files: are you chasing ultimate image quality for very large prints or not? If the answer is no, then the A7 will probably be a better choice; you’ll save money for glass, and won’t feel frustrated if your files aren’t perfect. On the other hand, if you do print…you probably wouldn’t even be asking.

You’ll notice a theme here: it really comes down to the lenses. This puts me in a bit of a dilemma: I don’t know whether to go out and buy one, or stick to my D800Es. Let me explain why: on one hand, the A7R unquestionably raises the bar when it comes to the quality/ portability equation; yet it has an extremely limited shooting envelope because of its demands on stability/ shutter speed, and very limited native lenses – just 35mm and 55mm so far – that can make the most of that potential. Perhaps the most telling question would be whether I missed the D800E/ Otus combination when using the A7R/55; the honest answer is not at the time, but yes when looking at the files afterwards. The irony of course was that I was also carrying the D800E and Otus for much of the testing to determine the answer to just that question.

One assumes that systems generally grow and thus populate their lens lineups with time, but the problem is that we haven’t really seen this happen with the NEX system; frankly I’m a bit concerned that the lenses I want won’t ever exist, or will come so late that there will be a second generation body to go with them. Adapted lenses are hit and miss, for reasons detailed earlier. As ever, the old advice of ‘buy the glass’ makes sense: if 35 and 55 are all you need, then either the A7 or A7R – depending on your printing needs – is probably the camera for you. If not, you might find it an intriguing idea as part of a lightweight system – I could see the aforementioned A7R/ 55 and GR being a good travel pair, for instance. I like the direction Sony are heading in with the A7R: now if only they would hold the course and not get distracted…

Both the A7 and A7R are available from B&H here in various kit or body combinations.

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Old flagship, meet new flagship. The E-M1 – and E-M5 – finally deliver on what the E-1 should have been.

2003 was an exciting year for digital cameras. I remember it as being the turning point just before the DSLR became accessible to the masses; professional image quality was now theoretically within reach of everybody – well, assuming you had the knowledge to use it. If not, you could theoretically keep shooting until you did; and that’s just what I did. It’s also where my personal photographic journey began in earnest. APS-C dominated as the best compromise of sensor size and cost; the D1X and 1DS were king. On the high-speed, responsive, general purpose front were the Nikon D2H, Canon 1D and Olympus E-1 – though the latter raised a lot of eyebrows with its smaller sensor. In mid 2004, I remember putting heavy consideration into both the E-1 and D2H as a replacement for my broken D70; I remember liking the way the E-1 felt and shot, and especially the smoothness of the mirror, but I didn’t like the limited variety and cost of lenses, not to mention the relatively slow 3fps and limited AF system compared to the blazing-fast 8fps D2H and CAM2000 – on top of which, you had a huge variety of lenses – a lot of which were cheap and excellent. I went Nikon again, but have always had a seed of curiosity towards the E-1. It’s been ten years now. Olympus Malaysia managed to find one in a cupboard somewhere, and kindly lent it to me…

There will no doubt be an ensuing flurry of comments that accuse me of first having gone crazy, then secondly being a rabid Olympus fanboy that’s completely in their pocket. Fortunately, this is not a review of a hot, new product, which means perhaps more sense will prevail. Rather, think of it as a collection of rationalising thoughts along the following three themes:

1. Old vs. new: how far have we come in the last 10 years?
2. Is there anything the old gear did better?
3. How much of a difference do the intangibles play in the creative process?

Still interested? Keep reading…

Firstly, the E-1 works. That’s no small feat given that most digital devices these days seem to succumb to mysterious maladies after just a couple of years of moderate use; in fact, a lot of things don’t work properly straight out of the box – A7R shutter vibration, or Df ergonomics, anybody? More interestingly, the D2H I bought instead of the E-1 is also long dead; it succumbed to moisture in late 2006. My impressions of the E-1 from the numerous hours fondling it at various camera shops still hold: it’s incredibly well built; the metal is of a very thick gauge, seam tolerances are tight, and everything just feels, well, solid. Everything is gasketed,has interlocks, or requires overcoming a positive detent to release. Few modern cameras are built to that level anymore; only the D4 and 1DX come to mind. Sorry Olympus, but it’s quite a notch up from the E-M1. That of course means weight, though; a bit of weight isn’t a bad thing because it means sufficient mass to dampen shutter vibrations – not that the E-1 needs it; it still has one of the smoothest and quietest mirror/shutter mechanisms I’ve ever used*. Granted, it manages only 3fps.

*It doesn’t take the cake for least vibration; that goes to the slightly louder F6 – however, the F6 has a mirror balancer counterweight which means it has very little recoil. It’s all the more impressive when you consider the F6 will run at 8fps and has to wind film, too.

Speed is not the E-1′s forte; it takes a second or so to start up – long enough to be noticeable but not so long as to be annoying – and focusing doesn’t seem very confident. It’s of moderate speed, but questionable accuracy – and there are only three points. It isn’t as slow as I remember it being, but I think it’d probably lose to any entry-level DSLR in pure responsiveness – let alone the E-M1. The LCD is tiny – just 1.8″ – and pretty much useless. It has terrible dynamic range and cannot be used to judge exposure, colour or critical focus. There is no histogram or overexposure warning on instant review (though you can get it through a slightly unintuitive hold-info-and-turn-command-dial procedure during playback). Zoom is woefully inadequate, the menus are primitive, and the clock has a mind of its own – one day it’s 2001, the next it’s Christmas 2067. Good thing it has external buttons for just about everything you’d need to set, then. In fact, the best way to shoot this camera is with the LCD off, and treat it like it’s got film in it.

Despite the haphazard placement of the external controls, they’re actually quite logical: all of the things you need to set fall easily to hand, with the most important things under your fingers in the natural grip position – if you have larger hands. (This must be the ONLY Olympus camera that was designed that way – and with sensible strap lug positions, too!) I have a bit trouble reaching the rear command dial without shifting my grip, some of the buttons on the top plate are a stretch, and the bottom right corner digs into my palm. On the whole though, it feels right in the hand; the kind of camera that makes you want to pick it up and take some pictures.

There’s an interesting clue to their priorities here: Olympus initially promised ‘smaller, lighter’ with the Four Thirds system, but honestly failed to deliver until the E-400 series, and I think only really fulfilled the promise with the OM-Ds; but the E-1 has two white balance buttons. There are no presets; you can only set Kelvin temperature and auto, but one of those white balance buttons is a ‘one touch WB’ – aim it at something you intend to be neutral in the final image, and presto – perfect colour. (The E-M1 now has this as default preset for one of the front function buttons, too.) If that doesn’t give you a hint, how about this one: the 5MP Kodak sensor in this camera is a CCD. It is based on – or perhaps rather the others are based on it – the same architecture as the Leica M8, M9 and Hasselblad CFV-39. These cameras have one thing in common: a very natural tonal response, and with the right (i.e. sufficient) UVIR filtration, very natural colour – with the CFV-39 implementation being the best of the lot, which is not surprising as it’s also the most recent. And that neatly brings me to the other reason for my curiosity over the E-1. The D2H might have been fast, but colour was at best ‘punchy’ and at worst, quite simply all over the place.

B&W conversions have excellent tonality and require very little work, providing you didn’t overexpose anything – if you did, your image is probably toast as this older generation of sensors doesn’t transition to overexposure in a smooth, natural way. The same is true for all cameras based on this architecture – the M8/9 were notorious for harsh blooming and artefacts around very bright objects in frame. Personally, I feel the first cameras that did handle overexposure naturally were the D3/D700.

So how did the E-1 do? I think the images in this article speak for themselves. So long as you don’t exceed ISO 400 (higher ISOs are at least 1.5-2 stops behind the E-M1 at the pixel level, let alone modern full frame cameras), dynamic range is decent, and colour is very pleasing; it handles subtle tonal transitions very well indeed. Better still if you nail exposure, which I feel is much like shooting slide film – there is no useful feedback from the camera whatsoever (remember that LCD?). Like the CFV-39, and unlike modern CMOS cameras, if you get everything right, almost no work is required to produce your final output. By comparison, even D800E/Otus files require a decent amount of work to produce natural tonality and accurate colour. Resolution is a bit of a bummer, though: not only do we have just 5MP to work with, the antialiasing filter is fairly strong, which means that fine detail is a bit soft. Very high quality prints might be a challenge at anything over 5×7″, especially with the new print process I’m experimenting with. To make things worse, my sample appears to focus somewhat inconsistently; mostly overly front-biased. I’m starting to think that older cameras didn’t have better AF modules than newer ones: we just didn’t have the resolution to tell that things were slightly out of focus.

It is perhaps a little oxymoronic to talk about ‘vintage modern digital’, but that’s pretty much what these cameras are; they’re in that phase after they are still competitive/ useful, and before they become retro cult objects – assuming they survive that long, and we can still get batteries and parts for them. I’ve been fortunate enough to use some pretty incredible gear on a regular basis; very surprisingly, the E-1 isn’t really disappointing; in fact, on the camera-ness front – haptics, tactility, build-feel etc. – it gets a lot of things very right. I very much enjoyed the experience of shooting with it, and the colour it produced – even if the files were a bit lacking on the resolution and acuity front, and the digital portion of the camera was a total disaster.

Here’s an interesting thought: it’s possible to find second hand bodies for around the $150 mark. Add a good lens – the 14-54/2.8-3.5 is a good match, and similarly weather sealed – for another $250 or so. Total spend: ~$400. You’d spend a bit more for a plastic fantastic entry level Nikon, Canon or mirrorless camera now. Technical image quality would be higher, but the lens wouldn’t be anywhere near as good, surprisingly, the viewfinder on the E-1 is better, and you’d gain 1-2 stops plus some reach on kit lenses with the 14-54. But here’s the thing: I guarantee you you’ll have a more enjoyable photographic experience with the E-1; you’d have to pay a lot more to get similar build-feel. I wouldn’t recommend any serious photographer go out and buy one now – Four Thirds seems like a stagnant, if not completely dead system – but maybe it actually makes sense for a beginner to consider, especially if they’re not printing. Having to work on shot discipline to make the most of your pixels and get your exposure right is not a bad thing at all, and these are skills that will continue to serve well when moving up the image quality ladder.

I’m going to conclude with one final point: though there’s no question that we’ve moved leaps and bounds ahead on technical image quality potential (the current same-sensor-size flagship E-M1 is easily two stops cleaner, has two to three stops more dynamic range, three times the resolution – perhaps more, since it has no AA filter) and features (in-body IS, wifi, touch panels, EVFs that are bigger than full frame optical finders, high frame rates, much faster AF, video etc) – if anything, I think we’ve gone backwards in the camera-ness department. I realise this is highly subjective – but I don’t quite get the same experience or feel with the E-M1; there’s a similar difference between the F6 and D800E. It’s as though some of that cost cutting has now become tangible: metal is thinner gauge, buttons are less tactile, mirror/shutter mechanisms aren’t as refined. Again, perhaps it’s just me, but I wouldn’t mind paying a bit more for a better tactile experience, especially at the professional end of the spectrum – it’s not as though a D800E or D4 is exactly cheap to begin with. Forget faux-retro like the Df; perhaps to seriously move forwards, camera manufacturers should take a serious look into their own (recent) history. MT

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Places left for 2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Havana and London – click here for more information and to book!

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

If ever there was a convincing argument for Micro Four Thirds, this camera and the Olympus E-M1 would form the vanguard. One lets you shoot under incredibly demanding conditions and extends the shooting envelope significantly over the competition; the other is so darn small that it puts most compact cameras to shame. In fact, the body is no larger than it needs to be to accommodate a 3″ touch-sensitive LCD, and a tiny bit of real estate to accommodate a few buttons and a vestigial thumb grip. To put things into perspective: the body is the same size as the ultra-compact Canon Ixus I used to have; the one so compact that it doesn’t even have a d-pad. Size does of course carry some compromises. But I admit that I was curious to find out just what they were; there are times when I need a bit more flexibility than the fixed 28mm of the excellent Ricoh GR, and this seemed like just the ticket…

From the images floating around online, I expected it to be small. But not this small; I believe we have reached the limits of how small we can make a camera body and still expect it to be usable. Some of the controls – the rear ring, for instance – aren’t very useful and a bit too fiddly; I’d have preferred to forgo that, have a proper d-pad and put the command dial where the AF selector switch is on the top – that seems like a waste of real estate to me, especially given that most people will use it with the kit pancake zoom (also excellent, by the way) which doesn’t even have a manual focus ring – rendering one of the three positions on that dial useless. The function button in its centre can stay, however.

Surprisingly though, the lack of real estate – and lack of buttons – do not really make for huge handling deficiencies; the impressive and highly customisable controls and touch screen shortcuts mean that a lot of the things you might usually need buttons for – AF point, for instance – aren’t necessary, or can be configured to be soft keys on screen. What did bother me more was the lack of any assigned button to be one-touch 100% magnification playback zoom, and the ability to jump between zoomed-in images to check focus/ sharpness – this is one of the most used features on my other cameras. Kudos for making playback mode full featured though – you can scroll and delete from the instant review (and even choose whether this behaviour is default or not).

Overall though, the camera is well built, solid, and the metal bits feel like metal. I was a bit disappointed in receiving the silver unit to review, but it’s grown on me; every other camera I have is black, and perhaps a little boring. Button feel is good enough. The battery is tiny, and will only get you about 250 images in practical use, but then again we expected that and can accept it as a compromise to the size of the thing. I like how compact the whole basic package is – almost jeans-pocketable, definitely jacket pocketable – but I dislike how many steps are required before you are ready to shoot: 1. remove lens cap; 2. extend lens; 3. power switch on; it somewhat defeats the point of having a small, pocketable, fast camera that’s always ready to go – with the GR, I just hit the power button or switch. All in all, it passes the haptics test: I want to pick it up and shoot with it. And I still want to pick it up and shoot with it even though I’ve had it in my care more than a week, which is a good sign.

In the past, I’ve had issues with Panasonic’s slightly confusing menus; whatever tweaks they’ve made to the GM1 have increased usability substantially, to the point that it doesn’t bother me anymore. Set and forget, then use the camera in glorified point and shoot mode, albeit with significantly better output. There are two gotchas here, and they’re pretty big ones if you shoot like me: firstly, program mode will tend to choose very small apertures and max out the mechanical shutter at 1/500s instead of switching over to the electronic shutter* – this results in very soft images indeed due to diffraction. And avoid the low ISO settings; there are visible compromises to noise and dynamic range.

*The GM1 has a dual electronic/ mechanical shutter, with the former taking over at 1/500s and up. Unfortunately, mechanical shutter speed and flash sync were sacrificed with size: just 1/50s; not that you’ll be doing much flash work seeing as there’s no hotshoe and the built in one is tiny. It can be bounced though, which is handy if you have low ceilings I suppose.

You can of course work around this by leaving the camera in aperture priority, which is fiddly because of that rear dial. By far a bigger problem is that if you’re using the spot meter, it’ll show you the correct exposure of what’s under the spot all the time, even if you lock exposure and recompose – I seem to recall the LX7 also having the same behaviour, which is hugely annoying as you cannot really see the final composition. Worse still, the spot may move to a point with vastly different exposure to what you intended. I suppose somebody will point out that the function of a matrix meter is to remedy that; the meter could use a bit more consistency, especially with highlight overexposure.

I haven’t said anything about image quality yet. In light of recent news regarding the origin of the E-M1′s sensor – Panasonic – I’m now starting to think that the GM1 and E-M1′s sensors are related; they aren’t the same because the GM1 lacks PDAF photosites, and as far as I can tell, still has an AA filter – though a very weak one. Its pixel acuity is comparable to the E-M5; i.e. just slightly below the E-M1. Dynamic range and noise characteristics are very similar; almost identical, in fact. I process the files the same way, and feel that I’ve got the same amount of latitude. Base noise seems to be a bit higher with the same ACR NR settings though – I have no explanation for this – which lowers the highest usable ISO by about a stop to 3200 in a pinch with some NR and DR compromises.

There is one important difference, though: colour. The E-M1′s native colours are much more pleasing than the GM1; neither is accurate, but I have to do more work with the GM1 to get to a point I’m happy with. I’m pretty sure this is down to the camera displaying the usual Panasonic trait of an odd shift in the blue channel towards cyan, which is especially noticeable (and unnatural) in skies; this in turn affects magenta. A custom ACR profile would probably cure this, and if I decide to keep the camera in the end, I’ll probably go produce one. Bottom line: image quality is better than adequate, and a big step above any of the small sensor (including 1″) compacts – even with the kit pancake.

Ahh, that pancake. The 12-32/3.5-5.6 OIS has some odd specifications – it’s a 24-64 equivalent, slow aperture, has no focusing ring, but is positively minuscule; it’s about the same size as a spare body cap and lens back cap put together. It manages this by collapsing, which makes it easy to store but requires and extra step to shoot. I’ve actually owned one of these lenses since December last year, and have been using it on my E-M1 to make a point and shoot on steroids; I like it very much. A shame that it isn’t available on its own outside of Japan. The black version appears to be made of anodised aluminium; I can’t tell what the silver version is made of – I suspect the zoom ring is metal, but the body is plastic. In any case, it moves smoothly, is easy to frame, and locks open and closed positively. Focusing is fast, and the stabiliser is effective – I can’t tell much of a difference between the lens’ stabiliser and the E-M1′s stabiliser.

Optically, it’s surprisingly good – much better than you’d expect given the spec and the fact that it’s a kit lens; I personally find it to be sharper and more distortion-free than the 14-42 pancake it appears to replace; it also has slightly better microcontrast. Both lenses still have pronounced distortion at the wide end, however; neither is fast to shoot because of the design compromises required to achieve that size – the 14-42 pops out by itself, but has a slow e-zoom lever, and you have no idea where in the zoom range you are until you start zooming; the 12-32 has to be extended manually before shooting. I have not used the new Olympus 14-42 pancake enough to make a meaningful comparison, but it is slightly thinner and also pops out by itself (and even has an optional self-opening petal-shaped lens cap, too).

If I had to sum up the GM1 – and 12-32 pancake – in one word, it would be fun. This camera is one you do not take too seriously, but whose results are always surprisingly good – especially given the size of the camera – and it can also serve as an emergency backup body if you’re shooting a M4/3 setup anyway. In my mind, you can only really pair it with the 12-32 or 20/1.7 pancakes before it becomes a bit of a pointless exercise due to imbalanced ergonomics; it can be done, but I don’t see why you’d do it. It isn’t a serious camera: you’re missing a lot of things like a hot shoe, viewfinder (or ability to take one) and there are some bugs like the spot meter behaviour; but that’s not the point: if you’re going with the intention of shooting, you’ll take the right tool. This isn’t going to be your only camera, so it doesn’t matter -unless perhaps you’re flying an extremely budget airline, or backpacking, or doing some other extreme sport. I’ve carried the GM1 in my pocket for the last two weeks, and produced some images I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise because my primary intentions at the time were not photographic – this is the important bit – because I had a) a capable device and b) the right range of perspectives with me. You might begin to think I like this thing; you’d be right. MT

I will be uploading more GM1 images to this set on flickr.

The Panasonic GM1 with 12-32 collapsible pancake is available here from B&H.2

____________

Places left for 2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Melbourne and London – click here for more information and to book!

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Today’s review is of a pair of lenses that you don’t see very often, nor do you read/ hear much about – the Schneider PC-TS 2.8/50 Super-Angulon and PC-TS 4.5/90 Makro-Symmar. There’s a third lens, a 28mm, which has been announced but as of March 2014 is not available. Given that there aren’t too many perspective control options for 35mm DSLRs, and one is always on the lookout for optics that better match the resolving power of cameras like the D800E, it made sense for me to try these two…

Perspective control or tilt shift is pretty much what it says on the box: the entire optical cell plane moves relative to the sensor plane to either correct for converging lines (shift) by forcing a higher or lower virtual perspective, or allows for movement of the depth of field plane of the lens to one that is non-parallel to the sensor plane to either extend or reduce depth of field. Various effects may be produced by combining these two movements together with different axes. Shifts are very useful in architecture to straighten converging verticals if you cannot get to the right height to hold the camera perfectly level, or for product work where you want to shift the camera out of the reflection of the object you’re photographing. Tilts are useful to extend depth of field for landscape or close distance work, or reduce it for portraiture.

With that in mind, and before we examine the Schneider’s incredibly complex mount, this is how the various T/S options stack up:
1) Nikon: tilt and shift axes fixed perpendicular, but the axes can move together through 360 degrees about the lens mount. Axes of the 24mm can be made parallel (far more useful for landscape and architecture) easily by undoing four screws; the 85mm requires a new flex and has to go back to Nikon; I’ve not been able to find confirmation on whether the 45mm is easily modified or not. +/- 11.5mm shift and +/- 8.5 degrees of tilt; 24, 45, and 85mm.
2) Canon: tilt and shift axes independently rotatable through 360 degrees. +/- 12mm of shift and +/- 8.5 degrees of tilt (for version II models; slightly less for version I); 17, 24, 45 and 90mm.
3) Rokinon/Samyang: tilt and shift axes independently rotatable through 360 degrees. +/- 12mm of shift and +/- 8.5 degrees of tilt; 24mm only.
4) Schneider: tilt and shift axes independently rotatable through 360 degrees. 12mm of shift and 8 degrees of tilt; 28, 50 and 90mm.

Clearly, of all of these, the Nikons are the least useful because their tilt and shift axes do not rotate independently.

By far the most clever feature of the Schneiders is the mount barrel. It’s also the most complex, and as we’ll see later, a bit of a mixed blessing. But first, here’s what each of the rings – no less than 8(!) do:
1 – Pull forwards to rotate T and S axes
2 – T axis geared control, 0-8 degrees
3 – Pull forwards to rotate S axis only
4 – S axis geared control, 0-12mm
5 – Tripod collar, removable
6 – Focusing ring
7 – Aperture ring
8 – Stop down ring – it’s important to note that the lenses have no electronic communication with the camera body or electromechanical diaphragm coupling, so you must remember to use the blue knurled ring to stop down before taking the shot.

What we get is very precise control over every single axis and movement. Build quality is unquestionably superb; these are amongst the most solid and precise lenses I’ve used, bar none. The lenses even come packaged in a useful, well-padded silo case with velcro loops for a belt or bag. But, since the lens is so big – for reference, the front threads are a whopping 95mm in diameter, and the 50mm weighs 1.4kg – and the balance is so front-heavy, you really do need to use the built in tripod mount. It also keeps movements about the optical centre of the lens. However, this creates some problems because the rotations are cumulative relative to the camera, and the tilt or shift only happens in one axis – so if you decide you need a negative shift instead of a positive one, you’ve got to rotate the whole thing about the tripod collar and pull the right collar to rotate the mount, then reverse motion on the other T or S axis, too. Changing the angle of the tilt or shift is NOT straightforward; on all of the other options, it’s a case of just moving the unlock lever and rotating the lens – nice and intuitive.

The tradeoff is that with the other options, the geared knobs to control movements are nowhere near as precise as the Schneider; you can easily set fractions of a millimetre or degree. This is difficult to do with the Nikon, Canon or Rokinon lenses as their gearing is simply too fast. It’s less of an issue with the longer focal length, but at 50mm, the lack of precision starts to become felt, and by the time you hit 24 or 17mm, very small movements can make a big difference – especially in the tilt axis. I almost never use more than 2-3 degrees of tilt or 3-4mm of shift with the 24 PCE, but using the full range of the 85 PCE is normal.

The 50mm appears to be a telecentric design with 9 elements in 9 groups; the 90mm is a symmetric double-Gauss variant with 6 elements in 4 groups and a maximum magnification of 1:4 – personally, I find this very low magnification and the distant near limit of 60cm makes the ‘Makro’ naming somewhat misleading; I was initially excited about the possibility of using the 90mm for my watch photography work as increased precision is always good – but at 1:4 and so-so performance with extension tubes, it turned out not to be a viable option.

A very modest maximum aperture – just f4.5 compared to f2.8 for the Nikon and Canon lenses – and simple optical formula for the 90mm raises expectations of optical performance. Resolution across the frame is very good at f4.5, but improves noticeably at f5.6, peaking at around f8. It matches the already excellent 85mm for resolution, but perhaps exceeds it very slightly for clarity and microcontrast. Performance at the extremes of the shift and tilt regimes is slightly better than the 85 PCE, too; there is less longitudinal and lateral chromatic aberration, though some odd flare/ ghosting around high contrast areas occurs at maximum tilt and wide open. All in all, a very solid performance.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the 50mm: whilst the Nikon 45 PCE is one of the best lenses they make, the Schneider 50mm is a disappointment. It is hazy and exhibits lateral chromatic aberration wide open – even without shifting or tilting, and must be stopped down to f5.6 to be acceptable on the D800E. Peak is again at f8-11, and after that diffraction has taken over. For a lens of this size, mass and price, effectively having only 2-3 usable stops of aperture is simply not good enough. Given the surprise of these results, especially from the 50mm, I sought confirmation – unfortunately, obtaining a second sample wasn’t really an option, but fortunately Lloyd Chambers (of Diglloyd) had also tested both lenses and concurred with my findings on the 50mm – the lens is just soft and hazy on the D800E. What I found slightly concerning about both lenses was the odd colour balance. They are a far cry from neutral; in fact, there’s a strong magenta-cyan shift that’s tricky to correct and renders skies with a very odd hue. Vignetting is of course a non-issue for both lenses, given the size of the image circle.

Given the optical results, and general fiddliness of using the lenses, I’d give the 90mm a qualified recommendation – for those doing work that requires incredibly precise control of shift and depth of field, on subjects that aren’t too small, I’d probably pick the 90mm over the Nikon 85 PCE. However, I cannot recommend the 50mm at all – the optics are very disappointing.

The Schneider PC-TS 50mm and 90mm lenses are available in Nikon F, Canon EOS, Pentax K and Sony Alpha mounts here from B&H

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Places left for 2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Havana and London – click here for more information and to book!

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

It’s been nearly two years since the D800E was released. In the meantime we’ve dealt with left focusing issues, comparisons with much more expensive cameras (here, and here), the fact that most of the Nikon lens stable doesn’t really match up to the capabilities of the sensor, focusing issues with MF glass – now that we have lenses like the Otus and 2/135 APO, and its use as a scanning device for film – amongst other things. It’s become my go-to camera when an image needs making, under any circumstances, and with any given set of requirements. Yet it’s honestly taken me two years to warm up to it. Here’s why.

The logical part of us doesn’t like things that don’t work properly. Quirks aren’t endearing when they get in the way of your shot, nor are they charming when they cost you a job. I’ve used many cameras that were entertaining and fun to use for whatever reason – ergonomics, shooting experience, the lenses, the way they looked and felt…but the frustrations and limitations ultimately dominated. The rational part, however, tries to persist with these devices anyway because we enjoy using them. So long as there’s no critical need to deliver images to a paying client, then loss of photographs might be a severe disappointment, but professional reputations aren’t at stake. Bottom line: for photography that doesn’t matter*, we’re willing to take a risk.

*Though this raises the much larger question of why we are bothering to photograph it at all in the first place if the image or subject does not matter…

What I do notice is that whenever I have a job to deliver – the D800E is always the first camera I pick up. I have no concerns over image quality, having the right range of lenses, lighting gear, spares, clients caring that my camera isn’t big enough (happens surprisingly often in this uneducated but price-sensitive market), etc. I know the hardware is sufficiently capable, and I am almost certain that it won’t let me down. And if it does, I have another one which I can just pick up and continue with. This gives you a certain amount of confidence when approaching what is sometimes unfamiliar or challenging photographic conditions – inside a tunnel boring machine, for instance. And the price point is relatively high for a DSLR, but at least it’s friendly enough that I can afford to have two, and easily available enough that I can buy another one on location if it really all goes to hell in a hand basket. You can’t say the same about a Leica M, or a H5D…

The D800E is not without its flaws; far from it. No camera is perfect. But these aren’t the dominating part of the experience, and that’s what makes it the current go-to. It took several months to resolve the focusing issues; my lens solution is mostly third party; the focusing screen** is a hack job, and the camera still locks up from time to time – requiring battery removal – but at least it doesn’t eat images and corrupt memory cards like the Leicas. There’s no stabiliser in the body, unlike the OM-Ds; but I’m not stuck if clients request 30MP+ files for extremely large enlargements – which they sometimes do, especially now that I seem to be slowly moving up the commercial food chain somewhat. Color requires quite a lot of work to fix; the camera’s native output doesn’t look as natural or pleasing as CCD-based cameras like the CFV, M9 or even E-1. The grip isn’t the most comfortable in the Nikon lineup, and I find my fourth and fifth fingers getting cramped after a few hours of use, unless I have the battery grip mounted – and that makes the whole caboodle even heavier still. The whole system is still larger and heavier than I’d like for travel, especially in light of today’s increasingly strict airline carry-on restrictions. And we haven’t even started talking about the significantly increased shot discipline required to make the most of the available resolution.

**They didn’t fit very well out of the box; significant work was required to restore mirror alignment and subsequently, AF accuracy. I know many of you will ask, but it’s a qualified recommendation – only buy if you know what you’re doing, and you’re prepared to fiddle around inside your mirror box and potentially void your warranty.

At this point, I’m now about 70,000 shots in with two bodies in constant rotation, and most of those were purely for commercial/ studio work – careful set up under ideal conditions, single shot, repeat. I admit that I’ve become both very used to and subsequently spoiled by the camera’s image quality – when I look at output from other cameras, some (like the GR) may meet it at the pixel level, but then they fall short on gross resolution. I have said many times that almost all current cameras’ resolution is more than sufficient for 99% of all applications – that stands true; but if you are in the 1%, and you do have a final output medium that’s demanding enough to distinguish between say 16 and 36MP, then the D800E does give you a bit of extra bite. My current printing method is in that 1% – it does resolve that difference in just a 10×15″ print; this has lead me to carry the D800E more and more often for this reason – especially when I know my output from that shoot is for this print method. (The internal conflict really arises when there is a small possibility that you might capture an image you want to print, but you’re not sure and don’t want to compromise…do you carry smaller, lighter, or bigger, heavier, better – just in case?)

On the whole then, there are more positives than negatives. It does the job, with better reliability and image quality than anything else to date, over a wider shooting envelope – even if you can now get decent ISO 6400 quality out of the current generation of CMOS medium format cameras, there are no f1.4 lenses to go with it, giving several stops’ advantage to the D800E. But, honestly: I’ve found this to be a very soulless, uninvolving camera to shoot – it does its job, gets out of the way, and then you take it out again only when you need to do another job. It has never really given me the impulse to take it out and shoot with it for the enjoyment/ entertainment value; I used it for work and work alone. Until now.

I think what has changed is that in the last six months a number of things around the ecosystem have matured to the point that I’m happy with the available solutions; firstly, I now have lenses that can make the most of the sensor – the Zeiss 1.4/55 Otus and 2/135 APO, and now a full set of PCEs; but more importantly, focusing screens** that make the manual focus lenses workable under situations other than those requiring a tripod and controlled lighting. It means that I can bring formerly medium format image quality to very demanding photographic situations; low light corporate documentary, for instance. And that does give me a commercial edge. File handling was an issue until I got a more powerful computer – with dual RAID 0 SSDs – that now make processing a breeze. It seems to work quite well as a film scanner, too. Finally, I now have a printing method that can take advantage of all of the resolution of the camera without having to print so large that I can only hang one photograph on my wall at any given point in time.

By far the biggest part of this is the lenses, though. Subjectively, it feels as though the Otus has finally unlocked the full potential of the camera; you don’t have to carefully watch your apertures or subject distances for adequate performance, or apply compensatory sharpening afterwards to make up for diffraction losses. I now want to shoot with the D800E/ Otus combination simply because it is the most transparent tool I have used; it replicates what you see, without coloration or adulteration. It does it over a very wide shooting envelope. I can now focus it adequately, too. But beyond that, it finally feels as though everything is working in concert: on the input side, the technical latitude of the camera and lenses allows me to translate my creative vision into a file, whose detail, colour and tonal subtleties translate into an accesibly-sized final print. There is a rational, logical synergy here – and that in itself is worthy of respect. It’s not the usage experience that’s finally make me like the D800E beyond its function as a core business tool: it’s the results. And I’ve finally put my money where my mouth is – I’ve now got two of them. MT

The Nikon D800E is available here from B&H and Amazon.

____________

Places left for 2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Havana and London – click here for more information and to book!

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

There are quite a number of medium format digital cameras available today; the vast majority are designed to handle like oversize DSLRs, and in some cases, there’s very little difference size- and control-wise between these cameras – take the Leica S, for instance. This makes them both familiar and easy to use, but also somewhat liable to catch out the unweary. My digital field work with medium format is done with a Hasselblad CFV-39, mounted on a 501CM body. The method of operation constantly reminds you that this is most certainly not another DSLR; not least because you have to wind the camera after every shot to recock the shutter and lower the mirror! The intention of this article is to look at the practicalities – or impracticalities – of using medium format digital in the field or while travelling as a DSLR replacement, and more importantly, in a way that lets you actually see enough of a difference to justify it in the first place.

Myth number one: it’s expensive.
It isn’t. Second hand digital backs are falling in price; I suspect we’re about to see another drop – especially on the current generation – once the new CMOS censored cameras hit the market in force; already Phase One, Hasselblad and Pentax have announced cameras around the Sony 50MP chip. I think there will still remain some die-hard CCD fans who won’t switch to CMOS, however – there are a number of reasons to still favour a CCD for some applications. Using a camera that’s one or two generations behind is not going to yield poor image quality; remember that these were the state of the art commercial tools at their release, and frankly, the bar hasn’t moved all that much in this market. Limited sales and limited R&D budgets have seen to that. So long as you are conscious of the limitations of the large CCDs, you can still produce excellent results.

Myth number two: you can’t use the in the dark.
This is partially true: don’t expect to use your Phase One as a reportage camera; firstly, you’re already at least a stop or two down on the lens front compared to a DSLR with f1.4 primes; there’s no stabilisation on any medium format camera, and finally, your sensor realistically tops out at ISO 400, perhaps ISO 800 at a push with some noise reduction. Honestly: the CFV-39 at ISO 800 looks like the D800E at ISO 6400. That says two things: just how clean the D800E is, and how large its shooting envelope; but also that you’re not constrained to ISO 50 on the digital back.

Myth number three: they’re power hungry.
If you’re powering a whole camera off it, perhaps; I don’t have experience with the Phase One cameras, but I do know that the H series ‘Blads can manage at least 400-500 shots per charge; the Leica S is even more – easily a thousand – and even the CFV-39 and -50 will manage ~700-800. Bear in mind that you’re not going to be shooting one of these things like a D4 – in single shot mode, with carefully considered setup and framing, you may realistically shoot a couple of hundred images a day at most.

My choice of medium format digital has perhaps the most restrictions of any of its kind:

1. Manual focus only.
2. The body is designed for waist level work, since the concept of portrait orientation doesn’t exist for a 6×6 square frame. This has viewing and ergonomic consequences, that can only be solved with a right-angle finder – the HC-3 or HC-4 – and a jury-rigged hand grip made from an L bracket (that’s also useful for mounting the camera to a tripod).
3. You have to wind it between shots
4. The leaf shutter may be silent and low vibration, but the enormous mirror and auxiliary curtains are most certainly not: remember that this camera, its optics, its viewfinder system, and all of the moving parts were designed for a 6×6 frame – at most, the digital backs use a 1.1x crop of 645. That’s a lot of extra moving mass.
5. The camera body is fully mechanical, and thus has no battery. Interface between the body and back is by means of the little pin that normally advances the film counter; it tells the back to wake up and fire the sensor, which is powered on for a preset duration, during which time the exposure happens. Surprisingly, there is almost zero noticeable lag. In any case, it requires winding to recock between each image – which means single shot only.
6. The back was released in 2009, with electronics that I think date back even earlier. Certainly the LCD, graphics and other UI elements feel like it; it’s not slow, but it’s not really snappy, either. The LCD is only useful for a) confirming that the camera has taken a shot, and b) viewing the histogram. It is not useful for anything else, and unlike modern DSLRs, cannot be used for doing a first cut evaluation of images.
7. There’s no meter: it’s not only very, very intolerant to underexposure and subsequent recovery, but also moderately intolerant to overexposure. Use an external spot meter, recalibrate your eyeballs for higher accuracy, or be prepared for iterations using the histogram.

You may be wondering why I chose it. One answer is simple: because the process of operating it most closely matches the experience of shooting film, whose output I like very much; the only difference is that you are composing for 645 and not 6×6, so portrait orientation or a crop factor comes into play. Nevertheless, the experience feels very, very similar and familiar – except you do have instant gratification – though admittedly I almost always shoot it with the LCD off, and treat the back like it’s loaded with film – very unforgiving slide film, because one of the properties of a CCD is that dynamic range is great – but only if you get the exposure right at the time of capture. Pushing and pulling a CCD file is not generally a good idea because the shadows aren’t anywhere near as clean, nor are the highlight transitions smooth and easily recoverable.

Note grip and eye-level prism; in this configuration, the camera is bulky but handles like a DSLR – albeit one that you have to wind and whose shutter button you have to trigger with your right fourth finger.

Many things that need workarounds, the biggest one of which is stability. The CFV-39 requires 1/2x at the bare minimum, or 1/3x preferably – we’re not talking 1/2x the 35mm equivalent, we’re taking 1/2x the actual focal length to be used handheld. That means 1/125s minimum for the 80mm, and preferably 1/250s+ to ensure a sharp image – assuming of course you focused it on the money to begin with. There’s another problem: the leaf shutters max out at 1/500s, which means you don’t really have a lot of latitude. Using the prism finder, jury-rigging a handgrip from an L-bracket and bracing the camera against your face might buy you one more stop – down to 1/60s – but you will only have a sharp exposure perhaps one third of the time, and that’s a bit too uncertain for me. You can of course control exposure with ISO, NDs and the aperture ring; however there are times when you need to go slower; much slower. ISO 400 is the point at which I set the threshold for acceptable image quality; anything higher will still be usable, but not really up to what you’d expect for medium format. As you can see – f2.8 (the fastest lens for this system), 1/125s and ISO 400 is really not very dark at all.

At this point, we have to revert to using a tripod; while we’re at it, a cable release and locking up the mirror is a must. Fortunately, this is very easy – there’s a switch under the winding crank that takes care of it, making it very much second nature to operate. During my last trip to Tokyo, I carried one with me all the time – a very lightweight Gitzo GT1542 Traveller with an Arca-Swiss P0 mono ball head, made slightly lighter and more rigid by the removal of the centre column. I personally find tripod bags very inconvenient, so it was clipped into a belt holster and carried much like a sword of old. The weight was noticeable after a while, but not too bad; more inconvenient was me inadvertently whacking the tripod against things. I’d much rather have a between-the-shoulder-blades quiver, but I can’t seem to find one. The tripod worked well, with one caveat: it seems that Tokyo has a lot of areas that are actually structures built over manmade underground caverns, which means that street level is really the surface of a bridge. And cars driving over that bridge will cause vibrations in the surface, which are beyond the scope of the tripod’s ability to damp – we’re talking about oscillations you can feel through the soles of your shoes. Needless to say, there’s a very visible effect on image quality, and especially for long exposures. The only solution is to carefully time your shots between traffic. In crowded areas, not blocking thoroughfares and avoiding getting kicked are also a bit of a challenge.

I didn’t find power or storage to be an issue – despite the files being anywhere up to 70MB each. One 32GB card saw me through the entire week-long trip without deleting anything, and I though I carried three batteries – I always had one full one left at the end of the day, and sometimes a bit more.

What the shooting experience does force you to do is be very disciplined: there is nothing stopping you from carrying a lot of lenses (they actually aren’t that much bigger or heavier than 35mm FF lenses because the apertures are fairly modest), other than backache; however, I personally got the best results when I carried just one, or at most, two – an 80mm and a 150mm. I felt far less encumbered, for a start. Beyond that, the 80mm was my staple simply because it extended my shooting envelope by two stops – firstly, being f2.8 instead of f4, and secondly, being a shorter focal length allowing for slower shutter speeds before hand shake became apparent.

One thing I haven’t touched on is focusing, and alignment. We’ve got a few moving parts here: firstly, there’s mirror alignment to ensure that your flange-to-focusing screen distance is exactly the same as the flange-to-sensor distance; it isn’t always the case, especially on older bodies whose mount surfaces may well have worn down over the years. It is imperative to calibrate the mirror zero to ensure that what you see in the finder is exactly what you get on your sensor; this is a slow process that requires a little manual dexterity and a lot of patience.Having the correct focusing screen and viewfinder are very important too: the 45 degree prisms are useless for this task, in my opinion. Not only are they disorienting and impossible to use in the portrait orientation, they also don’t offer enough magnification.

Fortunately, the digital backs are supplied with a standard focusing screen that also has markings delineating the sensor area, and a square crop within that – this screen has an excellent matte, crispy micro prisms and a split image rangefinder in the centre. I find that together with the HC-4 prism, I have more than enough magnification and brightness to focus consistently: firstly, the combination gives 100% field coverage and 100% magnification with the 80mm lens; you can shoot with both eyes open. Secondly, eye relief is terrible because of the magnification, but it has an enormous +/-5 diopter adjustment range – enough even for my extreme myopia. As an added bonus, there’s the stability increase afforded by bracing the camera against your face when shooting it handheld. Even so, you have to remember that not only is depth of field razor thin, but the resolving power of the sensor in pixels per degree FOV is even higher than a D800E; combine this with the significantly higher mirror slap, and you’ve got a camera that’s extremely demanding to shoot handheld. My handheld hit rate is very, very low with this camera: much lower than film, lower than normal digital, and frankly, pretty abysmal. It’s not a compositional thing: it’s an image quality one; there’s no point in keeping a slightly motion-blurred or camera-shaken image, simply because I might as well have used something else to capture it with. The additional magic of medium format is gone. (On a tripod, this is a different story, of course – my hit rate is nearly 100%.)

However, the biggest reason why I put up with all of these foibles is a combination of rendering style, colour and ‘bite’: the files are notionally 16 bit, which means a significantly wider gamut; the sensor has no anti-aliasing filter, either. The ability to discriminate between very close colours also translates into an ability to resolve higher-frequency and lower-contrast structures, which contributes to the impression of acuity and resolving power. Coupled with the nonlinear tonal response of CCDs – which coincidentally matches the impressions of human vision reasonably well – we’re left with a camera that produces extremely natural looking files; when you get everything right, almost zero post processing is required – it sees and replicates what you see; nothing more, nothing less. It is a different kind of transparency to the Otus/D800E combination: that still requires some tonal work for accuracy. The Hasselblad/CFV combination does not. By the same token, mess up the shot and you will not be shown any mercy: there is almost no latitude for repair afterwards. This level of clarity means that it’s much easier to convey the feeling of being there, or the illusion of reality, of course resulting in stronger images. MT

This set on flickr was shot entirely with the CFV-39.

____________

Places left for 2014 Making Outstanding Images Workshops: Havana and London – click here for more information and to book!

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Image from Pentax UK.

A couple of days ago, Pentax threw down the gauntlet to the other medium format digital camera makers in the form of the 645Z. It uses the same ~50MP 44x33mm CMOS as the Hasselblad H5D-50C and Phase One IQ250, but with one critical difference: unlike the Hasselblad and Phase One, it’s feasibly within the reach of a whole load more people. And it isn’t just the shocking price – $8,500 plays $29,000 (Hasselblad) or $37,000 (Phase) – it’s the UI and operating gestalt, too. I think what we’ve just seen is an early game changer.

Pentax released the 645D some time ago to not that much fanfare, but a rather interesting price – especially compared to other medium format options of the time. The 645Z is now a direct comparison to the Hasselblad and Phase because of the choice of sensor; it seems that only Sony is alone in offering a medium format sensor with current photosite technology. My guess would be that it shares a lot at the architecture level with the D800E’s sensor, which is no bad thing. I believe the MF sensor’s pixel pitch is slightly larger, though. It’s also the reason we see an enormous jump in shooting envelope and usability: we go from ISO 400 being the absolute maximum (with significant NR work afterwards in post processing) to ISO 6400 being the highest rated sensitivity, and HI1 to HI4 options all the way to 204k thereafter. That’s four stops. Suddenly, f2.8 maximum apertures don’t seem to matter quite so much anymore. Handholding and insufficient shutter speeds don’t seem to be quite such critical limitations.

The rest of the spec sheet suggests the 645Z isn’t a D4S replacement, but then again, consider this: if at the pixel level it loses a stop or two in noise to the D4S, but has nearly four times the pixel count – downsampling is going to yield an amazingly clean image, regardless of the ISO used, with that medium format look*. And that makes things interesting.

*Related to the depth of field properties of the actual focal length of the lenses, and irrespective of the field of view. Smaller formats mean shorter focal lengths for the same equivalent FOV, and the attendant depth of field properties that go with it – i.e. a lot.

However, unlike the Hasselblad and Phase, I don’t think the 645Z requires such an enormous shift in the way you work, or familiarity with older cameras: a lot of hardware and UI elements appear to be ported directly over from a K-3, right down to focus peaking, a 27 point AF system (with 25 cross type points) and the button assignments. It’ll do 3fps and 1080p30 video (that should look interesting). There’s a solid AF lens system available already, and prices don’t seem to be unreasonable – older MF lenses are legion, and they’re even cheaper (I’ve seen excellent lenses as low as $75!) Once you get over the size and physical aspect of things, it doesn’t seem at all intimidating. It’s even built like a current pro DSLR too – all magnesium alloy and fully weather sealed. What it will do, and quite impressively, is extend the conditions under which the next step up in image quality from a DSLR can be obtained – consistently.

I do have two concerns – perhaps that’s too strong a word – however. The first is that we may not really get as much of that ‘medium format look’ as we think: I have always strongly suspected a good part of it is down to the native tonal response of the sensor, and we all know that the linearity of CMOS sensors might be great for extended dynamic range and noise control, but it does mean that color and tonality aren’t quite as good as CCDs. Hasselblad and Phase have made it clear that the sensor and associated hardware is capable of native 16 bit output, and they’re offering 16 bit files; however, it isn’t clear that this is the case with the 645Z; in the past .PEF files have been 14 bit, and DNGs just 12. Hopefully this situation changes and we get the full 16 bits. It would be a shame to compromise twice. In any case, I don’t imagine the tonal latitude will be any less than the D800E, which is also limited to 14 bits; I figure if we can work with that, anything better is a bonus.

Secondly, there’s the lenses. Pentax USA has committed to introducing an additional 13 lenses (from their current overseas lineup) into what I suppose they want to become their largest market; they should be commended for this. However, I wonder how many of these lenses are up to the task of resolving as expected on a sensor of that pixel density and size; as we saw with the introduction of the D800E, a lot of lenses aren’t anywhere near as good as we thought they were initially. I suspect that the newer lenses designed post-645D will be fine – such as the 25/4 – but some of the older glass may prove disappointing. Personally, what I find interesting is that there is a) a Hasselblad/Zeiss V to P645 adaptor, and b) a lot of the lenses I already have have been tested to be excellent performers on the 645D, even wide open. It may well prove to be an interesting digital back – I’m not particularly worried about manual focus limitations, because we now have both live view and focus peaking, and this is the kind of camera that goes on a tripod anyway – it seems silly to buy one with the intention of seeking out optimum image quality and then leaving some of it on the table.

Possible shortcomings and limitations aside, this camera is really a slap in the face to everybody else: it’s basically made Nikon and Canon offerings above the D4 and 1Dx pointless, because they will a) be priced pretty close; b) have smaller pixel pitches and hit diffraction faster, and have limited usable lens selections; c) not be much smaller. You could get three of these and a lens or two for the price of one H5D-50C, or four for an IQ250; if Leica uses this sensor in the next S, you can bet that the price point isn’t going to be less than the other two. What Pentax has done is out-Nikon’ed Nikon; they’ve copied the D800E’s price-performance ratio and turned it up another notch.

I’m personally looking forward to reviewing this one as soon as a demo is available. If anybody happens to know some folks at Pentax, I’d love to get in touch. Mainstream medium format, I bid you a warm welcome. 16×20″ Ultraprints, anybody? MT

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Caveat: this review was produced with a final production beta camera and lenses; this means that whilst we’re probably 99% of the way there, there will almost certainly be some small changes before the camera finally ships. All sample images were shot in DNG and converted via ACR, with the 18-56 and 23mm native T-mount lenses.

Let me say up front that whilst I have been very clear that innovation has been somewhat lacking in the camera industry across the board of late, there have been a few standouts that do so precisely because they push various aspects of the game – be it image quality or more rarely, ergonomics. I’ve long had the feeling that Apple’s latest camera implementations – touch once to lock exposure and focus, again to shoot – have really distilled the essence of the camera down to its bare minimum. It uses technology not to pad out a spec sheet, but to free the photographer to concentrate solely on composition. Shame then, that none of the more capable cameras have really gotten this implementation right – until now. I believe the Leica T is the first generation of a paradigm shift in the way we control and interact with our cameras.

About a month ago, I got a call from the folks at Leica asking if I’d be interested in testing out a new camera – but not just a new camera, a whole new system. That left me doing some head scratching: the S system sits at the top of the pile, with M coming next, and the other various smaller ‘systems’ – I use inverted commas because none of these have interchangeable lenses; just a huge quantity of accessories. That does not qualify them as a complete system, in my book.

In essence, the T appears to share the core technology from the X2 and X Vario – same 16MP Sony-sourced APS-C sensor, without anti-aliasing filter; mid-sized mirrorless body without viewfinder (but optional 2.4-million dot EVF) and lenses that are either a moderate-aperture normal zoom or 35mm equivalent. Frame rate seems to be lower at ~3fps for 13 shots. The T is launched with both the 35/2 and ~28-80/3.5-5.6 equivalents. Unlike the X cameras, the lenses are of course interchangeable – in a new autofocus mount – and trade the high-sync leaf shutters for an in-body focal plane shutter.

Apologies for more camera p*** than usual: this is an exceptionally handsome device, in a modern and unusual way.

The core then, is familiar ground. One could argue that the sensor is hardly state of the art anymore, but then again, the 24MP APS-C sensors currently available don’t appear to deliver much of acuity improvement, but penalize you heavily if your shot discipline is poor. The 16MP unit in the T is therefore a sensible choice – possibly the best currently available one – and one that delivers known excellent results. (The Ricoh GR is a good example of this.)

Where things seriously diverge is in the user experience. Even more so than the M bodies, I believe the haptics and ‘objectness’ of the T takes things to another level. The body is a unibody machined from a single 1.6kg aluminium billet and designed in collaboration with Audi, and available in silver (immediately) or black (in July). It’s solid and hefty but not heavy. The only reason this construction method works is because the innards are put in through the enormous rear screen aperture – it’s about 4” in size, appears to be just slightly lower in resolution compared to an iPhone’s panel, is capacitative touch sensitive and covered in Gorilla Glass. It would appear that some design DNA was donated on a more permanent basis by Apple’s Jonathan Ive after that one-off M collaboration; if you took the red dot off the front and blindfolded me, I’d have sworn Apple had decided to enter the camera business – it’s even got 16GB of internal memory, rather reminiscent of the i-devices.

I think this is a good thing. It means that firstly you want to pick it up and fondle it; wanting to use it means taking more images which in turn means better photographs – eventually. It is one of the most solidly built, if not the most solidly built, cameras I have ever held. It should be, since no others are made from a single piece of metal – there are no external shell or panel seams anywhere; it feels like it’s built to last. The only tangibly plastic bit on the whole camera is the SD card/ USB port door – shame this isn’t metal too, but I suspect it probably has something to do with the wifi antenna.

I have to say I don’t like the strap lugs. Though the mechanism is clever, and the placement doesn’t interfere with your hands, the supplied rubber strap has very sharp metal on the end that goes between your fingers; that combined with the surprising weight of the strap can make it dig in. Please round the corners, Leica, or give us an option for regular attachments to use a strap of our choosing. It might appear in my reviews that I’m obsessed by strap lug placements, but to me, this is one of the most important things for prolonged use when holding the camera in-hand. Finally, all of the controls and detents need to be just a little bit stiffer – dials are too easy to turn, and the power switch goes past ‘on’ to ‘flash up’ a bit too easily.

However, the most impressive aspect of the camera by far is its UI: it’s responsive, and more importantly, uses the touch screen in sensible ways – making it fully customisable. You can drag and drop the icons for settings you want in a 3×3 grid; touch to change them – have as many or as few as you want, and put them wherever you want. I’ve put my most used three under the arc of my thumb (metering, focus mode, exposure compensation) and left the rest of the secondary functions under my left thumb. You can of course then save all of these to a user profile for later recall. There’s a full menu with everything, too. It’s fairly mature for a first generation product – no doubt there will be improvements in future generations, but it’s very usable now, and quite refreshing. One side benefit is that you can actually find the button you’re looking for in the dark. I have to say at times I feel as though I’m using a smartphone though, and there’s simply no way you’re going to use this camera with anything other than thin leather gloves because of the touch screen. There have been other touch screen cameras before – but to my knowledge none that allow this degree of customisation (the recently announced Lytro Illum remains to be seen; and as usual with that company, you have to use their software to view – with all of the usual ‘we own your images’ caveats.)

The downside is that you don’t have the haptic feedback of real buttons, but the upside is that you can configure the camera’s shortcuts absolutely any way you want. It can be as simple as possible for beginners, or fully-featured for more advanced users. Two physical control dials for exposure (or anything else) are on the top right corner of the top plate, under your thumb. The T lacks a proper thumb grip, sadly – it feels as though it’d benefit from a ThumbsUp, except you’ll then lose your ability to attach an EVF. Once configured, I find the camera extremely fluid indeed in use – and unlike other cameras with configurable buttons, it’s impossible to forget what they do.

There are some gotchas, though – and some of these may be firmware related (my camera was not running final firmware): the camera not remembering the secondary dial setting (and defaulting to ISO), for instance; slightly buggy playback mode (swipe downwards to enter – that’s the single non-intuitive function on the whole camera, actually) which moves your AF box if you’re in touch focus mode. Playback mode itself is fine, if a little slow to enter – tap twice to magnify, one of the dials skips between images magnified, the other controls zoom. It’d also be nice to not be able to set the shutter speed past the max flash sync of 1/160s in Manual mode – the camera will fire, but you’ll get a black frame. Finally – and perhaps most importantly – information is always overlaid over the frame in black bars; you can lose the information entirely, but then you also can’t see what exposure parameters have changed when you turn the dials. It’s a little frustrating; either deal with imprecise edges or guess-the-ISO. Finally, if you’re the kind of person who likes to decouple the shutter button and AF and/or AE – you’re out of luck. Half press does everything; there are no more physical buttons to assign, and holding the screen doesn’t work, so that’s not really surprising. It’s not a big deal anyway; I’d much rather have AF/AE/shoot on one button because it’s faster.

Leica have added yet another EVF (with eye sensor, built into the camera body itself) to their growing collection – this time with a proprietary connector that’s buried down the deep end of the hotshoe a la Sony; perhaps to prevent people from going with the Olympus option as on the M240 and X cameras. The new viewfinder resurrects the old ‘Visoflex’ designation (to see one in use, see this article). It has a 2.4m-dot panel, and reminds me largely of the A7′s finder – though dynamic range doesn’t seem to be quite as good as either the A7/A7R or the E-M1. The refresh rate could be faster, too, especially in low light. In good to moderate light, it’s excellent – even if it does add considerable height to the camera and not quite match it visually (black plastic instead of aluminium). I wish the locking detent – it flips up by 90 degrees for waist level shooting – and the diopter dial were tighter though; it’s too easy to knock both accidentally. It’d also be nice to have somewhere to store that lovely little square of machined aluminium that’s the hotshoe cover – given the immense amount of thought given to the rest of the design, it seems like a surprising oversight. It’d also be nice to have a display mode where when the EVF is attached, the rear panel stays permanently lit as shortcut buttons since you can’t change anything on screen.

The sensor is almost a known quantity – image quality appears to be similar to the X2 and X Vario. I’d put the high ISO limit somewhere between at 1600 and 3200, depending on how much noise you can accept or how much NR you’re willing to do afterwards – there is a 12500 setting, but this looks like a storm of jellybeans. In practice it feels about a half a stop to a stop slower than the GR (which shares the same sensor) in terms of shooting envelope. This means in the dark, you really need to be using the 23/2 – or be prepared to give up two stops on the zoom. There’s an auto-ISO function with sensible limits; about 1/1.5x focal length. Given you’re probably going to be holding the T at arms’ length, it makes sense. That said, I still saw camera shake – especially at the longer end of the zoom. I really hope their forthcoming telephoto zoom has a stabiliser, otherwise the EVF and/ or a tripod will be a must. Usable dynamic range in good light is 11-12 stops, again comparable to its sister cameras; I don’t want to form any firm conclusions on image quality yet as my unit is not running final firmware – no doubt there will be some tweaks to color profile, high ISO performance etc. prior to launch. I’ll revisit that later, but suffice to say expect the output to be at the level of the X cameras or slightly better. This is also one of the reasons for the large number of B&W images in this review – there’s no ACR profile for the camera yet; I’ve made my own but not had the time to properly refine it.

Pixel quality is of course lens-dependent; the zoom is sharp throughout the range and across the frame at all apertures, peaking at f5.6-8; however it seems to lack the microcontrast ‘bite’ of the prime, which performs surprisingly well even at minimum focus distance and maximum aperture. The prime does display some longitudinal chromatic aberration wide open*, which I didn’t see with the zoom. I’m told it works well with M lenses (but lacks offset micro lenses) but have not had the opportunity to try this. I have used some of my Nikon mount glass as an experiment, and so long as the lenses were solid on the D800E, they were also solid performers on the T. One surprise is that the lenses themselves are not made in Germany; they’re made in Japan – you cannot tell this from the zoom and focusing rings or mount/ shells, but the extending part of the zoom is plastic, as are the hoods. (The body is made in Germany, though.) Autofocus is quite fast; not blindingly fast like the Olympuses and later Panasonics; a definite notch up over the X2 and X Vario. I’d say it’s just a hair slower than the GR with the prime attached. And there is a very short but noticeable freeze before locking focus, like the Fujis. Unsurprisingly, the prime is a bit faster to focus than the zoom – it is getting more light into it after all. What would have been nice is if the lens focusing rings adopted the same design as the X Vario – there’s an detented A(utofocus) position at one end, and a distance scale if you wish to manually override; it’d also simplify two more menu items (AF/MF and MF magnification – no peaking here). Hyperfocal heaven!

*Curiously, I saw this with the Otus too when mounted and shot wide open – I’ve not seen this behaviour on the D800E, which has the same pixel pitch. It might well be down to adaptor planarity, though resolving power doesn’t seem to be at all affected.

It’s interesting to note that the mount on the T is enormous – about the size of an EOS mount – which suggests the body could certainly take a full frame sensor. Presumably the size has something to do with tele centricity of the lenses, backward compatibility and so on. For those who do have M lenses, there will be an electronic M adaptor available too – it has the photodiodes required to read the 6-bit codes on the lens, and transmit those via electronic contacts to the T’s mount. I would assume there are some software corrections going on internally to compensate for vignetting, CA, magenta/cyan shifts etc.

Battery life is rather impressive. The cell itself is physically quite large – nearly the size of a D800E’s battery – but has half the capacity; the camera will still easily go for 600-700+ shots per charge, which is impressive given the size of the display it’s always powering. It’s also worth mentioning the battery mechanism itself is rather neat – a little lever makes a featureless rectangle drop out of the bottom a few millimetres; push it again and the battery releases itself. Similar to the S2, actually.

I think Leica must firstly be given credit where credit is due: to shoot with this camera is a completely new experience. It requires you to recalibrate the way you think of interacting with a camera to get the most out of it; there may be some discontinuity experienced when switching between the T and more conventional cameras. Iphone users, on the other hand, will be right at home. And it pains me to say this, but the camera now also includes wifi and a matching smartphone app for both control and social media sharing – it appears this is now a necessity for cameras.

It is not perfect; no camera is. I think whilst build-feel and materials are absolutely top notch, the ergonomics could still be better; there are a few awkward angles and sharp edges – especially around the strap. The proprietary strap attachments might be clean and neat, but they do severely limit strap choices – what if you want a padded neck strap, for instance? And a rear thumb hook is really a must to stop the camera from twisting out of your hands – they even added one to the M240. The next generation needs proper IS – ideally in the body, or failing that, in the lenses (especially since it’s a lot sleeker to use without the EVF) and a sensor cleaner.

This camera had – has – two big hurdles to overcome: a lack of native lenses, and fluidity/ workability of the UI. Spending some time with it has convinced me that the latter is mostly a non-issue; Leica are reasonably good about filling in lens holes, but I just hope that given the target audience, we get some fast primes, too – not just slow-aperture zooms (the brochure shows wide and telephoto zooms in the roadmap too); no matter how good the optics may be. Sometimes you just need more light. In the meantime, the ability to use M lenses may be a good solution if you already have some from your M bodies.

Which leads us to the question of who this camera is really targeted at: I think it’s too expensive for the casual enthusiast, and the price puts it out of reach of most of the lifestyle crowd; I can certainly see Apple fans buying it because it’s a product in the same gestalt (and much like a first generation Apple product, the idea is very solid but will improve significantly with a couple more iterations). M owners might well pick up one if the M240 is too rich for their blood, or they need a better telephoto solution – that 1.5x crop factor does give you a little effective boost. In fact, I can see a lot of people who have trouble focusing their Ms going over to the T for the AF alone – if the AF lens lineup is there to match. I can’t help but feel it’s made the X-lineup somewhat redundant: you can buy the T with a 35/2 equivalent, instead of the X2′s 35/2.8; and or you can buy it with the 18-56 zoom and gain a bit of maximum aperture on the Vario. What it lacks over the X cameras is the ability to set everything before turning the camera on – especially on the Vario, where you can set focus distance, too.

The final question is one of where the T fits in with the rest of the ecosystem and mirrorless pecking order. It’s not a speed demon (albeit somewhat crippled by shutter shock) like the E-M1; it’s not a resolution champ like the A7R (also crippled by shutter shock). It’s middle of the pack for responsiveness; comparable to a GM1 and kit lens, I’d say – but with better optics and a better sensor (comparable to the Ricoh GR). It’s priced well above any of these options – what did you expect, it wears a red dot – but it’s also built a cut above them, too. I suppose it’s like buying a German car: you might pay a bit more, and the spec sheet isn’t quite as full as a Japanese one, but it does just feel that little bit more enjoyable to use. Also as with cars, there’s absolutely no justification whatsoever for buying this over the competition. But the problem is, once you’ve handled it, chances are you’ll just want one – and that’s not something I can say for the vast majority of cameras I’ve handled. Haptics and build-feel do make a difference!

Overall, it’s a solid performer in every way – but the UI and build quality really set it apart, and make it a more interesting experience to shoot with than a lot of competing mirroless cameras. It’s a shame then that the price will probably be the limiting factor in adoption, even for people who want it. But who knows: it’s been a good 60+ years since the first Ms, but they may well have started another major shift in the way we interact with photography. Now, what I’d really like to see is a Monochrom version of this camera…MT

Jonathan Slack and Sean Reid have also published their respective takes on the camera.

The Leica T is available to preorder here from B&H.

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Me getting down in Havana. Photo courtesy KH Yeo

If you’re going on a trip that’s probably never going to be repeated (let’s assume it isn’t for a job where you’d have to bring everything you could possibly need and spares) – what do you bring? The tried and true, or the new gear you think might work? And more importantly, how does one balance it out against the current draconian carry on limits, and one’s endurance in the field? After all, there’s no point in bringing the best camera only to leave it in the hotel…read on and see how my bag did in Havana. I made a very conscious choice to travel as light as possible and leave behind the tripod; it was a last minute change mainly due to luggage space challenges and a lack of foreseeable night/ long exposure photography.

I erred on the side of caution with my load out. Havana is an expensive and long – 30h journey time on the shorter leg – trip for us from Malaysia; we’ve got to make it count. To top it off, at the time of leaving we had no real idea about safety etc. – leaving gear in a hotel room is generally a bad idea for obvious reasons, though you also don’t want to be a pack mule to your equipment. The reason for not bringing a complete E-M1 set for stills and video (we filmed a couple of episodes for the video workshops too) was because I also have the secondary objective of making Ultraprints out of my work – and 16MP is simply not enough for anything of size; an 8×10″ is about the limit.

I also considered the Hasselblad and digital back, but given we’d be shooting under tropical sun, I’d either have to use NDs all of the time, or stop down heavily to deal with the maximum 1/500s shutter speed on the V’s leaf-shutter equipped lenses. The D4 also briefly came under consideration to give me some additional low light and tracking capabilities, but it didn’t make sense to carry two battery systems or the much, much larger charger. Finally, there was the Leica T prototype that remained in my hands following completion of the review. This had to be eliminated for the same reasons as the E-M1: not enough resolution, in addition to being a prototype: you really don’t want to take chances especially when there’s precisely zero local support for any brand.

In the end, predictable and sensible worked: the kit let me make the images I wanted to make, and didn’t get in the way. And that’s about all we can reasonably ask from a camera, isn’t it? Most of the masterclass participants did the same thing: stick with the tried and tested, so that they might focus on the image making process rather than a camera’s operating idiosyncrasies.

Nikon D800E (x2)
Performed very much as expected, except it seems as though the mirror calibration of the primary body had drifted slightly. An inconvenient (but at least doable) fix with the tools I brought along. More concerning was the occasional long lag and ‘hour glass’ delay visible when awaiting playback or powering up; it seemed to clear with a power or shutter cycle, and failing that, a battery removal. Other than that – nothing but the usual great image quality. The second body was probably overkill and saw no service at all the entire week. Update: Nikon has finally fixed this problem with the latest v1.10 firmware update a couple of days ago.

Nikon AI 45/2.8 P
Didn’t plan to use it – just as a body cap for the spare body, and to have something to shoot with in that range if the Otus packed in (as unlikely as that may seem).

Nikon AFS 70-200/4 VRII N (to be the subject of a future review)
My impression of Havana as a physical location is that it’s either very tight (poorer and historical areas) or very long/ wide (think grand boulevards and avenues) which meant that I’d probably have to bring a telephoto of some sort. The 2/135 APO is an outstanding lens, but quite large/ heavy and not so easy to focus; given that one of my personal objectives was to try my hand at car photography, a manual focus lens was probably not the best choice for the trip. In the end, the 70-200/4 was chosen and purchased over the f2.8 II for size and weight, in addition to a lack of focus breathing and much reduced 1m minimum focusing distance – and it’s stellar optics and rock-steady VR, which must be one of Nikon’s current best features. The lens handled very well – like a slightly long (but not heavy or overbalanced) 24-70. In fact, it lived on the main D800E body most of the time – 70mm isn’t much longer in practice than 55mm. I found it to require some fiddling with AF fine tune to get a setting that would work optimally for both ends of the zoom and at all distances; it appears that there is some field curvature and variation in focal point as you zoom. Nevertheless, one of the few times I’ve bought gear specifically before a trip, and one of the even fewer times I’ve come away very impressed.

Zeiss ZF.2 2/28 Distagon
In short: I didn’t land up using or carrying it because I had the GR with me, and that was just easier to carry, deploy and use off a belt holster than playing musical lenses (especially not in some of the very dusty or sea-sparayed conditions we encountered). I’d leave this behind next time.

Zeiss ZF.2 1.4/55 Otus APO-Distagon
I found the focal length to be somewhat in no-mans’-land for the trip – which is definitely not a mark against the lens, but which certainly reduced its utility. The few times I did carry it, it of course produced the usual stellar images. However, the more I use it, the more the hood annoys me: it’s too easy to ding/ dent the edges, and really needs a rubber bumper on the end.

Harvesting what is probably the world’s most expensive sea salt – I’ll serve it at a photographers’ dinner one day: Cuban, grown on the front element of an Otus. Note: make sure you wet/ dab the front element first to dissolve the crystals before attempting to polish it, or you’re going to scratch it. Badly. The Otus is fine, by the way.

Ricoh GR Digital V
Still just as enamoured of this little powerhouse as I was at the start. Has one of the highest pixel quality levels of any camera, and certainly the highest of all the APS-C cameras – thanks to a combination of its outstanding lens and AA-free sensor. It always goes with me wherever I go, and never disappoints. Despite fairly heavy use – up to 400 images a day – I never ran out of juice. The battery indicator never ran down by a single bar, either…

Olympus OM-D E-M1 (x2)
Though its primary purpose on this trip was video, my partner did use it for some stills; image quality post-EFC firmware update is definitely a notch up on what we had previously. It still remains our choice for handheld video work because if its excellent stabiliser and very low profile.

Olympus ZD 12-40/2.8 PRO
A versatile lens with excellent optics; good for both stills and video (thanks to that manual override clutch with hard stops at either end). Weathered sea-spray pretty well, too.

Olympus ZD 75/1.8
Same comments as for the 12-40: no other contenders for this purpose and field of view.

Billingham 307 and Hadley Small
I love the way the 307 looks, and the fact that it isn’t a Hadley Pro, but it’s quite limited in capacity – between one D800E/Otus, the 70-200, 2/28, laptop, and some spares, cables and ancillaries, the bag was full. I think I need a bigger one next time. The Hadley Small was a good walk around bag when I wanted to carry more than one extra lens; otherwise I just used the Think Tank pouches.

Sandisk Extreme Pro SD cards
My choice unless there’s a Leica or CF slot involved; in which case you need to use something slower to avoid file corruption, or take advantage of the faster bus speeds respectively (Lexar 1066x are a good place to start).

WD My Passport 2TB
I experienced some strange behaviour with this drive – with about 200GB free, it started slowing down dramatically to the point that it was perhaps running only at 20% of normal speed – I’ve usually landed up buying a new drive before hitting this point, so I suppose it’s a capacity thing…

Wacom Intuos small (2013 version)
I honestly can’t tell the difference in feel between the latest Intuos (Bamboo replacement) and the older Intuos3/4 tablets – they’re that good. And lighter, smaller and wireless with touch capability to boot – what’s not to like? Only one problem, and I suspect it was a computer hardware one – at one point after using Air Display to mirror the screen on one of my iPads, the tablet didn’t read at all – it recognised it because the power light was on, and the activity light blinked when the pen touched the surface – but there was no cursor movement. Odd – but thankfully solved by a restart.

Think Tank Skin 50 v2 and App House 8
A couple of pouches to hold a large lens and iPad mini/ voice recorder respectively – no radio mikes this time meant that I was carrying all of the audio gear on my person. And me not wanting to carry a bag – most of you know I much prefer camera in and and a jacket with pockets – meant that I’d have to find a solution for the portions when we were filming. These two pouches worked a treat.

Apple Macbook Air 11″, late 2012
Still a great travel laptop given the size/ power tradeoff, but now starting to show issues because I’m processing D800E files on it on location (I always used to leave those til I returned home to take advantage of the faster computer here); it feels slow, the limited screen gamut is growing more frustrating, and the battery life when using PS is abysmal – something like 70 minutes with brightness on low (impractical for editing) and all wireless connectivity off. I can’t help but find myself considering a 13″ MBP Retina…

Would I change anything? Probably yes, I’d leave behind the extra D800E and 28mm, and add the 21mm wide converter for the GR instead; though having said that, if I go again I’d probably bring the 645Z instead, and put everything inside the larger Billingham 555 instead of having two smaller bags…MT

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H2 2014 workshops now open for booking – Making Outstanding Images San Francisco, Chicago and Venice; Masterclass San Francisco and Venice – click here to book or for more info

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

This will be the first in my new review format for ‘light’ reviews – pieces of equipment that perhaps don’t necessarily need a full blown magnum opus, but benefit from some context in deployment and typical usage. A short piece on the D4 will follow next.

One of the few lenses in the Canon system I’ve long been jealous of is their 70-200/4 IS (in addition to the 17TSE). Until not so long ago, Nikon users have been missing a light/ compact high quality telephoto option. Sure, there’s been the 70-300/4.5-5.6 VR, but that was only a decent performer up to 200mm; anything else was emergency territory. And it simply wasn’t that good on the D800E, nor a pro build. Finally, we have the AF-S 70-200mm f4 G VR ED IF (what a mouthful). I’m going to address two questions in this review: firstly, is it any good, and secondly, f2.8* or f4? I suspect the latter question is going to be of interest to many still sitting on the fence.

*It’s important to note there are two versions of the 70-200/2.8 G VR. I’ll go into the differences in more detail later.

Inversion

I initially purchased this lens just before the Havana Masterclass; judging from the geography of the place, a short tele would be required to achieve the kinds of compositions I wanted. I already have the Voigtlander 90/3.5 APO-Lanthar, and the Zeiss 2/135 APO-Sonnar; however, neither of these would be flexible enough and frankly I prefer not to use manual focus telephotos on moving objects such as cars and people (both of which there’d be plenty of in Havana). There were three possible options: the 70-200/4, at the same price, a second hand older 70-200/2.8 VR, or the newer 70-200/2.8 VR II. Price is seldom a consideration for photographic tools: if it doesn’t do the job, it’s going to frustrate me to the point that I’ll buy the one that does – especially if I know the option exists.

Armada, 2014

Weight, on the other hand, IS a consideration; so is focus breathing and optical quality. On this basis, the older lens was a no-go. The 2.8 II loses on focus breathing and weight, but has great optics. The fact that it progressively shortens to an effective 135mm at the near focus distance of 1.5m and only hits 200mm at infinity is an issue; you don’t get the magnification you expect and this hinders one’s ability to previsualize compositions. I’m fairly sure that would bother me, so that left the f4. Fortunately, the f4 not only matches – and I think slightly exceeds – the optical quality of its f2.8 sibling, but also appears to have slightly more effective VR, and best of all, focuses closer to a minimum of 1m at all focal lengths, and does not exhibit focus breathing: 200mm at 1m is really 200mm. Why this isn’t the case with the more expensive, larger lens is beyond me.

After the rain

Not everything is a bed of roses though: to achieve the significant weight and price difference – 850g vs 1540g and $1000 – the lens is made of plastic (much like the 80-400 AFS) and there’s no tripod collar or hard pouch included. Plastic construction not necessarily a bad thing (though I personally prefer the haptics of metal); the pouch is moot as I never use them, but making you pay an extra $170 for a mediocre tripod collar is criminal. It’s not that the collar flexes – it doesn’t – but the locking mechanism isn’t very secure; it’s too easy to accidentally release the knob and have the camera rotate. Fortunately, you have to very deliberately pull the knob out and unlatch the collar to release it entirely, preventing expensive noises from ensuing.

Lost

Optically, the 70-200/4 is a 20/14 design, as opposed to 21/16 for its larger f2.8 II sibling. It doesn’t extend when focusing or zooming, it’s weather sealed, equipped with a silent wave motor, and the latest generation of Nikon’s vibration reduction system – supposedly good for up to four stops. In practice, it’s not quite that good, but it does make a huge difference when handholding – especially at the 200mm end, on a D800E. Critically sharp images at the pixel level at 1/125s are consistently possible, as opposed to 1/500+ without. I certainly wouldn’t be without it, and subjectively, it’s probably the most effective of all the VR lenses I’ve used so far. The motor feels like the faster type used in the constant aperture pro zooms rather than the consumer ones;
it feels no slower to focus than the f2.8 II, which is a boon for tracking moving objects. In any case, you should be using this lens in AF-C mode most of the time since small changes in subject or camera distance – especially at the 200mm end – can result in noticeable shifts in the critical focus plane.

A Cuban stereotype

The only thing I have to complain about optically is some fairly pronounced field curvature – the focal plane is simply not flat. It’s not a big deal if you use the nearest focus point, but if you’re focusing and recomposing, you may see some softness and wonder why since most telephotos generally don’t suffer from this. Everything else is good, though: resolving power is excellent even wide open; I’d say every aperture is usable everywhere in the frame, even on the D800E. I think peak is at f5.6-8, but it’s hard to tell as diffraction starts to become visible beyond that. I couldn’t find any signs of chromatic aberration, lateral or longitudinal, which is impressive considering the number of chrome car parts in the sun I shot whilst in Havana. Microcontrast is excellent by Nikon standards – right up there with the best of them – but still falls slightly short of the mighty Zeiss Otus**. Bokeh is always subjective, but in this case, not at all objectionable or busy. There’s a tiny hint of spherochromatism, but it’s not easy to spot most of the time. All in all, the f4 is a lens that splits things up nicely into planes – it has that transparency and separation I look for in my lenses; more importantly, it doesn’t really impose any character of its own onto the scene.

**Is there some bias here? Probably.

Arches off limits

I think we can safely say it’s a good lens; it would appear however that the loss of one group and two elements has done nothing to hurt the optical performance of the 70-200/4 vis-a-vis its larger sibling; if anything, I prefer this optical design for its lack of focus breathing. Close up performance is weaker than distance, especially so at 200mm and f4, but it’s forgivable since it isn’t a macro lens. Most of the time you’ll use it further away anyway, so just set the 3m near limiter and enjoy much faster focus acquisition.

Personally, I’m honestly not sure that the extra stop from the f2.8 II would justify the weight and price difference; I very rarely shoot wide open anyway, and with a lens that long, I’d rather stop down a bit to retain some context; even at f5.6 not everything is in focus most of the time. This is even more apparent with the D800E and an Ultraprint – both are capable of very accurately resolving and reproducing the fine transition between in and out of focus areas, and this should be something that’s used rather than smoothed over with stopping down and aggressive sharpening. Furthermore, I cannot tell the difference optically between the two. The only situation in which I’d recommend the f2.8 is if you are shooting in low available light and/or really need that extra stop.

Untitled

One thing I wouldn’t do again is buy the tripod collar, however. This lens is really meant to be used handheld; it’s light enough and balances very well on the larger bodies – D800E with grip or D4, with most of the weight in the camera – that the tripod collar just gets in the way when you shift your grip. I landed up taking it off. It is a lens which you feel is attached to the camera, not the other way around – I’d be fine with using the camera’s tripod mount if need arose – just remember to turn VR off.

Overall, I’d give this one a solid recommendation for any Nikon users looking for a high quality short telephoto; it’s optically excellent, handles well, focuses quickly, and has very effective stabilisation. Most of the time, I paired it with the Ricoh GR on the wide end and felt that I was missing nothing – in tighter situations, I’d swap it out for the Otus. Or sometimes I’d carry both, with the spare lens on a belt pouch. It proved to be very flexible; it just left me wishing there was a GR with the D800E’s sensor for Ultraprinting…

Neighborhood friends

About the photoessay: This is the first in a series of photoessays from my work shot during the Havana Masterclass in April. I shot a lot of cars, some human context – abstraction of man again – and a bit of cityscape in Havana. Not much of my usual architectural abstraction, simply because the decayed grandeur of the city simply didn’t suit that style. I’m also not much of a telephoto shooter usually; I’d rather keep the context and isolate by composition, or opening up the lens a bit. The geography of the city – long, wide avenues and grid streets – didn’t really suit that way of working because it was too open; you’d either have to get very close to your foreground and use the wide, or compress and layer.

I found myself enjoying the compression/ layering and consciously looking for it; distilling critical elements of the city (cars, people, decaying buildings, arms on windows, Soviet architecture, statues, flags) and attempting to overlay them. Surprisingly, I didn’t do that much cinematic work; I suspect it’s because I’m personally evolving away from that to some extent and moving more towards painterly compositions – and because the dominant colours were so punchy that the impact of my usual tonal shifts would be lost. What you see in light quality and color is pretty close to reality: the latitude, relative lack of pollution and angle of the sun meant that we got the intense color of the tropics, but with the directionality of a higher latitude and strong color shifts between dawn and dusk. Needless to say, all of the images in this review/ photoessay were shot with the 70-200/4 VR on a D800E. Enjoy! MT

The Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f4 VR is available for ~$1,400 here from B&H and Amazon.

__________________

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The Nikon D4 might be old news now that the D4s has been around for a couple of months, but given the diminishingly incremental improvements between each cycle, there’s less of a penalty for opting for an older camera than you might think. And even less again once we consider that for most applications, the point of sufficiency was passed a long time ago. A nearly-new D4 made its way into my hands a couple of months ago during the Melbourne workshop. At a shade over US$3,800, it was just too good a deal to pass up. Read on for my summarised thoughts after spending a couple of months taming the beast.

I said in part two of my Olympus E-M1 review that the camera really competed with the 1DX and D4 class of cameras – I think that’s still mostly true. At base ISOs, image quality between the three is nearly indistinguishable. Frame rates are pretty much the same, for all intents and purposes. The DSLRs win out on AF tracking – and I seem to have lucked out with one appears to have perfectly calibrated AF, because it lacks the left-focus problem, required almost no micro adjustment for most of my lenses, and can track moving objects just fine at 10fps. Having spent a solid year and a half with a D3 as my primary (and at that time, only) camera, the D4 seems to respond just that little bit sharper than the D3 ever did.

Ergonomically, the D4 is a brick. It’s lighter than it looks, but that isn’t light at all. The tradeoff is that I think it probably has the best grip shape and button configuration (and configurability) out of all of the current Nikons. Why they have not yet put the D800E’s sensor inside one of these bodies boggles the mind; I’d buy one in a heartbeat. (When you spend that much time with something in your hands, it’d better feel perfect.) There are a few gotchas, though: firstly, the vertical set of controls can’t be made to exactly duplicate the horizontal set (namely around the sub-joystick and the AF-ON button behaviour) and it appears that one of the consequences of nice sticky/ grippy sculpted rubber is that it appears to be impossible to make it stay on; every single Nikon pro camera I’ve had has had its grips replaced after two years or so. The D4 is no different: I replaced them after I got the camera because the CF door and front main grip were already peeling, to the tune of ~$130. Surely making an adequate adhesive cannot be rocket science.

Those backlit buttons are very cool in a geeky sort of way, but admittedly less useful than you’d think in the real world – there simply aren’t that many situations in which it’s so dark that you can’t even make out a glimmer of the white-on-matte-black text. Vertical grip ergonomics still don’t match the main grip, however, and there are some things you still can’t do in vertical mode – like change exposure mode. From a pure ergonomic standpoint, the add-on grips are better – but the extra layers of metal make say a D800E+grip body heavier than a D4. All that said, I still think a bit of mass is required to damp shutter vibration and keep things stable, especially when you’re blazing away at 10/11fps.

Everything about this camera is fast: AF, menu navigation, startup, shooting, and of course frame rate – 10fps with AF/AE, 11fps with AF/AE locked on the first frame (the D4s will AF/AE at 11fps too, thanks to a new mirror system). With a fast CF card (Lexar 1066x) – I couldn’t bring myself to invest into XQD – you get ~70-80 raw files in a burst, which is more than enough for any practical purposes I can think of. That’s significantly more than my D3 had, or the D800E, or even the D3s. The D4s is supposed to be even larger, but if you have to shoot that much…I’m questioning your technique more than anything. There are cameras that appear to have higher throughput rates – oddly, a lot of these are compacts (RX100II: 200MP/s, 14bit; Nikon’s own 1 V3, 360MP/s, unknown bits) – but I doubt any of them can write as fast, or do as many things simultaneously, which still makes the D4 feel faster in practice.

Hindsight has proven that the XQD/CF decision was a stupid one – the cards are still hideously expensive, readers nearly impossible to find, and thus the second slot is rendered effectively useless. I’d still rather have dual CF or CF/SD to match the other cameras in the lineup. (Dual SD would be pointless unless they were the new, faster, SDXC type.) I suppose power management falls into this category too: 2000+ shots per charge on an EN-EL18 is routine; 3000 is doable, and perhaps even more than that if you’re shooting bursts and not chimping much. The charger packs larger than a D800E body, but will charge two batteries simultaneously and quickly.

The D4′s sensor is now going on two years old; it’s been superseded for low light by the one in the Df, and more recently by the D4s. Though the DXO numbers might be higher, there isn’t a lot of difference in practice – at least not that I could see. I wouldn’t hesitate to use any of these cameras up to ISO 12800; beyond that, it gets a bit ropey. For practical intents and purposes, we’ve gained a stop to a stop and a half on the D3/D700 generation, and a bit less on the D3s – all whilst upping the pixel count slightly. I still remember not that long ago – at least in the D200 era or thereabouts – 1600 was about the limit. The best part of all of this is that color fidelity and dynamic range stay reasonably intact even at the higher sensitivities. Overall dynamic range isn’t as high as the D800E at low ISOs, however, and it seems to lack that camera’s ability to make extremely fine tonal gradations. Interestingly, I feel the native response of the sensor is closer to the CCDs of old than the newer CMOSes though.

One decision I do find somewhat odd is retention of the AA filter in the D4s; Nikon was in transition at the time of the D4 (and D800/E) release over whether to remove AA filters or not; it’s pretty clear since then which decision was taken. The D4 predates that, but everything that came since – the D800E, the Coolpix A, even the D7100 – have gone without, with a noticeable acuity bump. That said, the D4 seems to have very high pixel acuity; probably about the best I’ve seen for any camera with an AA filter.

Initially, I considered buying a D4s; it would serve as my reportage and teaching camera, and for general applications where AF would be preferable and larger file sizes were not needed by my clients. The price, however, was a little difficult to swallow for a body that would not be primary by any stretch – and enough to buy two more D800Es. I honestly could not find a commercial justification for it, but the want factor was high; I ultimately let it pass. Serendipity sent a low mileage used D4 my way a bit over half the price of a new D4s; that was a no brainer. Ultimately, I find it a frustrating camera to use. Not because of any fault of the camera or files – it’s frustrating because I wish my primary D800Es had ergonomics this good; the files are excellent for their pixel count, but aren’t quite large enough to Ultraprint with, and basically: I want to use it more than I have the ability to. I suppose that’s a good kind of frustration, if there’s such a thing.

There is one important caveat in the whole thing: buying a D4 for high ISO use if you already have a D800E is pointless: you can shoot at the same ISOs with the D800E, downsize to D4 native output size, and get very comparable results noise-wise, and with slightly better acuity (especially since you’re downsizing 36MP non-AA to compare against 16MP with AA). There is, however, a noticeable difference in AF tracking ability even in good light; file handling is a lot easier, the buffer is many times larger, and the ergonomics are better. Plus I feel the camera is overall slightly better built – and presumably better sealed, too. Like I said: it’s frustrating, because you want one – I think few people really need one. But that’s not what photography is about for most people, I think; and given the D4s has pushed prices of both new and used cameras significantly downwards, it actually makes a used D4 a very good buy indeed. MT

Update: mine didn’t stick in the wake of the 645Z…I just couldn’t justify keeping it knowing that I wouldn’t use it that much because of the print limitations, and me not taking many of those reportage jobs in the future.

__________________

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Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

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Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

In full Transformer mode

Two of the most interesting cameras in recent memory – the 645Z and RX100III, at completely opposite ends of the imaging spectrum but both pushing image quality – are arriving this week and I have a fundamental problem: a lack of light. Kuala Lumpur is blanketed in a horrible 100+API haze again that’s eating light and turning the sky into a giant drybox; right after two weeks of fantastic crystal-clear weather during which we had stars every night. I’ve made the most of the windows of opportunity, but in an ideal world I’d have liked to push the dynamic range of the thing a bit more.

Rear LCD can be made to show shooting info for use with the EVF. Now if only it also had a touch screen to make changes really fast…

First, some background. Those of you who followed this site in the early days will remember I was a big fan of the original RX100 for it’s flexibility and image quality. You’ll also know that I simply don’t have the time these days to review something that isn’t interesting; if the RX100 series isn’t sufficiency with a capital S in something barely larger than a couple of packs of playing cards, I’m not sure what is. I was constantly thinking it’s files were from a sensor one size larger. Combine that with very high responsiveness, good color and dynamic range, and you’ve got a spectacular pocket instrument. You’ll probably also recall I thought the IS was rather anemic and the wide end of the lens left a lot to be desired – f1.8 it might have been, but not very useful til f4 or thereabouts. The upshot of all of this is it was primarily deployed as a good light camera – you had to hit ISO3200 pretty quickly, which makes it a good thing that sensitivity was just about usable with some work. And ergonomically, those with smaller hands were left challenged by the tint controls. An accessory grip was almost a must if you didn’t want an expensive accident – the beautiful aluminium ones made by Richard Franiec are solid and ergonomically superb – much nicer than the rubbery stick on piece that Sony tries to sell but should have really been built into the camera.

We gained several things with the Mark II version: a flipping screen, hotshoe with accessory port compatible with EVF and a revised sensor and a few other features. I skipped it and in fact sold my original RX100 after the Ricoh GR release. Not enough difference for most people to upgrade, but still a solid camera in its own right. Interestingly, in this part of the world at least – all three versions remain on sale, but at vastly different price points. The Mark III is 50% more expensive than the Mark I.

The Mark III loses the hotshoe, but adds a pop-up 1.3m dot EVF and a much faster 24-70/1.8-2.8 equivalent lens, a bit wider and faster than the 28-100/1.8-4.9 from the previous camera. It’s also a little thicker and heavier. The flip screen now rotates through 180° for the selfie crowd. It retains the slightly upgraded sensor (still 20.1MP) from the update in the previous RX100II. The fundamental form factor of the camera remains the same – few and very small external controls, mostly programmable, stepless lens ring, a slippery candybar shape and a bit more thickness than can be reasonably pocketed. This means you still really need an add-on grip for the front of the camera for optimum handling; at very least, use the wrist lanyard. Build quality remains excellent, and the moving parts feel solid though the screen could use a bit more resistance or a detent to keep it in the shut/ locked position. The lens barrel is substantial in both size and mass, and has almost no play even when fully extended.

Whilst I was impressed by the build quality and configurability of the menus and controls with the first version, I wasn’t so impressed with the menu system itself: it’s a bit of a mess. The tabs scroll horizontally so you’re never quite sure when a right press is going to give you the next tab, an enter is going to take you back to the shooting screen, or back to the menu. Fortunately once the camera is set up to your liking – in my case RAW, program mode and spot metering with exposure zebras** – you can pretty much leave it and not have to enter it again. And I really wish they’d add detents to the lens ring to make it easier to set things that have discreet values, like aperture or exposure compensation. I can appreciate that the smooth ring is there for manual focus and the video crowd, but this really isn’t the camera for it – firstly, you have very little to no depth of field control in the real world despite the largeish sensor*, and manual focus is pointless when the AF is so good.

*The longest real focal length is 25.7mm at f2.8 with a 2.7x crop factor to full frame – which means in reality you’re really looking at something closer to f6.7-f8 depth of field. At anything other than the closest subject distances, that’s effectively hyperfocal anyway. This is not necessarily a bad thing: there are a lot of situations in which I want more depth of field than I can have without perspective control lenses.
**Flashing/ scrolling diagonal overexposure warning. Though the clipping level is customizable in the menus, it seems that even with the level set to the maximum of 100+ the raw files come out somewhat underexposed. This tells me three things: a low contrast JPEG really isn’t that low contrast, and the sensor has a decent amount of highlight recovery. Finally, the histogram is still necessary, it seems.

As for the EVF: I admit to having very mixed feelings here. Initially, I thought it would be a very useful addition that I’d use all the time; most of you will know I’m a fan of eye level finders for both stability (one additional contact point to brace yourself against) and for how they force you to focus on what’s in the finder – i.e. the subject – and ignore what’s going on outside. I’ll always use the EVF or OVF if possible. However, the finder has two problems: the biggest one is that it simply isn’t bright enough to use outdoors in the tropics, even with brightness set to maximum. Combined with the fact that it’s fairly low in magnification (yes, I know, we forgive it some things because it’s physically small) actually makes it difficult to see. It doesn’t look small or grainy though; the pixel mask is clearly very fine and the high density of the dots means that the image remains crisp. I found myself reverting to using the LCD a lot of the time, partially out of habit, partially because I just couldn’t adequately see the EVF to compose to my satisfaction. Note that the refresh rate of both remains high and fluid even as the light falls. It also acts as a secondary power switch and both powers on the camera when deployed, and powers it off when retracted – this is a clever bit of thinking as it saves you one additional step to getting the camera ready to shoot (but also adds one since you have to pull out the eyepiece).

However, I’d definitely rather have it than not have it: the EVF comes into its own at night, where it’s much stealthier than using the LCD, it definitely aids stability, and it’s plenty visible. You can even turn off the back LCD completely, or have it set to display shooting info. I suspect the former setting – coupled with the eye sensor (no idea where they hid that) that switches the EVF on and off – will be both a fast and power-saving way to photograph. Leave the camera on and set that way to be always ready. The camera also powers on automatically when the EVF is popped up, but note that you’ll have to pull it away from the front of the camera to get the optics in the right position otherwise the image will be blurry. The mechanism itself is quite impressive – it’s pretty solid and has very little play; I wouldn’t be at all worried about damaging it. And they even crammed in a tiny diopter adjustment lever in there.

Overall usability remains good in general, and excellent for a compact – though I’d still consider the Ricoh GR’s UI, physical controls and ergonomics to be the class leader. It’s fast, but not as fast as the GR in deployment, either; the lens is faster to extend than previous versions, but the zoom moves slowly and surprisingly, the screen (or EVF) takes a surprising amount of time to register exposure changes; almost as though the diaphragm is physically slow-moving. Focusing is fast enough that you don’t really notice it. It just does, and does accurately. It slows down a little in low light, but it never really hunted and is much faster than the GR – even after its last firmware update. I suppose it’s because the lens doesn’t need as much helicoid since the real focal length is shorter most of the time. As with all CDAF cameras, you’re not going to be tracking moving objects with it.

Bottom line, if you liked the earlier iterations, you’re going to get on just fine with the RX100III. Not having shot with the Mark II, I found the tilting screen very useful; you can shoot it very stealthily indeed, almost like a tiny Hasselblad (if you set it to square). The folding mechanism could be a bit tighter, though – it’s very easy to accidentally pull away from the back of the camera.

The new lens is a significant improvement on the previous one at the wide end. Even though it goes 4mm wider, resolving power at f1.8 is really quite good, almost out to the corners. The old lens required f4 to match it. Things aren’t quite as good at the tele end, however: despite f2.8 being pretty decent in the centre, microcontrast and ‘bite’ is lacking. The corners aren’t as good, however some of that may be due to sample variation as I’m seeing some obvious decentering or astigmatism – the top left corner is softer than the others. Though resolving power improves through f5.6, anything smaller sees diffraction start to kick in: the pixels on this sensor are really very very small. Curiously though, stopping down to f5.6 doesn’t seem to improve the corners at the wide end of the zoom; they always still stay just a little bit short of crisp. Perhaps there’s some extreme field curvature going on. Close up performance is also greatly improved: whilst the old lens showed its weakness here with extremely hazy, soft images until you backed off to about 30cm or so and stopped down a little, the new lens is plenty sharp at the focal point and has decent contrast, too. There’s some chromatic aberration on highlight edges, but nothing that isn’t fixable in ACR; the lens is also remarkably flare-resistant – as expected for something bearing the T* coating label. All in all, this lens is a far more worthy bearer of the Zeiss badge than the previous version, which had a great long end but was frankly always somewhat disappointing below about 40mm equivalent.

I don’t know if the camera uses the same stabilizer mechanism as the previous version, but I’d presume not since the lens design is different – and likely necessitates some different hardware. The problem with assessing any sort of stabilization system is that it’s largely subjective; I found this one to be noticeably more effective than the Mark I’s stabilizer, but nowhere near as good as Nikon’s VRII or Olympus’ 5-axis IBIS. This is a good thing, because the lower shutter speed threshold for AUTO ISO cannot be set. Fortunately, Sony have made sensible minimum speed choices; it appears to be around 1/1.5x the focal length. I think this is a good tradeoff between the effectiveness of the IS system, the pixel density of the sensor, the effort required to release the (almost silent and zero-vibration) leaf shutter, and the size/ mass of the camera.

Given the physical size of the pixels involved, I was most impressed with the performance of the original RX100; constantly running through the back of my head were expectations of a sensor a size larger – more like M4/3 than 1″. Whilst most of the time those expectations were met, the sensor started showing its size when it came to situations where dynamic range became challenging; highlight recoverability especially tailed off significantly compared to larger pixels. I’m finding the RX100III’s sensor (and by extension, presumably the II also) to be slightly better there – perhaps half a stop – but no less noisy than the original; all of those boost settings might as well be academic. 1600 is the practical limit for decent quality, 3200 is usable in a pinch and requires some post processing NR. There are unquestionably noticeable dynamic range compromises at higher ISOs. Color rendition is not bad with the default (beta) ACR profile, but will require custom profiling to fix some of odd hue shifts in the blues, which tend to cyan especially in skies.

I suspect Sony is also applying some pre-correction to the raw files for CA and distortion, especially with a lens of this size and specification. I didn’t see any of either despite ACR not having profiles for the RX100III yet.  I’m also seeing some NR smearing artefacts – especially at high contrast edges – which never seem to go away regardless of the NR setting. Sony should probably have removed the AA filter to compensate for this. Still, it remains an impressive sensor given the size of the camera; combined with the much faster lens, face-braceable EVF and improved IS system, the reality is that the camera’s shooting envelope is much larger than its predecessors even though there have been no sensor improvements. And I’m fairly sure it’s going to be large enough for almost all of the target audience; I seldom found myself in situations wanting more. The sensor appears to have decent monochrome conversion potential, but it isn’t anywhere near as good as the GR. You’ll still need to be prepared do a lot of dodging and burning to get outstanding results.

Battery life is surprisingly good considering the tiny size of the cell; Sony quotes the EVF as being more power hungry than the main LCD, which is surprising and the opposite of my experience with every other camera. With minimal chimping and roughly 50-50 EVF and LCD use, I’ve been averaging around 300 images per charge. There’s probably a bit more in there, but I’ll put it on the charger once I reach the last segment since I’ve only got one battery, and it takes a long, long time to charge. Like the previous versions, an external battery charger is an optional extra; the battery charges over USB in-camera. This is a little surprising given the relative cost of camera and charger and the target audience: without the external charger, there’s no way to continue shooting and charge a battery even if you have a spare. Perhaps somebody should make a USB cable with some terminal ends that clips over a battery – it would be the best of both worlds for size and convenience.

Every photographer needs a compact. The question is, which one: do you prefer to have a scalpel or a Swiss Army Knife? I’d put the fixed-focal, large-sensor compacts like the GR, Coolpix A and to some extent the X100s and X2 in the former category; the RX100 series sits squarely in the latter. You’re only ever going to carry one at a time. Having carried both types as backup pieces in the past, I find they tend to encourage very different kinds of photography; the RX100III isn’t as fast to respond as the GR, which means you plan your shots more and I personally at least tend to gravitate to static subjects – not because of focus speed or shutter lag, but because I can never seem to get the lens into position in time. That said, I’ve produced a lot of images with the original Mark I that I was very, very happy with. And its shooting envelope is somewhat larger than the GR in terms of versatility. Though you give up 1-1.5 stops of high ISO usability on the GR, you gain that back from the lens, EVF and IS system and the faster long end of the zoom definitely opens up new possibilities under darker conditions. And we haven’t even talked about the versatility of the tilting screen yet.

Like all compacts, there are compromises. If you own the first generation RX100, I’d say this makes a very compelling upgrade; it’s a bit tougher from the second generation, and not even worth considering if you actually use the hotshoe. Personally, I think this and the Ricoh GR are at the top of the compact camera tree at the moment – if you own neither, it’s got to be one or the other. At $798 for the Sony, both may be a bit too much: that’s enough to get you an entry-level DSLR and two lenses, though not of the same quality as that in the RX100III. I think your decision should boil down to this: is your current pocket-carry lacking in some area? Does the RX100III outperform it in that area, without giving up anything else you might find important? Do you shoot predominantly wide or long? Granted, 70mm isn’t long long, but it’s a lot longer than 28mm. Finally, does it fit in your pocket? The camera is thicker than you might expect, and the lens’ ring can snag easily. (Sony really needs to produce a slimline belt holster like the GC-6 for the GR, not that fiddly snap on leather jacket thing.)

The thing is, I own a GR already, and these cameras aren’t something I use for paying client work; they’re really what I consider to be ‘off duty’ entertainment devices. If I didn’t, I’d probably buy the Mark III straight away; however, for the way I shoot and the way I use the GR, the tradeoffs the RX100III requires are a toss up against the things I gain. I’m going to have to use it a bit more before deciding if I’ll buy one or not; good thing I’ve got a couple more weeks with the loaner. I’d like to finish with one thought: throughout the time I’ve used the camera, I’ve been subconsciously assessing it for what it’s lacking or where it falls short against much larger and more fully featured cameras. This is an important point to note: it is a compact that really plays in a class above, and puts things into perspective, don’t you think? MT

Additional images from the camera will be uploaded to this flickr set on a continuing basis. Images were shot raw and put through my usual workflow via ACR.

The Sony RX100 III is available to buy here from B&H.

__________________

H2 2014 workshops now open for booking – Making Outstanding Images San Francisco, Chicago and Venice; Masterclass San Francisco and Venice – click here to book or for more info

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

After a bit of – drought, it’s review bonanza week: at the opposite ends of the spectrum. First we had the Sony RX100 Mark III, and today will be the first part of the Pentax 645Z review; to be split into an assessment of the camera itself and a relative comparison to its predecessor, a previous generation CCD-equipped Hasselblad CFV-39 digital back, and the Nikon D800E. As far as I can tell, this is the first review of a production 645Z, anywhere. This part alone is going to be a 4500+ word monster, so grab a large coffee and settle in for a bit. Unfortunately the weather at the moment in Kuala Lumpur is extremely hazy – 120+ APIs thanks to various burning vegetation – which is not ideal for camera reviewing. However, as the 645Z is part of my personal equipment, bought at retail from Malaysia, it will be with me for some time and be subject to mid and long term updates – much like the Nikon D800E.

Let us begin. I know my reviews are already long; this is likely to be longer still because there’s a lot to cover. As a starter, you may want to read my early thoughts on the 645Z immediately following it’s announcement. Though the Z’s body design is not new – it shares most of the external and internal layout with the 2010 645D – it is somewhat unusual for modern medium format digital in that the design is completely integrated and the sensor/ processor portion is not removable or replaceable. This also means the body can be weather sealed to the same extent as the best conventional DSLRs, and in fact, the Z handles very much like one of those – albeit a very, very large one. Not all of Pentax’s lenses are weather sealed, however – only the 25, 55 and 90mm lenses enjoy the same level of environmental protection. The seals appear to be fairly robust and I’d be confident of using it in inclement weather.

The reformed tree – available to buy as a 12×15″ Ultraprint in a limited series of 20, here. Please remember to include your phone number in the comment box for the shipper – thanks!

The 645Z shares a 51MP, anti-alias-free 33x44mm Sony CMOS sensor with the Hasselblad H5D-50C and Phase One IQ250; both of which are significantly more expensive cameras. This trip represent the first time CMOS has made an appearance in ‘medium format’* digital – cameras larger than 35mm, at any rate. There have been a lot of concerns over the tonal rendition of CMOS compared to CCD; having a bit of experience with both, I’m inclined to prefer the native tonal look and color of CCD, but the lower noise, latitude and linearity of CMOS. Unfortunately, you cannot have it both ways. My solution thus far has been to shoot the CCD digital back when I know I’m unlikely to require heavy tonal edits and use output that’s fairly close to out of camera, and develop a workflow for the CMOS cameras – the D800E, basically – for everything else, including custom color profiles. I understand from several in the industry that the underlying photosite technology in this trio of cameras is an evolution of that which debuted in the D800 two years ago. This means we can expect live view, video recording, huge dynamic range, a very low noise floor, surprising high ISO capability, and excellent acuity. Color accuracy should be very good but still not quite up to the medium format CCD backs. I’ll return to whether this really is the case or not later on. In short: medium format’s shooting envelope has just greatly expanded.

*I use quotation marks because 33×44 is to 645 much like APS-C is to full frame, and nowhere near the much larger 6×6, 6×7 and 6×9 formats also common in the film world.

Face, I

The 645Z is a really solid lump of metal; a more awkward shape than most DSLRs owing to the longer flange back distance inherited from the film 645 system. It’s ergonomically well-thought out with most major controls falling under the fingers of your right hand or thumb of your left (if you cradle the lens with your left). There have been some minor button moves and reassignments from the 645D to accommodate the tilting screen; I personally think these are an improvement, and I definitely want the waist level finder option in case I miss my Hasselblad. The viewfinder is larger than the 35mm full frame cameras, but not that large; smaller than my Hasselblad and HC-4 prism, for instance. It’s enough to gauge focus accuracy for most lenses, but you’d better use live view for critical applications and wider lenses whose depth of field transition profile is too shallow. No point in throwing away all of that extra resolution; it came at a premium.

Face, II

Camera design is now mature enough that there really shouldn’t be any handling issues on equipment of this price or level; and there aren’t. The button assignment, menus and mode dial memory positions are hugely customizable and flexible. I spent a month with the previous 645Z to familiarize myself with the handling and operation, as well as to test the lenses I’d acquired in advance. Even if I hadn’t, the controls are plenty logical and wouldn’t have required much familiarization time coming from my usual Nikons. If anything, there’s almost too much information presented to you – though the back screen is useful, all of the critical things you need to know are easily gleaned by looking at the position of the knobs or the top panel LCD; the back LCD duplicates much information, is very bright/ conspicuous and I suspect also power hungry. Fortunately, it can easily be turned off, and the camera will remember this setting (or you can append it to one of the custom U1-3 modes on the dial, though I wish there was a way to save and export these settings to a card – both U1-3 and the custom functions). The only thing I don’t like about handling is that it’s too easy to press the buttons on the camera’s left shoulder unintentionally when shooting in portrait orientation. That said, there is a customizable lock button to disable these buttons (and others, if you wish) and provision of two tripod mounts is a very useful touch. It means that a standard 90° L bracket off eBay will do a great job without having to pay even more for a custom unit.

Now is probably also a good time to mention remote control options; like every other manufacturer out there (but few medium format ones) the camera can be operated wirelessly over wifi plus a smartphone/ tablet app – but only with the optional proprietary Pentax FluCard wireless SD. I haven’t had a chance to test this yet, but I could see it coming in useful for longer exposures, light painting, etc. – most of which I do very little (or none) of, but would like to try at some point. Most medium format shooters are used to operating tethered – partially because the monitors on all but a few of the latest generation digital backs are utterly abysmal (really only useful for confirming the camera took a picture, checking the histogram, and perhaps changing a setting or two) and partially because focus confirmation becomes more critical**. The 645Z will operate tethered over USB3 – not Firewire – but I think the larger screen combined with wireless review of JPEGs (forget trying to send the enormous raw files over wifi in a hurry) will prove to be more than sufficient here.

**And there are also clients who simply like to watch.

Magritte attacks

The 645Z inherits the K-3′s 27-point AF system, 25 of which are cross-type. This is useful for off-center subjects and the greater precision required for focusing medium format due to shallower depth of field for a given aperture and angle of view. The only downside is that all of the points are clustered near the center of the frame, as the system was originally designed for APS-C. Still, it’s the only medium format camera to have more than one AF point at all. It will track moving subjects, but not that well – I have a feeling this also has a lot to do with the some of the older lenses’ drive systems having some backlash in the gearing (they’re driven by a motor in the camera body). For static subjects however, it’s accurate and snappy – more so with SDM lenses – and if it isn’t accurate enough, it can be fine tuned easily. This was the first order of business with my camera to obtain optimal performance. Subjectively, I find it feels faster than the Hasselblad H5, a little behind the D800E but light years ahead of its predecessor. Metering also deserves a notable mention here, because matrix just seems to always get the exposure right – you have the option to bias exposure towards the area underneath the AF point or not (partial spot, I suppose) – which is something the new Nikons sorely need but lack. It feels like the Nikon matrix meter in the ‘good old D3 days’ – when it was less likely to surprise you. I do wish we had the option to set lowest shutter speed thresholds with auto ISO though; the ‘slow-medium-fast’ program with respect to lens focal length doesn’t go fast enough to really be assured of sufficient shutter speed to avoid hand shake. That said, there IS the TAV mode which will set ISO based on your aperture/ shutter requirements, but it isn’t quite the same as it doesn’t allow an unbounded upper shutter speed. Useful at night, though.

The Pentax 645 system has quite a number of lenses available – either new or used off the usual second hand sources. However, not all of these lenses are equal performers, and for the most part, only the newer lenses – with built in motors and weather sealing – perform adequately wide open for digital, especially the 645Z. There are also a host of manual focus options which will also work, but you really need the impossible to find and out of production split prism screens to make the most of them – though if you work mainly off a tripod, live view is an option. However, what I do find glaringly missing is a decent normal zoom and tilt shifts. There’s also an enormous difference in price (but not quality) between buying the older screwdriver focus lenses new vs used; no idea why. As with all other new medium format lenses, the newer sealed SDM versions will empty your bank account very quickly. It’s also worth noting that manual focus lenses (or AF lenses in manual focus mode) will beep once the camera thinks the lens is in focus – a very useful touch. I believe the trigger point for this is also affected by the AF fine tune setting, but further testing is needed to confirm this.

Prior to even seriously considering the camera, I spent a significant amount of time determining which lenses were adequate, which were good, and which would serve my purposes – I landed up purchasing the D-FA 25/4 SDM, D-FA 55/2.8 SDM, FA 75/2.8, D-FA 90/2.8 SR Macro SDM and FA 200/4. The 55 and 90 SR lenses are excellent; the 25 needs to be stopped down a bit to reach excellence, and the 200 is not bad if you can nail focus precisely. The 75 is so-so wide open, better stopped down, but has focusing issues – it’s just outside AF microadjustment range. The older screwdriver AF lenses don’t seem to focus very precisely; both of them consistently back focus on both my 645Z and the loan 645D. I suspect there are some differences in the tolerances involved for film vs digital capture. By comparison, the SDM lenses required very little to no adjustment.

The camouflaged predator

With cameras of this resolution come serious considerations of shot discipline, shutter and mirror design: if there’s too much recoil, vibration or it’s difficult to hold the camera steady, then you’re going to find all of that extra resolution you’ve paid for disappearing very quickly indeed. A lot of us – myself included – learned this the hard way with the D800E; not only did 1/focal length become insufficient, 1/2x was marginal under ideal conditions. And nailing focus becomes really very critical indeed. There are of course other factors beyond resolution which dictate the minimum shutter speed one can ‘get away with’ – your threshold of acceptability for acuity, for instance. I personally junk anything that isn’t perfect at 100%; with this as a benchmark, I find that 1/2x is sufficient for a D800E, and was expecting to need 1/3x or higher with the 645Z – however, it seems that the shutter and mirror mechanism combined with the mass of the camera is sufficiently well-damped that 1/2x stands, or 1/1x or slightly lower for the SR-enabled 90 macro (which also happens to be the only medium format lens of any kind with an optical stabiliser).

A false autumn in the tropics

The mirror/ shutter mechanism might be loud, but it’s well-damped. It’s also different from the unit in the 645D, which has different acoustics and a lower 50,000 shot life (the 645Z is 100,000 – and I’ve burned about 1% of that already in the testing/ reviewing process). And mirror lockup is just the twist of a dedicated knob away. Better yet, if you use the self-timer, the mirror locks up by itself when the timer starts. Remarkably, for a sensor of this size, there’s even an ultrasonic sensor shaker built in to remove dust. There is one catch, though: maximum shutter speed is 1/4000s, which is very high for MF, but sync speed is just 1/125s. With a shutter opening roughly twice the size of the D800E’s, it’s not surprising, but it does severely limit your ability to balance flash and ambient.

Momentary indecision

There are also effectively no leaf shutter lenses. I don’t consider this to be a major issue as I don’t plan to use this camera outdoors with speedlights anyway (in fact, I almost never use speedlights outdoors) nor do I do the kind of jumping/ moving/ motion-freezing stuff; but others who do will probably want to think again. In any case, I still have my Hasselblad V lenses which all have their own PC-sync ports; it should be a relatively simple matter to use the 645Z body in bulb mode and sync/trigger the actual exposure to the 1/500s leaf shutter in the V body. Hopefully at some point Pentax will release some leaf shutter lenses – 1/1600s Phase One sync, anybody? It’s worth noting that leaf shutter lenses top out at 1/1600 for the most part, or less (1/500s on my Hasselblad V, which is terrible for tropical light – it means constantly switching NDs or not having much DOF control); they’re also limited in maximum aperture to f2.8 for the ‘normal’ 80mm, but mostly f4 (and more DOF control limitations). Bottom line: if you plan to use your camera mostly in the studio, then the leaf shutter rules; but if you plan to use it for available light work, then the 645Z is probably the better choice. Note: The Phase One bodies will also go to 1/4000s on their focal plane shutters.

Pillars

I’ve got a lot to say about image quality. I received a lot of email traffic expressing concern over the samples; one look at the EXIF data and very strange exposure choices (high ISOs, frequently 1600 and up, and very small apertures) already suggested something not quite right. Who knows what was going through the mind of their photographer at the time. Fortunately, I can report in a nutshell that image quality is really excellent – at all ISOs, and without any major caveats. Firstly, there’s the whole question of 14 vs 16 bit: I’m not going to go into that in any depth beyond what I can empirically (and subjectively) observe through my experience shooting the D800E and CFV-39. Remember also that the Hasselblad H5D-50C and Phase One IQ250 use the same sensor; the Hasselblad claims 16 bit files, but Phase One also outputs at 14 bit – either one of them isn’t really, or the whiners have no reason to complain.  The 645Z’s tonal response and color is not really like either camera. The 645D also only had 14 bit files, and I don’t recall any complaints there. It has the adjustability and latitude of the D800E, but the pleasing natural-ness straight out of camera of the CFV-39; it doesn’t share the same color palette – not better or worse, just different. Your preferences will vary. However, with a color checker chart and a bit of work, it’s not difficult to make a custom profile that will please your personal tastes – I do this for every one of my cameras and set it as a default as part of the ACR conversion process. Does it have that ‘medium format look’? Well, given that such a thing is a property of both the angle of view, real focal length and aperture as much as the technical qualities of the recording medium, I’d say yes and no: it looks different from FF35, but not like full frame 645 (the CFV-39 has a 1.1x crop factor to 645). Remember, the sensor is 33x44mm after all.

Enough detail for you?

And another one

What really impressed me about the 645Z’s sensor is the amount of latitude it has. Dynamic range is definitely a notch above my D800E; situations where the D800E would have clipped do not clip in the 645Z. I would put dynamic range at around 14-14.5 stops under ideal conditions (perfect file, some recovery of shadows and highlights in ACR); this is more than enough for most situations and to produce very pleasing monochrome images – though it doesn’t have the incredible highlight tail of Fuji Acros, I believe it’s possible to come close to that tonal feel by taking advantage of the very low noise floor, underexpose for zero clipping, then use a curve to bring up the shadows – this is something I want to experiment more with. Note that such a process would of course sacrifice image quality somewhat since data is being pushed. Regardless, I think it’s pretty clear to see that the 645Z shares the same special sauce as the GR for B&W conversions.

Low ISO test series; screen capture of 100% crops of DNGs converted via ACR. Click here for size here.

Low ISO test series; screen capture of 100% crops of DNGs converted via ACR. Click here for full size.

For the first time, I’ll be making all of the full size DNGs from the bookshelf test series available – you can download them here, until such time as I need the space in my Dropbox account freed up but at least for two weeks. These were shot with ideal shot discipline – focus with live view magnified, on a heavy tripod with mirror up and self timer; but under deliberately horrible light (mixed tungsten, fluro and LED) to see how the camera’s AWB would handle it. (Answer: quite well.) It should also give you a good idea of just how much detail is in one of these files.

Part of latitude is noise: by the time we hit ISO 51k, usable dynamic range is appears to be somewhere around the 7-7.5 stop mark (the amount will vary with your tolerance to noise); I can’t see any difference between ISO 100-400, there’s 1/2-2/3 stop loss at ISO 800, and roughly 2/3 to a whole stop thereafter. For a full size file, I place the usable limit at 12.8k for color, and 25.6k for monochrome. ISO 6400 will clean up almost completely with some NR. This is unheard of for medium format – and represents an excellent performance for cameras in general. At the pixel level, I’d say this camera is perhaps a stop cleaner than the D800E – not surprising given the newer photosite architecture and 20% (or possibly more) light collecting area – 5.3um pixels play 4.88um pixels. If you don’t need a full size file, oversampling and downsizing to 16MP – comparable to say the E-M1 and D4 - will yield some surprises: ISO 51k is very, very clean. It’s so clean I’d say it looks something like a ISO 2500 file from the E-M1, and an ISO 12.8k file from the D4 – and of course thanks to the downsampling, fine detail is much better, too. Food for thought for the reportage shooters – I certainly intend to make full use of this.

Coils

The slightly larger pixel pitch means that diffraction should theoretically kick in later than the D800E; the 645Z also has no anti-aliasing filter. On the D800E, you can see diffraction softening happening after f8-11, and it’s very noticeable by f16. I’d move that cut point somewhat later with the 645Z – to perhaps f16 with noticeable limits a bit higher – this is partially due to the larger pixel pitch, partially due to the longer focal lengths involved, and some technology by Pentax that supposedly corrects for diffraction. How exactly it does this is unclear – I suspect some sort of unsharp masking or a slightly different interpolation of the raw file – but the difference is visible, and better, even with the DNGs. It’s switchable, though I can’t imagine why anybody would want to turn it off. It’s also worth noting that the camera will record either raw in DNG or proprietary PEF format; both are 14 bit. The latest version of ACR supports the native PEF format – again, more investigation is required into whether there’s any visible difference between the two formats, but my testing up to this point suggests not. There’s also one minor firmware bug in the files – on my camera at least, no matter how I have the rotation tagging set, the images always seem to come out of the camera upside down in ACR despite appearing fine on the LCD. Overall, image quality is superb. I was expecting it to perform as a ‘D800 plus’; so far it’s met all of those expectations, and frankly, surpassed them. The 645Z extends the shooting envelope quite a bit beyond that of the D800E – not only are the files cleaner at the pixel level, but you’ve also got the benefit of being able to downsample. I’d love to see this sensor in something much smaller, with an optical finder, and with a fixed lens perhaps – GR Digital VI, perhaps?

Ripples

I shot several hundred test frames during the course of making this review and familiarising myself with the camera; being cautious made me swap batteries out after every session, but the most I could get the gauge to move was lose one of the three segments after about 150 images shot mostly live view – this is an impressive performance given the size of the sensor, considering my D800E would probably be down 50% or so if shot under similar conditions. A second battery is probably recommended for heavy shooters to get through a day, but you’re probably going to run out of card space first – for the first time, I’m considering moving to 64GB cards. The 645Z also records video, which is another reason to consider larger cards. However: there are some unfortunate gotchas: bit rate appears pretty low – just 21mbps, there’s no way to get a clean HDMI out only from the sensor, and it doesn’t use the full area – you lose about 10% from the left and right, which actually makes the video size…the same as a 36x24mm sensor. So perhaps there isn’t much point after all, especially given there are better full frame options out there for video work. Oh well – you can’t have everything, it seems.

2.4:1 and still more than enough pixels left (28) to Ultraprint.

There’s no denying that with Sony’s entry to the medium format sensor game, the whole market has changed. Available light becomes possible, excellent, and not just a challenge; what’s especially interesting is the enormous difference in pricing between the Hasselblad H5D-50C, the Phase One IQ250 and the 645Z – all of which use the same sensor. Granted, the Hasselblad and Phase One bring leaf shutters, an (arguably) better lens selection in some areas, and interchangeability of the backs with your other (large format perhaps) cameras – but we’re talking a factor of three or more here. For the price of the IQ250 alone, you could get two 645Zs and a decent set of lenses – redundancy and two-body shooting if you want. Or you could buy a 645Z and subsist on second hand manual or early AF lenses and not spend much over US$10,000 – for a medium format camera with state of the art performance. You could even add the 645D if you decide you prefer the CCD ‘look’, or an older Phase One back with a larger sensor and a Hasselblad V system for the best of both worlds. Granted, as relatively ‘cheap’ as the 645Z is, it is still going to be far too expensive – and too much weight – for most photographers to consider; it’s a niche product and overkill for pretty much everybody but a very small group. But those whose pockets are deep or whose business can justify it now have a more interesting option. I’ll be revisiting the comparison in the next article – between the 645Z, 645D, CFV-39 and D800E. No way of getting my hands on the H5D-50C or IQ250, unfortunately – there isn’t even a Phase One dealer in my region; not surprising as the annual medium format market in Malaysia is probably not more than 20-25 cameras. That should give you a pretty good idea of the state of the industry.

Shadow etching

But I digress. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the 645Z is not its pixel count, its high ISO ability, dynamic range, ergonomics, handling, battery life etc. – it’s the fact that it makes it so easy to get such incredibly high image quality; it has a shooting envelope many times larger than any other medium format camera, and in my experience so far, larger than even the D800E. Everybody who’s used medium format digital previously will be extremely cautious with the camera and slowly be surprised that they do not need to be; DSLR upgraders will shoot it without the benefit of context and not understand what the big fuss is about. I personally think this camera represents a significant step forward for medium format; it’s no longer as intimidating and the results can now compete with DSLRs under almost all conditions. Of course, high shot discipline and care will always pay off; those who have it will be rewarded with extraordinary image quality. Paradoxically, whilst most cameras benefit from being shot with the deliberation and care of medium format, this camera benefits from being shot like a DSLR – under such situations is where it’ll extend your image quality envelope enormously and bring previously unimaginable results. This earns it a ‘highly recommended’ rating from me, with one caveat: if you shoot primarily flash/ studio work, this is probably not your camera because of the slow 1/125 flash sync. For everything and everybody else – if you need the resolution, there’s really no better choice at the moment; Pentax deserve credit for not just brining this camera to market, but pricing it at a very sensible level. MT

I’ll be uploading images from this camera continuously to this flickr gallery.

The Pentax 645Z is available to buy here from B&H. Lenses are available here from B&H and Amazon respectively.

__________________

H2 2014 workshops now open for booking – Making Outstanding Images San Francisco, Chicago and Venice; Masterclass San Francisco and Venice – click here to book or for more info

____________

Visit the Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including workshop and Photoshop Workflow videos and the customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | mingthein.com 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

The contenders. From L-R: Pentax 645D, Pentax 645Z, Hasselblad 501CM with CFV-39 digital back, Nikon D800E.

Four cameras, 166 megapixels, no sensor smaller than 36MP and 36x24mm. It’d have been nice to get the Phase One IQ250 and Leica S along for the ride too – sadly there’s no Phase distributor in Malaysia and nobody from P1 has ever replied any email I’ve sent though. So we’ll make do with four: two from the old CCD guard and two from the new CMOS challengers. Lining up on the right are the Pentax 645D (33x44mm, 40MP) and Hasselblad CFV-39 on a 501CM body (49x37mm, 39MP) against the Pentax 645Z (33x44mm, 51MP) and Nikon D800E (24x36mm, 36MP). Perhaps we should have gotten one of the 41MP Nokia PureView phones along for kicks, too. That said, the rationale behind these choices is as follows a) I had access to them; b) to build a more or less complete system would be roughly the same price; Nikon and Pentax new lenses are more expensive than the used screwdriver Pentax FA or Hasselblad V glass; by the time you add everything in, the 645Z is obviously the most expensive option – but also arguably has the highest IQ potential. Welcome to part two of the Pentax 645Z review – the first part can be found here.

A note on testing methodology and lens choices:

• All cameras were shot raw and processed through ACR CS5.5, because this is what I normally use in my workflow.
• Color profiling has been left to Adobe’s defaults. I wouldn’t do this in the real world, of course – I apply custom profiles to all of my cameras to make results visually consistent.
• No noise reduction was applied – switched off in camera and zeroed out in ACR except for the identical default 25% chroma NR applied to all cameras.
• No sharpening was applied to any of the comparison images
• Adobe’s own lens profile corrections were used for all cameras to take the glass out of the equation as much as possible.
• White balance was achieved by using the eye dropper tool on the same location for all cameras, but the 645Z came the closest to getting it right.
• Ideally, I’d have liked to have picked the best lens for each system – the 55 or 90mms for Pentax; 45 or 85mm PCEs or the Zeiss Otus or 135mm APO for the Nikon, and the 50 Distagon or 120 Macro for the Hasselblad. Unfortuantely, this would have made any comparisons meaningless because of magnification differences; I therefore went with the only lens combination that would match fields of view on all three sensor sizes: 60mm, in 35mm EFOV terms. That’s the AFS 60/2.8 Micro-Nikkor on the D800E, the FA 75/2.8 for the Pentaxes and the Zeiss CF 2.8/80 Planar for the Hasselblad.
• A best attempt at matching DOF was made – f5.6 for the Nikon, f8 for the Pentaxes, and f11 for the Hasselblad; sufficient for the lenses to be in their optimum zones, but not so much as to make diffraction come into play.
• By extension, everything said about the D800E applies to the recently announced D810, too.
• Everything other than the ISO test series was shot at base ISO (100 for all cameras) on a heavy Gitzo 5-series tripod and Arca-Swiss Cube head.
• Focusing was accomplished through live view (where possible) or picking the best of repeated iterations (CFV). My D800E and 501CM/CFV viewfinders and focusing screens have been adjusted for perfect manual focus planarity; the Pentax 645s have not – the loaner 645D is noticeably off, and my own 645Z is almost perfect (but out by a hair, I think).
• I won’t be uploading any full size files – there’s no point. Firstly, I don’t have the bandwidth; secondly, a jpeg on flickr isn’t going to tell you much about colour, and lastly, unless you’ve got a very accurately calibrated wide gamut display AND the uncompressed 16bit TIFFs, we’ll be splitting hairs without a scalpel. I recommend going by what I say, not so much what you see in the web jpegs.
• Skin tone reproduction is something I have not explored yet. Partially because portraiture and fashion aren’t my speciality, and partially because my model/muse/wife is in hospital with dengue fever at the moment.
• A note on objectivity: I own three of these cameras (and two D800Es) and my aim is always to use the best tool to get the best result; I like to believe that I’m about as close to unbiased with the relative comparisons as you’re likely to find…
• Lastly, but importantly – a huge thank you to my buddy Darren at Autodetailer for the test location and subject material :) You will notice some strange EXIF data on the 645Z images of the Ferrari 599; firstly, it is a metallic burgundy NOT rosso corsa, and secondly, it’s an available light studio with fixed fluro light banks, which means either tripod or high ISO. We were both short on time, so I opted for the latter – there are a number of images here shot at ISO 3200 or even 6400 - which is pretty darn amazing, considering just how well the camera has held the car’s color and handled the dynamic range across the scene. Think of it as a worst-case torture test of sorts.

What’s not obvious in this table is the difference between the 645Z and 645D is significantly larger in practice than the numbers would suggest. Firstly, the new camera is just so much faster in operation; it’s the difference between slightly frustrating and fluid. You needed to wait at least 3 seconds per shot for the buffer to clear on the 645D before being able to view an image; even menus were a bit laggy. Review is under a second on the 645Z, and reviewing/ zooming/ menus etc. feel much the same as the D800E: effectively instant. On top of that, autofocus is much faster and more precise; it locks on with more confidence and doesn’t seem to shift around as much during repeated refocusing. Again, speed- and accuracy-wise, it doesn’t feel much different to the D800E. Battery life is also noticeably better, and despite the increase in pixel count, the camera seems to be no more susceptible to shutter vibration than the old one; I presume we have a new mirror and shutter mechanism to thank for this. There are other operational improvements too, including addition of video recording, nearly 3x the continuous frame rate, and of course a vastly larger shooting envelop thanks to sensitivities that top out a whopping seven stops higher. And that’s before we even begin to talk about image quality.

Unsurprisingly, the newer generation of cameras handily trumps the old one – on the price/ performance ratio, at least. But this has been the way for as long as I can remember in this industry, and more so when we’re dealing with very niche products. I don’t know how many CFV backs Hasselblad sold in the three or so years before discontinuing them, but you can be sure it’s probably fewer than Nikon makes D800Es in a week. There are plusses and minuses of course to going with newer options. Firstly, there’s the whole debate over colour, bit depth and tonal response; I think at least part of that is justified. And the operational experience is very, very different. For the most part, conventional DSLR and DSLR-like mirrorless designs are very well integrated; there are still some UI aspects that could be improved – there always are. Medium format digital has mostly felt clunky to me: the camera part operates separately from the digital back part, and until fairly recently, they didn’t even talk to each other. There was a point when the camera and back powering on simultaneously from the same button was listed as a feature! Finally, we have the Pentax 645 twins: their operation is more seamless than any other medium format camera I’ve used so far (though granted I have not had a chance to try the new Phase One cameras) and its handling doesn’t need much introduction because it’s much like an overgrown DSLR. That can be a good and a bad thing – good because you’ve got a lot more room for external controls, bad because it means even more weight.

Even with this in mind, using the CFV is a unique experience. You have a 100% mechanical camera – any V series body –  and lens on the front that’s of course capable of operating without batteries and independently of the back; you could even (gasp) load film into another back and swap it out if you wish. The back operates independently from the rest of the camera. The only way they communicate is via the little pin that protrudes from the camera body and used to advance the film counter; before the exposure, when the auxiliary shutter curtain rises, the pin extends into the back which wakes it up and primes the sensor; the leaf shutter is closed at this point so the whole camera is light-tight. Then the shutter in the lens fires, determining the exposure, and the pin moves back into the body, ending the exposure. So in effect, the exposure time of the digital back is always much greater than the actual exposure time determined by the lens. Presumably, there’s some clever software or noise reduction circuitry in there to prevent long exposure shadow noise – though this is already slightly higher than for most cameras, it’s not easy to determine if it’s the result of each actual sensor-on time being at least 0.5-1s or something else.

Regardless of all of this, if you enjoy the experience of shooting with an older, fully mechanical/ manual camera like a film V-series, this is as close as you’re going to get in the digital world. Remarkably close, in fact, other than the crop factor (1.1x, 645 – not square, sadly, unless you don’t mind a 37x37mm sensor area). I still think the V series design is one of the most fluid in use – all of the critical controls (focus, aperture, shutter) are all on the lens itself, easily preset, and viewable at a glance. And you even have program mode because the aperture and shutter rings are coupled on most of the lenses. However, this system as a digital option has one enormous catch: because the film capture area was meant to be square, the viewfinder and controls were laid out in such a way as to only work in one orientation. However, the digital sensor is a 645 aspect ratio: in order to shoot verticals, you need one of the 90 degree prisms and a grip, or a tripod. Leaf made a series of backs with an internally rotating sensor, which was a clever solution; Phase One P backs could mount in either direction (but run the risk of dust and moisture ingress) – either way, you’d still need a special viewfinder mask or focusing screen to show both vertical and horizontal orientations. Personally, I found the prism + grip solution much better for stability and general usability.

When seriously considering one of these imaging monsters, it’s also important to look at the types of subjects you shoot, and the lens choices and general system accessories available. Whilst the V series is perfect for studio work because the leaf shutter will give you flash sync all the way to their 1/500s maximum speed, and relatively small maximum apertures (f4 for all of the leaf lenses except the 80mm, which is f2.8) and manual focus only aren’t very important, they’re not so good for outdoor reportage and available light work – precisely because you’re restricted to f4 and 1/500s. In the tropics, or in any kind of bright sunshine, that means using ND filters (focusing becomes tricky), having almost no depth of field control and running into diffraction issues, or overexposure. By the same token, the Pentax 645 system is not the best choice for studio shooters: flash sync is just 1/125s because of the focal plane shutter and a lack of leaf shutter lenses; however, you do get a 1/4000s maximum overall speed, and most of the lenses are f2.8. The Nikon D800E splits the difference – 1/8000s maximum shutter, 1/250s sync speed, and lenses down to f1.2 (mostly f1.4). It’s easy to see why the D800E has been making serious conquests over both documentary and studio professionals – I deploy mine under both situations to equal effect. However, it still renders like 35mm. The difference is seen mostly at normal angles of view and below: it’s difficult to describe exactly, but wides look wide. There’s a definite difference in the way the Zeiss 2.8/21 renders on the D800E as opposed to the Pentax 25/4 on the 645Z – even though the Pentax is actually wider at an equivalent 19mm horizontal field of view, it doesn’t feel as wide as the Zeiss. Something to do with geometric projection, perhaps.

But I digress: all of these three options are mature systems. So mature, in fact, that legacy lenses for the Hasselblad V – proper made in Germany Zeiss glass, no less – go for an average of US$500-1000 a piece; non-SDM FA autofocus lenses for the Pentax are even cheaper, at somewhere between US$300-500. And there’s absolutely no shortage of Nikon glass whatsoever, though not all of it will be able to perform to the expected level on the D800E’s sensor. This is an important point to note: all of these sensors are relatively high density and will test lenses to their limits, especially the D800E; a lack of good lenses is its achilles’ heel. The others suffer to the same thing to more or less the same degree, so it’s very important to know that the focal lengths you need are adequately served. I would say that there are actually very few lenses indeed that can be used on digital without reservations to distance or aperture on all three of the systems (there may be others which I haven’t tried):

• Hasselblad V: 4/40 IF, 4/50 FLE, 4/120 Makro-Planar, 4/150, 4/180, and the Superapochromats
• Pentax 645: D-FA 25/4 SDM, D-FA 55/2.8 SDM, D-FA 90/2.8 SR SDM Macro – and perhaps the FA 200/4 if focused manually with live view.
• Nikon D800E: Nikon 24 PCE (beware sample variation), 45 PCE, 85 PCE, 85/1.8 G, 70-200/4 VR and the superteles; Zeiss 2.8/21, 2/50 Makro-Planar, 1.4/55 Otus, 2/135 APO

You’ll notice this is not a very long list at all, and only Nikon has anything tilt shifts. Hasselblad has the clunky Flexbody and somewhat less clunky Arcbody, but operation of both with digital backs is fraught with risk as you must remove the digital back to focus and frame between every exposure. On top of that, most of the lenses will have edge CA and purple fringing issues when tilted or shifted. Realistically, this means that architecture still remains the preserve of the Nikon system for me. Product photography too either requires stitching or tilt shifts; it’s easier to get it right in camera, so again – we’re back to Nikon for most things. For portraiture, fashion, reportage/ documentary, travel, landscape etc – pick your poison. That actually means for these things most people use their cameras for, you’ve got a lot of options; this is not surprising since all of these are mature systems which have had the benefit of many decades of professional photographers to refine.

A note on Hasselblad-Zeiss V glass on the Pentax 645: it can be done, because the V has a longer flange distance than the P645. I conducted some informal tests but didn’t have a chance to present them properly. In short, the Zeiss V glass outperforms the legacy FA Pentax lenses (75/2.8 vs 2.8/80; 200/4 vs 4/150) by a noticeable margin, wide open or stopped down. The Zeisses tend to start off a bit softer but improve more through f8-11; the Pentaxes start off a bit better and have better near performance, but don’t improve as much when stopped down. The difference between the 200/4 and 4/150 was so great that I’d probably pick the 4/150 over the 200/4; despite 33% more focal length, extra resolved detail is negligible. You’re going to be using both of these on a tripod anyway, so stability is a non-issue for the most part. Microcontrast and color rendition are better, and the output simply appears to have more ‘punch’ without being harsh. However, the new Pentax SDM lenses are all on par or better – the 55/2.8 is slightly sharper than the 4/50 FLE, which suffers from some focus shift as a consequence of the FLE group; the 90/2.8 SR blows the 2.8/80 out of the water, and is slightly better than the 4/120 Makro-Planar all over. There is no Zeiss equivalent to the 25/4. Food for thought. Note also that because of the much longer flange back distance compared to say 35mm and mirrorless, production tolerance issues are much less noticeable. 

At this point it’s probably worth mentioning the competition – Hasselblad’s own H5D-50C, and the Phase One IQ250. Both of these have more extensive lens systems with some tilt shift options (or the 1.5x HTS tilt-shift converter for the Hasselblad) and autofocus, but a significantly increased price – north of US$27,000 for the H5D-50C, and $32,000 for the IQ250. In today’s strained commercial environment, such expenditure is extremely difficult to justify by most pros – including myself. In comparison, if you need another Hasselblad V body, you can probably find a nice one for about $800 – including a film back, waist level finder, and possibly an 80mm lens, too – they tend to go as kits. The body only might be $400-500. I can make medium format digital pay off for me, at that level the ROI is much lower than I’d like – and that’s before we even count the cost of adding lenses. There are two enormous reasons why they can ask for that much money and still find buyers, though: autofocus + leaf shutter/ high speed flash sync, and professional support – at least in the rest of the world. Phase One is pretty much nonexistent in Malaysia, which makes it a non-starter for me; I don’t need high speed flash, and even if I did, I prefer to use speedlights, so running a separate NIkon system is both cheaper and more flexible. However: your requirements and local options will almost certainly differ, and this should be taken into consideration, too.

Let’s move on to the more quantitative part of this comparison. Again, I emphasize that you should go by what I say, not the small web jpegs. Since the whole point of the exercise is to chase the last fraction of a percent of image quality, viewing these images at anything but maximum quality – uncompressed full-fat TIFFs on a calibrated monitor – is rather meaningless, and I simply don’t have the bandwidth to serve them. I’ll break down the assessment into a few categories. Even so, at base ISO, the results are much closer than you might think. Click through to the images on flickr for larger versions.

For reference – applies to all of the images which are divided into four panes.

First test scene, processed to final.

Second test scene, processed to final.

Resolving power
Our ‘lowest’ resolution camera here weighs in at 36MP; the highest, 51. Though this is an area difference of some 40%, the linear difference is much less – more like 20%. It’s basically going from a 10×15″ to a 12″x18″, or more like 12×16″ due to the difference in aspect ratios. Pixel pitch also plays a secondary role here: the smaller the pixels, the less acuity there is because all other things being equal, the signal to noise ratio is lower and this affects acuity. (Of course, there is some oversimplification here as lenses also play an important part in the equation.)  What’s telling though is that only the D800E and 645Z don’t appear to have any significant resolution compromises with increasing ISOs; edges don’t start degrading until very late in the day. Bottom line though: to see a consistent difference, you’re really going to have to be employing optimum shot discipline all of the time; otherwise that 20% is going to disappear very fast indeed.

From the 645Z. I think there’s no question that there’s a frightening amount of resolution here – note the reflections in the bolts, and the textural differentiation in the brake calliper. Remember, this image has not been sharpened. More impressively, most of this detail holds through even ISO 6400.

Dynamic range
The first time I used the D800/E, I was surprised by firstly how flat the raw files looked, then by just how much latitude they held – in both shadows and highlights. There’s probably an easy 1.5-2 stops at both ends; practically, the D800E seems to have around 13.5 usable* stops at base ISO. Put it this way: if exposed properly, it rarely clips. Being used to the D800E, I found the 645Z even more impressive: it almost didn’t clip at all, despite being shot under extremely high contrast situations during the test period. I’d say there’s at least a stop more dynamic range in there, perhaps slightly more than that. However, it’s worth noting that at least some of this (for all cameras) is attributable to the raw conversion since we only have 14 bit files to begin with. This is not to say that the 645D and CFV-39 are slouches in this department: far from it. I think both top out at around 12-12.5 stops; they certainly clip with more regularity than the D800E, let alone the 645Z. This is more of an issue for the 645D, because it doesn’t appear to handle overexposure with as much grace and smoothness as the CFV; pixel pitch probably has something to do with it. The CCD cameras lose dynamic range very quickly as sensitivity rises; basically, one stop for every one stop gain in ISO. This isn’t quite the case with the CMOS cameras, which only start to visibly lose dynamic range over about ISO 800 (D800E) or 1600 (645Z). The difference is further compounded by the fact that the two CMOS cameras had more dynamic range to begin with.

*The definition of ‘usable’ is also highly dependent on how tolerant you are of shadow noise.

Highlight dynamic range, ISO 100. Ignore the slightly different focal planes/ depths of field.

Highlight dynamic range, ISO 800. You can see all of the cameras starting to block up slightly, the D800E appears to be handling this slightly better than the other cameras. Still impressive just how much of the highlights they’re holding, and how smooth the rolloff is – despite being a very hard reflection.

Midtone dynamic range, ISO 100 – none of the cameras is having any issues here.

Midtone dynamic range, ISO 800 – you can see the two CCD cameras starting to struggle with both noise and shadows crushing; the tonal response is starting to become a bit weaker, too.

Shadow dynamic range, ISO 100 – all of the cameras have no problems holding the entire dynamic range of the scene without clipping; however from the density of blacks it’s clear that the 645D is the weakest of the four, followed by the CFV (though it has quite a high noise floor compared to the other cameras); the 645Z leads the D800E by about a stop.

Shadow dynamic range, ISO 800 – If we take a look into the shadows, you can see the CMOS cameras pull far ahead – the 645Z looks to be a bit lighter than the D800E, despite an identical highlight exposure, which suggests that most of its extra dynamic range lies in the deep shadows. The CCD cameras, on the other hand, are starting to lose detail and dynamic range; in the case of the CFV, we’re losing pretty much everything below Zone IV.

Noise
The 645Z and D800e walk away with this one; whilst all of the cameras look pretty much the same at ISO 100, you’ll find that the noise floor is much lower on those with CMOS sensors. Beyond that, the CFV starts to fall apart at IS0 400, and earlier in the deep shadows – notice how quickly luminance noise starts to set in. We get another stop out of the 645D to about ISO 800; even 1600 is actually usable at a pinch, though expect to have lost many stops of dynamic range in the shadows. The D800E still looks much the same as the 645Z, and both don’t appear much different from base ISO. That said, though the highlights and overall histogram appear the same, the 645Z’s lowest zone is a bit lighter, which suggests that there’s more dynamic range than the D800E in here. In fact, the D800E remains relatively clean at ISO 3200, and ISO 6400/12800 can be used in a pinch with some postproduction NR work. Under this kind of (fluro) lighting, the 645Z appears to perform much the same.

Subjectively, this is somewhat different to my observations under more neutral white balance; the 645Z has a bit of an edge over the D800E in those situations – by as much as a stop.  I’d say the 645Z’s higher 25k and 51k sensitivities can be used if you don’t mind downsizing. In fact, a 645Z file downsized to match my D4 blows it out of the water in noise, acuity and dynamic range – by more than two stops. Remember, for a given output size, the increased amount of information to begin with in the 645Z’s files are going to mean that even if noise at the pixel level is the same as say the D800E, you’ll still get a noticeably cleaner result. And that’s not quite the case, because this camera is about a stop or so cleaner at the pixel level, too. It’s also worth noting that the CFV-39 has no microlens array over its sensor; this means that its light gathering ability isn’t quite as good as the other cameras. Its actual ISO seems to be about 2/3 stop less sensitive than the others despite having the same numerical rating – important when taking into account flash and other exposure calculations. Also, the CCD cameras will punish underexposure and post-processing recovery quite badly with noise and colour shifts in the shadows; this penalty doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as harsh with the CMOS cameras.

ISO 100. What follows is a series of crops at every ISO; the CFV tops out at 800, which we’ve left in for the last full comparison at ISO 1600. Thereafter it’s down to the two CMOS cameras. I stopped at 3200 – this is probably about the limit for what I’d consider very good quality after some noise reduction/ cleanup; 25k was thrown in for kicks and entertainment.

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600 (CFV at 800)

ISO 3200 – 645Z on the left, D800E on the right. Notice the 20% linear difference in image size isn’t quite as much as you’d expect.

ISO 25600. Apply PP NR, downsize and you’ll actually have a surprisingly usable file.

Color and tonal response
Firstly, it’s important to know that all of the images from each set had their white balance set on the same object in the scene, using a 5×5 pixel sample eyedropper; this should be about as close to consistent as possible. I used the default Adobe conversion without custom profiling. I’m sure somebody will say at this point that there is better software for each camera; I agree, but from a consistency, comparability and workflow point of view, ACR is still very much the way to go – especially if you happen to be mixing multiple cameras on a job, which I will probably land up doing. There is only one 16-bit camera here; does it produce more accurate colour than the rest? No. More pleasing? Perhaps, but that’s subjective. The only place where the CFV is demonstrably better is in reproduction of the reds in the tail light; it’s much closer to accurate than the 645D or D800E, which are far off; interestingly, the 645Z is closer to the CFV despite having architecture and processing that’s much closer to the other two. Skin tones, blues, greens etc – yes, they’re missing from this comparison, but there’s only so much I can physically do in two days. In any case, it’s not a big deal to profile the colour of any one of these cameras (or all) to be the same as the CFV, or consistent with a fifth reference. I know for a fact that my custom profile for all of these cameras will be more like the latter. I just want to make one comment about all of the cameras: there’s remarkably little hue shift as the sensitivity increases even to 6400 or thereabouts (with the exception of the deep shadows of the CFV, which have been polluted with chroma noise); we see some desaturation but this is to be expected.

ISO 100. Strong tonal differentiation of fine gradations even into the shadows from all cameras, as expected. Color reproduction is actually remarkably similar here.

ISO 800. Not quite the same story; the CFV has acquired a green hue shift, the 645D has increased in contrast as its dynamic range contracts, and the two CMOS cameras look almost the same as at base ISO.

ISO 100. This is a bit more interesting: one of the trickiest hues to reproduce accurately are deeply saturated reds; Ferraris, transparent clear plastic tail lights, maple leaves and the scarf of my polar bear all fall into this category. Early digital cameras would blow the channels very quickly, to the point of being unusable unless you underexposed by 1-2 stops – at the expense of the rest of the image; we’ve come a long way since then. Here, the same point on the car’s bodywork was used as a white balance reference. The 645D and D800E are both too orange, with the 645D being the least accurate. The Hasselblad and 645Z are closer to the mark, but neither quite nails it – the Hasselblad is too pink, and the 645Z still a bit too orange. I think the truth lies somewhere between those two.

ISO 800 – and remarkably little hue shift or noise in this zone, even for the CFV.

The final image is to show a few things: at the same output size, how much depth of field separation you get from a given angle of view and real aperture – in this case, 60mm (35mm EFOV) and f2.8. The CFV’s format is double the size of the D800E, and as a consequence there’s a noticeable amount more defocus – as expected. There’s also slightly less depth of field (60mm plays 80mm). The second point I’d like to mention is colour again: the CFV has perfectly nailed the colour of the Ferrari, but the 645Z is a bit too dark and the D800E too orange. Still, the differences are relatively slight and easily correctable afterwards.

Shooting envelope
I think it’s no surprise here that the two newer cameras have the largest shooting envelope of all; I’d put the D800E and 645Z on par because what the latter gains in high ISO performance and resolution it gives up to faster lenses and a more flexible system to the former. It’s quite possible that the slight high ISO gain for the D810 may edge this somewhat in Nikon’s favour. None of these can exactly be considered light or compact, though the 645s with the diminutive 75mm aren’t too bad, and if you opt for the f1.8G primes for the Nikon (28, 35, 50, 85) you can pack a lot of image quality into not much space at all. I think the 645D lands up somewhere in no-man’s land; it’s really the low-cost starter option to see whether medium format is for you or not. And finally, the CFV combination is really a scalpel: it excels at some things, but definitely isn’t for every situation.

Of course, there has to be a huge amount of personal subjectivity to be taken into account. It may well be the operation of the CFV is so much more pleasurable to you than a digital-DSLR style interface, in which case the rest are non-starters; or price, which would favour the Nikon; or perhaps you’re allergic to manual focus or have vision issues, in which case the Hasselblad would be a non-starter – and you’d have to think very seriously about focusing the D800E, because it seems to be the most intolerant to focus errors of the lot  - partially because of the pixel pitch, and partially because the focusing screen is nowhere near as differentiating as the others between in and out of focus areas. Haptically, none of these cameras are bad choices: they’re all mature, evolved designs. Even the blocky-looking Hasselblad V bodies are actually very comfortable to use; I actually find them very, very fluid in use and beautifully simple. I put my left hand on the lens controls, and my right hand cradles the bottom the camera body with my index finger on the shutter release; I had to be a bit careful when doing the comparison because the lens release is in the same place on the Pentax! On top of that, the camera itself (and the back, styled to match the chrome body) is a work of art – unfortunately, I can’t say the same about the 645Z or D800E; at best they are ‘functional’; quite frankly, the 645Z’s external design is something only its engineers could love. Still, it gets the job done. In any case, I highly encourage you to try them out in person before making a decision; ultimately, it will come down to personal preferences. Note: the film Hasselblad V bodies handle exactly the same as one with a digital back; the digital back is a little bit heavier and larger than a film magazine, but not by much.

It’s difficult to come to a clearly meaningful ‘which is better’ conclusion here, other than it’s clear that the 645Z succeeds and improves on the 645D by some margin, and unless you’re on an extremely tight budget (in which case you’re probably going to be better off with the D800E or D810 anyway) is really a non-starter option unless you must have that medium format look. If you only have the budget or weight/ space allocation for one system, I have to say go with Nikon – it’s the most flexible and will let you do probably 99% of what the others can. It’s also the only option if you have special purpose requirements such as tilt shifts or supertelephotos. Splitting the 645Z and the CFV is much harder; though there’s a definite resolution advantage to the 645Z over all of the cameras here – between 27% and 40% in area – I think the CFV trumps it very slightly in pixel acuity, though this may well be down to the lenses. I personally prefer the slightly biased warm colour native to the CFV, but this can be easily be adjusted for in post. I think there are two deciding factors here: firstly, whether you’re going to use it in studio or with available light, and secondly, the rendering. The former has to do with flash sync and high iso capabilities; effectively you’re trading off one for the other. The latter is something a bit more subtle: the larger the sensor, the more natural the rendering appears to be – at least to my eyes. I’m not talking about the super-shallow depth of field that’s a property of very large formats, but the way the focus transition rolls off, even at f8; it tends to be much smoother and more gradual than the abrupt ‘planes’ we’re accustomed to with fast lenses and 35mm DSLRs. I guess what I’m saying is that I can see a reason to keep both the CFV and 645Z around – unfortunately, my accountant is telling me otherwise…MT

The Nikon D800E is available here (B&H, Amazon). The D810 is available here (B&H, Amazon). The Pentax 645Z is available here (B&H). The Pentax 645D is available here (B&H, Amazon) – though I suggest hitting up Japan Camera Hunter to find you a nice used one from Tokyo instead at significantly less cost. The Hasselblad CFV-39 is sadly discontinued, but the CFV-50 (50MP) is still available here from B&H.

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Having a bit more time with the relatively new Pentax 645Z under my belt has given me the opportunity to try a couple of things I’ve been curious about: long exposures, and a more thorough evaluation of the three SDM lenses currently available for the 645 system. The former is probably only of interest to landscapists, architectural photographers and people who have severe allergies to controlled lighting, but I feel the latter is probably a critically important topic in itself. Let’s start there.

Compared to other medium format system contenders – really only Hasselblad, Phase One and Leica – Pentax has about 13 lenses currently available; unfortunately this is somewhat misleading as most of them appear to be much older designs that date from the heyday of the film system in the late 80s or early 90s. For the most part, they are body-driven, plastic-barrelled (not the nice kind of crinkle finish plastic that Nikon uses, for instance, but the smoother, slightly cheaper/ more brittle feeling kind of older lenses) and have manual focus on sliding clutches rather than permanent override or switches. Build quality leaves something to be desired, and they were designed for the resolution of film – not the 645Z. Of the four contenders, I’d say only the Leica S glass gives me the confidence to use it at any aperture and any subject distance and be assured of consistently excellent results – the rest all have stars and dogs, caveats and cautions, even for the best of the lenses.

Pentax 645 lenses come in three flavors: A, which are manual focus; FA, which are autofocus, and D-FA, which are accompanied by built in SDM motors, weather sealing and full time manual focus overrides. SMC is super multi coating, something analogous to the various other branded coatings on other lenses; Aero Bright is their new equivalent of Nikon’s Nano Coating – as far as I can tell. Again, I believe this is only present on the D-FA lenses. There are a plethora of A (discontinued) and FA (still available new, and recently in the USA too) lenses; from a 35mm wide (28mm-e on the digital bodies) to a 400mm telephoto. D-FA lenses are only three: the 25/4 (19mm-e), 55/2.8 (43mm-e) and 90/2.8 SR Macro 1:2 (70mm-e), which is the only medium format lens with optical image stabilization. Confusingly, there’s also a DA version of the 25mm, which I believe is the same except for a slightly longer hood. Pentax’s own roadmap shows a couple of zoom updates due later this year or early next, which will presumably be D-FA, have SDM focusing, Aero Bright coatings and hopefully also optical stabilization. Leaf shutters would be nice too, but at this point I feel I might be pushing it.

My experience with most of these lenses suggests a few things: firstly, if you have patience and don’t mind possibly having to try a few samples, don’t buy them new. There are an abundance of them available second hand online and from various dealers as holdovers from when people quit the film days. There are bargains to be had – though probably not after this article is published – up to 60-70% cheaper than new glass, for excellent plus/ mint-minus grading. Second hand FA lenses start from $300 or thereabouts; on the other end of the scale, a new D-FA 25/4 or D-FA 90/2.8 SR will run you close to $5,000. Secondly, there definitely is sample variation: AF tolerances in the past might have been responsible for a number of these lenses acquiring undeserved reputations for being soft or inconsistent; the truth is helicoids can not only drift out of alignment, but body driven AF (or any non-lens-based coreless direct driven DC motor system) is going to have some backlash and free play that will result in zero movement for small changes in subject distance even if the AF system and motor in the body commands it. It would be impossible for the gear train to move without binding otherwise.

Since film emulsions have some thickness, the focal plane has some tolerance of movement before the image appears to be decidedly out of focus. This is not the case for digital, and small changes can make the difference between pixel-crisp and ‘might as well use a FF DSLR – or less’. This difference in tolerances, AF backlash etc. basically means that a lens which will not focus properly on one body even with maximum AF fine tune may well do so on another body with none whatsoever. (My partner and I actually pooled FA lenses to mix and match which would work best on which bodies – the 75/2.8 that would still backfocus on my body at maximum -10 fine tune adjustment focused just fine on his with zero fine tune. And all of our SDM lenses require +/-2 or less adjustment – go figure. I imagine it’s a lens thing, not a body thing.) Finally, not all of these lenses have weathered the ages well – there’s no easy way to tell the age of a lens without tracing the serial number as there don’t appear to have been many cosmetic changes throughout the lifetime of most of the optics, so guessing age this way can be tricky. Sticky or stiff actions are probably not a good sign, to say the least. And be weary of fungus and heavy internal dust. Remember that A and FA lenses are not weather sealed if you intend to use the camera in harsh environments.

Performance-wise, I have not yet encountered any FA lenses that are outstanding performers wide open on the 645Z other than the FA 120/4 Macro 1:1; most are very good one stop down and excellent by two stops, but by that point you’re at f5.6 or f8 and very much into tripod territory or elevated ISOs. Some lenses like the FA 200/4 are frustrating: it’s possible to get surprising results even at f4, but AF backlash means that most of the time you’re at f8 on a tripod for insurance. I find there’s a slight difference in color transmission between the D-FA and FA lenses; the D-FAs are neutral and moderately saturated; the FAs skew slightly warm and have both lower contrast and a slightly odd-feeling spectral transmission. I put it down to the difference in coating technology.

D-FA 25/4 (and presumably DA also)
Beware sample variation on this one. If you get a good sample, it can be quite spectacular, even into the corners. I’ve handled four lenses: the first wouldn’t focus to infinity with or without the drop in filter (new lenses include special thin CPOL and skylight filters) in place and was very astigmatic; the second demo unit was slightly astigmatic, and the third and fourth units were fine. I suspect alignment of elements in this lens are very sensitive to impacts and the first two may well have been dropped or bumped; #3 and 4 were new lenses. Wide open, center resolution is excellent; you get a bump in microcontrast and edge performance one stop down, and the corners are not far off the center by f8, but there is some lateral CA. There’s surprisingly little distortion for a lens this wide. Enabling the default ACR correction profile cleans this up nicely and restores corner performance. What I find most impressive about this lens is the way it renders: it simply doesn’t feel anywhere near as wide as it actually is; the Zeiss 2.8/21 Distagon on my D800E has more geometric distortion/ stretching towards the edges as a wide ‘signature’ than 25/4, even though the 25/4 is a 19mm equivalent. Advantages of medium format, I suppose.

D-FA 55/2.8
The standard kit lens for both 645D and Z; it’s easy to see why. 55mm is a very natural feeling focal length for the 33x44mm format; much in the same way 80mm feels and renders on 6×6. I suspect it’s got something to do with this ‘natural’ diagonal of 43mm-e; Pentax has made a number of ‘limited’ lenses for their 35mm cameras around this range. Central sharpness and resolution is excellent at f2.8; there’s definitely some field curvature on this lens as focus and recompose too far off axis requires some compensation. The edges and corners require f5.6 to come up to central standards. Bokeh is smooth and it doesn’t quite have the microcontrast bite of the 90, but it’s not far off. All in all, much to like here: light, small, reasonably affordable – and probably the one must-have, in my book.

D-FA 90/2.8 SR Macro
In my opinion, only the D-FA lenses perform at maximum aperture on the 645Z; the 90/2.8 SR Macro is probably the best of the three, with an unqualified shooting envelope – any aperture, any distance, subject anywhere in the frame. There is some slight field curvature as there’s a clear difference in sharpness wide open between focusing with an edge AF point and recomposing slightly, or using live view (even with AF fine tune perfect). This goes away by f5.6. Resolution and microcontrast are excellent at every aperture, with almost no noticeable lateral CA and only trace amounts of longitudinal CA. Both are easily cleaned up by the lens’ default ACR profile. Bokeh is smooth and vignetting minimal. This is perhaps the best of all of the lenses available for the 645 system, and an excellent optic by any standard. On a relative basis, I’d put it somewhere between the Zeiss 2/100 Makro-Planar and 2/135 APO-Sonnar. A note on the optical stabilization technology: it seems to be not quite as effective as Nikon or Canon’s latest and is slightly noisy in operation, but it definitely welcome. It clearly reduces the ‘danger zone’ speeds by about 1.5 stops (as compared to about 2-2.5 on Nikon VRII, regardless of what the manufacturers claim). We can only hope this is incorporated into future lenses.

Long exposure performance
I have to admit, I was quite blown away by the 645Z’s long exposure behaviour; with dark frame subtraction (‘long exposure noise reduction’) set to auto, it almost never uses a second frame below 4-5 minutes. 2-3 minutes at base ISO appears to have no penalty to the noise floor or dynamic range; there’s no amp noise at the edges, either. You start to see a bit of luminance speckling in the lowest couple of stops of dynamic range up to the 5 minute range, and frankly, I haven’t found anything dark enough to require much more than that.

This image is remarkable for the amount of dynamic range it retained at two minutes, and above base ISO – nothing is clipped at either end in the original, from the deepest shadows in the upper balcony, to the brightest highlights in the lower one.

Cranking the ISO a couple of stops on longer exposures appears to have no more penalty to noise and dynamic range than increasing for a shot of more normal duration. This is one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen; even my D800E requires some cleanup above 30 seconds. Coupled with the wireless triggering app and automatic mirror lockup with self timer, it makes for very fluid and easy long exposure work. Battery life is also equally impressive – after 50 test exposures of several minutes, using live view – as a sort of torture test for both battery life and thermal-induced noise – performance at the start and end of the test was the same, and the battery indicator hadn’t budged. Using a rough approximation by recharging time, I’d say I’d used somewhere between a quarter and a third of its capacity. Again: impressive.

My next installment in this series will come after a few months, trips and assignments and using the 645Z as a documentary/ available light camera; this will be the mid term report. MT

The Pentax 645Z is available here from B&H, and the respective lenses are here: 25/4, 55/2.8, 90/2.8 SR, older legacy lenses.

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