still, not satisfied

[Eric Lange]

It is a little bit more complicated. Mamiya and Leaf Imaging (Israeli company) used to be own entities offering medium format digital backs. Then Leaf Imaging went into partnership with Mamiya (Mamiya Leaf) before they were purchased by Phase One. Leaf has a long history producing outstanding medium format digital backs. Mamiya on the other hand had a long history with their great medium format camera and lens systems. However, Mamiya digital backs were always subpar to the other brands.
So when Phase One bought Mamiya Leaf, they copy quite a lot of technology from Mamiya and Leaf. To make the story short, Phase One rebranded the Mamiya 645 body and Mamiya shutter leaf lenses (Mamiya Schneider Kreuznach) to Phase One and sold them for higher price. Their IQ1 digital backs are the same like the Leaf Credo digital backs spec wise with some add on feature and different UI. But the tech inside is the same. But Phase One IQ backs costs at least 25% more than Leaf Credo backs. It is only the brand and UI. I think with the current IQ3 100MB digital backs Phase One has made quite a jump in terms of DR and image quality etc. I have not tested yet, but DR is rated 15. The older backs were around 12.5-14 DR.

Coming back to the topic, I was referring to what has been discussed previously and the concern that was raised by Simon Lok. Regardless of how good and how big the sensor is, when shooting handheld you MUST absolute nail your focus 100% to get the sharpest and most detailed image. It also depends on the subject you are shooting and how much motion are in the frame. Also, the bigger the sensor and resolution the more you have to work on your shooting technique, very steady hand or shoot on tripod/stick. Only slightest errors can lead in image degradation.

Trust me, I have been shooting medium format since 2008. I have many many early images shot on medium format that are worse than those from my long retired Canon 5D2. What does it matter if medium format has better DR, noise ratio, resolution etc. if you don't nail your focus or have shaky hands. Your image will look like crap. If you don't believe me, go and ask any still photographer shooting medium format.

+1 (big one)

I would second what Thai Christen has said here, and how the history and restructuring of "Team" Phase has worked out.

The CREDO backs are excellent and I would say substantially less expensive than the top flight Phase One backs (substantially more price difference than 25% unless something has changed?) . Leaf and Phase One were able to make the best technologically of what each and the other was lacking (at the time) (good tech transfer and swap) etc. and really important to keep the Mamiya hardware end of things alive also IMO. At that time Hasselblad were kind of "Tanking"/in real trouble and their products seemed to be suffering at that point but seems they have gotten some nice things back together as it would of course have been a shame to see Hassy disappear all together.

For my work large sensor is really important matched to best glass for the application. My applications are mainly technical where target resolution is a critical factor, and acreage of mega pixels is really important.

I/we have had superb results from Leaf Credo backs be they 50Mp to 80Mp using a Schneider Digitar (symmetric type lenses like a 43mm f5.6 /Apo Digitar XL , especially stopped down to about f-11 amazing + virtually zero distortion and stunning MTFs/resolution of complex subjects). [Lenses specifically designed for high res digital imaging].

Personally I think there is very little glass on the planet that is able to get the best out of 80Mp on up... (unless one is using very specialized lenses), So 50 to 60Mp on roughly medium format - work out really well, but beyond that the way the individual MTFs stack up in an additive way there is kind of diminishing returns IMO . 50 to 60 Mp is I think the sweet-spot for 'Data efficiency" on MF and anything beyond that is 20 to 40 more MP of blurr and chromatic artifacts and things that most lenses simply can't achieve or have to be digitally corrected afterwards introducing "Unknowns" and undefinable artifacts into the data/imagery.

In some cases a large sensor, exceptional glass and 50 to 80 MP is really needed and nothing else will do for very demanding applications...

Although I am super interested in what the Fujifilm GFX 50s can bring for $6500.00 base price? That is also a game changer to the MF submarket.


I totally get the DSMC concept to capture that exquisite moment, but for some "Mission critical" applications smaller sensors and smaller number of photo-sites is simply not practical and a more "square-er" format and frame is needed. I.e more K in the vertical direction of the frame/ more square -ish aspect ratio like 4x5 etc.

[I love the physical and mechanical form factor of cameras that are square and narrow (face on) like a lot of Medium format cameras as well as RED DSMC II (form factor) as integrated (non removable) grips are a PITA IMO, especially for technical applications and VFX].


CREDO and LEAF good/ excellent sensors / backs.

 

[Eric Lange]

Red used to have that on their DSMC1 Side handle. Functionality was implemented very late but did work pretty well tough unfortunately not with short shutter speeds. I have been able to even light motion clips with strobe for special effects. Great feature, missing in the current line of cameras.
BTW, that Leaf / Mamiya combo is an excellent choice but Mamiya never had own backs, they have always been Leaf. P1 acquired a lot of color science from Leaf.

Cheers,

Ulf

Mamiya did have their own backs (all be it briefly I think it was a Z1 7B or something* ? (I'll look it up in a mo)), I had one, and before that I had the Kodak backs (as well as the LEAF Aptus backs) and even before that I had the Leaf peltier cooled "Bricks" and filter wheel lol

Really good tip about flash synch and strobe BTW

and YES you are correct about color science from Leaf.

What I liked about Phase One was the mechanical/HW engineering, very solid and geometrically precise and loved their demos where they would put a camera-back in a freezer and then in a toaster oven and then switch on the digital backs and they still worked!.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

* it was the Zd https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=mamiya+zd+back

and I think they had one other model before that maybe? Maybe not?

 

[Mike Finegan]

I have Helium and A7R2 and recently demo'ed the Hasselblad 6d-100c (for stills and digital film).
Love the motion capture of Helium 8K but can't even come close to A7R2 for stills (just what my eyes see) using identical glass.
Of course s35 8k is a different medium than FF 8K even using same Zeiss lenses, but there is more to it than that.
Low pass coverlet on the sensor and maximum 2:1 compression do have an effect on stills. For digital film (just ask Graeme) low pass filtering seems to be required to get best compressor efficiency against Moire. RED is lossless for motion not stills.

The a7R2 obviously pales against the 100M Hasselblad with good Hasselblad glass - but less so than the a7r2 to Epic W (IMHO).
A well crafted shot with the a7r2 can be 'baby medium format'

Fortunately for RED lol, Hasselblad doesn't understand digital cinema. They use one size fits all subsampling/cropping and compression - with output (ultimately) being DNG but in a display resolution of 3820x2160. While the huge Sony sensor (almost 12K!) is triple oversampled!! to get the UHD output - it would be amazing if just Nyquist criterion (2x) was applied. But I suspect they can't process that much data transfer at 24/25 frames per second.

Anyway long story short there is still no one camera to rule them all across both motion and stills.

 

[Thai Christen]

Red used to have that on their DSMC1 Side handle. Functionality was implemented very late but did work pretty well tough unfortunately not with short shutter speeds. I have been able to even light motion clips with strobe for special effects. Great feature, missing in the current line of cameras.
BTW, that Leaf / Mamiya combo is an excellent choice but Mamiya never had own backs, they have always been Leaf. P1 acquired a lot of color science from Leaf.

Cheers,

Ulf

I totally missed that. So what was the fastest flash sync speed on Dsmc1? 1/125?
Ashame RED did not incorporate this feature into their Dsmc2 line. Maybe fututure upgrade in Side Handle or Base Expander II?

Before Mamiya went into partnership with Leaf, Mamiya had their ZM and DM digital back line. But I was not convinced.
And true, Phase copied Leaf excellent color science which Leaf was famous for.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

2:1 compression has no effect on the image. At that point the compression is lossless. Two weeks back I did a resolution stress-test and there was negligible effect on resolution at 8:1 R3D compression on Helium, manifesting more as a slight change in chroma noise on highly saturated colours than any measurable loss of resolution.

OLPF is the major factor, along with "technique" (as in achieving critical focus and making sure there's no unwanted camera motion, and sharpening with raw development).

All sampled systems should really have a low pass filter (be it in the realm of audio or video or otherwise) as aliasing artifacts can be quite ugly. For stills shooting, people have been relaxing / removing OLPF to achieve more sharpness (some video people remove them because they're expensive) and for stills people, they may think that's reasonable if they're only shooting really shallow DOF or natural subjects without hard edges. The reason we don't relax the OLPF is because it plays havoc with broadcast compression (aliases are added false detail and move in the opposite direction to real motion), and while aliases can be hand-fixable in PhotoShop on the odd still where they may occur, that's not doable for motion video.

Graeme

 

[Thai Christen]

Mamiya did have their own backs (all be it briefly I think it was a Z1 7B or something* ? (I'll look it up in a mo)), I had one, and before that I had the Kodak backs (as well as the LEAF Aptus backs) and even before that I had the Leaf peltier cooled "Bricks" and filter wheel lol

Really good tip about flash synch and strobe BTW

and YES you are correct about color science from Leaf.

What I liked about Phase One was the mechanical/HW engineering, very solid and geometrically precise and loved their demos where they would put a camera-back in a freezer and then in a toaster oven and then switch on the digital backs and they still worked!.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

* it was the Zd https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=mamiya+zd+back

and I think they had one other model before that maybe? Maybe not?

It looks like you have been with medium format for quite a while too

Another thing worth mentioning is that Leaf was the first company launching a touch screen UI interface into their Leaf Aptus digital back series. And for those using the old Hasselbald V system, Leaf Aptus series were the only digital backs that allow you to mount horizontal or vertical. That means when you switch from shooting horizontal to vertical, you just unplug the back from camera body, rotate it 90 degree and then plug it back to camera body. This is awesome. With other backs, you have to flip camera body and lens 90 degree, which looks awkward for Hasselblad V. Not even Hasselbald were able to implement this feature into their digital back for the V system.

 

[Ulf Krentz]

Mamiya did have their own backs (all be it briefly I think it was a Z1 7B or something* ? (I'll look it up in a mo)) snip

I´m pretty sure somebody told me the ZD backs were based on Leaf technology back in the day but of course that might be wrong. We started with a Valeo22 / Mamiya RZ which was the first back that was fast enough to shoot fashion. For strobe with DSMC2 it might be possible to extract a flash trigger from the sync and tally outputs. What a shame there is no native support any more. Cheers!

 

[Thai Christen]

I have Helium and A7R2 and recently demo'ed the Hasselblad 6d-100c (for stills and digital film).
Love the motion capture of Helium 8K but can't even come close to A7R2 for stills (just what my eyes see) using identical glass.
Of course s35 8k is a different medium than FF 8K even using same Zeiss lenses, but there is more to it than that.
Low pass coverlet on the sensor and maximum 2:1 compression do have an effect on stills. For digital film (just ask Graeme) low pass filtering seems to be required to get best compressor efficiency against Moire. RED is lossless for motion not stills.

The a7R2 obviously pales against the 100M Hasselblad with good Hasselblad glass - but less so than the a7r2 to Epic W (IMHO).
A well crafted shot with the a7r2 can be 'baby medium format'
.

What shooting criteria did you apply? Did you shoot exact the same scene with the same shutterspeed using similar FOV? How about your technique, all handheld or on stick, manual focus? Otherwise the comparison would be unfair and no justice to EpicW.

I mostly shoot people and handheld (mostly in motion), manual focus. Unless I have a very bad technique shooting medium format, my still images from my EpicW are on par to the ones from my Mamiya Leaf Credo or Hasselblad V/Leaf Aptus.

 

[Ulf Krentz]

I totally missed that. So what was the fastest flash sync speed on Dsmc1? 1/125?
snip

1/75s was the shortest for a single flash. Dialing in shorter times resulted in a black frame. Not sure for triggering in sequences, might have just been the first flash that did not show up, but I don´t remember... As you usually freeze motion with the strobe itself it is not too limiting with studio work but obviously has limitations in a bright environment.
You might also check these threads: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?137495-Stills-and-Strobes http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?123918-Smoking-Kills/page2 http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?123926-Played-around-with-Strobes-for-this-Hair-Shots

 

[Thai Christen]

1/75s was the shortest for a single flash. Dialing in shorter times resulted in a black frame. Not sure for triggering in sequences, might have just been the first flash that did not show up, but I don´t remember... As you usually freeze motion with the strobe itself it is not too limiting with studio work but obviously has limitations in a bright environment.
You might also check these threads: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?137495-Stills-and-Strobes http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?123918-Smoking-Kills/page2 http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?123926-Played-around-with-Strobes-for-this-Hair-Shots

1/75? Ufff, that wouldn't have done it for me anyway because most of my still jobs back in the days were most exclusively outdoor using strobes.

Btw, saw that link and the video. Looks awesome and very clever workaround solution.

 

[Eric Lange]

It looks like you have been with medium format for quite a while too

Another thing worth mentioning is that Leaf was the first company launching a touch screen UI interface into their Leaf Aptus digital back series. And for those using the old Hasselbald V system, Leaf Aptus series were the only digital backs that allow you to mount horizontal or vertical. That means when you switch from shooting horizontal to vertical, you just unplug the back from camera body, rotate it 90 degree and then plug it back to camera body. This is awesome. With other backs, you have to flip camera body and lens 90 degree, which looks awkward for Hasselblad V. Not even Hasselbald were able to implement this feature into their digital back for the V system.

Yes long time I guess you could say right from the beginning... The original Leaf "Brick" and solid sate cooling created an extra problem of condensation forming on the sensor's surface/glass window but dynamic range was good . If I remember rightly the photo sites were 15 micron apart (but may have been 9 micron in actual size) 2048 x 2048... Three wratten R,G,B gel filters on a synchronized filer wheel... LOL I/we had to build a lot of crazy equipment and mechanical positioning systems and track-ways for imaging in the field to mosaic very precisely 125 shots into one single very precise image for historic site recording conservation work. I still maintain each individual shot was the best 4 million pixels on the planet if you could align the three color separated channels properly LOL. The things we gripe about today! You young'ens don't know how lucky you have it... ;-)

Totally agree with the rotational design features of the Leaf Aptus and the use of a flat ribbon cable for that, quite brave and still maintain decent bandwidth and response times.

Maybe I'll dig up some old slides of that field project as it was pretty insane what we had to build, (as I can't find imagery on the web of the Leaf Digital Camera back on a Hasselblad ) almost pre-dates the "Inter-web".

At the time everyone thought I was insane for not shooting film, but there were technical and physical constraints that made the mosaicking of all these shots practical as we were in tight spaces but over a large area where long shots would not be possible and also the project was to see whether "in field digital capture" could be accomplished to yield practical results and be of sufficient quality... So we had to have workstations (Apple Quadras) in the field and huge CRTs etc. and magneto optical drives so we could verify real time adequate and complete recording and capture as well as experimenting with diagrammatic overlays (in photoshop 2.0??? ) digitally for restoration work... It was a good proof of concept... to validate real time in field digital workflows and processes in challenging environments. The equipment seemed to eat plenty of dust and grime no problem.

Now I build high precision 3d + VR "reality capture systems" and associated software + HW that pretty much do the same thing but in full three dimensions (absolutely life like, not computery looking at all and very high res over large areas in 3d). Hope to roll out systems that other folks (other than ourselves) can run with before the of end of time; but the HYDROGEN platform is a great accelerator for advanced techniques (looking forward to that) and I think we have some goodies that can make that platform shine/be pretty awesome too (in any case HYDROGEN will be a really useful day to day device for us and others we sell to/provide services for). And we have made sure the mechanical elements we have are RED DSMC II compatible (of course!) .



Cool to know there's some other long time Medium Format digital shooters here on RED too..!

Cheers

Eric.

 

[Eric Lange]

2:1 compression has no effect on the image. At that point the compression is lossless. Two weeks back I did a resolution stress-test and there was negligible effect on resolution at 8:1 R3D compression on Helium, manifesting more as a slight change in chroma noise on highly saturated colours than any measurable loss of resolution.

OLPF is the major factor, along with "technique" (as in achieving critical focus and making sure there's no unwanted camera motion, and sharpening with raw development).

All sampled systems should really have a low pass filter (be it in the realm of audio or video or otherwise) as aliasing artifacts can be quite ugly. For stills shooting, people have been relaxing / removing OLPF to achieve more sharpness (some video people remove them because they're expensive) and for stills people, they may think that's reasonable if they're only shooting really shallow DOF or natural subjects without hard edges. The reason we don't relax the OLPF is because it plays havoc with broadcast compression (aliases are added false detail and move in the opposite direction to real motion), and while aliases can be hand-fixable in PhotoShop on the odd still where they may occur, that's not doable for motion video.

Graeme

I's second that, Graeme Nattress writes: " Making sure there's no unwanted camera motion "...

Any vibration or rotational vibration and associated motion really is "Death" to technical photography... We tend to use much heavier and over designed fixtures and "mechanical positioning systems" just for that reason.

Even when I was student operating a very rigid photographic (film) copy stand on the 4th floor of a very sturdy building next to train tracks (outside) we would have to time our exposures and shots around trains not being there, as the vibrations would be sufficient to soften / un-sharpen some of our work especially with slide/diapositives.

I definitely agree with some of the sentiments about some cameras DSLR types over sharpening in-camera and also the possibility of chronic aliasing artifacts being much more noticeable on "Moving" sequences and then scrunched to broadcast formats... Even in the early days of HDTV / digital chronic aliasing artifacts like zig-zagging on near horizontal lines, like large steps of a buildings or monument (kind of thing) were very noticeable but "brushed under the carpet" by various industry "Big wigs" in the interests of "Progress"... Just literally looks like chunky pixles cascading over repeating horizontal lines... is kinda ugly / distracting .

That's a good analogy (@Graeme) between audio, as that "Scrunched -up" sound-space almost creeps me out... feels "tinny" and claustrophobic / unreal... Same with imagery (sometimes)... Low pass filter for grown-ups ;-)

 

[Mike Finegan]

Well if I could get a Helium sensor without low pass filter coverlet I might be able to see that Maybe you can help me get LOL
And I am only talking about stills with perfect lighting and technique not motion. For first few frames of RED still capture the act of pushing the button does sometime introduce noticeable vibration on stills even when on a heavy tripod. But I mean when everything is perfect. Same everything including lens, but very different sensor sizes.

When RED submitted unit for DXO test I thought I saw reference to single frame no compression special unit being used. If that is the case there must have been some advantage to go through all that trouble? Did that unit have low pass coverlet?

And my comparison is not apples and apples even with low pass filter coverlet - Weapon VV at 2:1 compared to A7R2 full raw and med fmt like Leica SL007 and Hasselblad 6D100C would be better stills test.
For motion there is no comparison at all - none of the medium format cameras can match helium.

 

[Thai Christen]

For first few frames of RED still capture the act of pushing the button does sometime introduce noticeable vibration on stills even when on a heavy tripod.

You are kidding, right? This cause much less vibration (if any??) than the slapping of the huge mirror of a Hasselblad V or PhaseOne/Mamiya 645DF
You compare to A7R2 which is a mirrorless camera with 5-axis stabilisation within the body. Shooting on medium format or Helium stills mode handheld with manual focus on the other hand requires pristine technique to get the best and sharpest image. Even in good lighting. A7R2 is no comparison because it is much more forgiving to user error. My two cents.