Day 4 - Five in Five

[davidc]

It certainly prompted me to read about it this morning. An oddity of a camera.

Do you have examples of the image at full resolution? I'd be interested to see its "medium format quality" in a 14mp APS-C sensor, and luminous landscape rather petulantly said its not going to bother giving comparisons I'd be curious to see how it stacks up against a normal camera, especially when the sigma marketing material says it has dslr quality in a body smaller than a dslr . While I in know way mean to disparage your kit, the skeptic in me wonders why if it is so capable then how come no one else has reproduced/emulated it (even the d800e is different), why it isn't as widely adopted/available/advertised and, maybe most tellingly for me, why don't you seem to have used it much (like with the PAD project). I'm all for buying kit that you simply enjoy shooting with (like film cameras or the leica) but revert back to proper kit for serious work. Just makes me wonder about it. Why not get a medium format film camera for a fraction of the price and with far less hassle associated with shooting & PP workflow?

Strikes me as a peculiar little package

[davidc]

Just to clarify - it sounds very interesting but evidently hasn't set the camera world on fire. If it was good I would want one, don't get me wrong. But it makes me wonder, is it as good as you suggest - or maybe instead so much better than normal kit to warrant using - or is it really more of a curio/toy?

Even if the image quality is mind blowing, are the drawbacks such that it is condemned to the sidelines for being "almost there"?

There's no right/wrong answer . And googling reviews about it is certainly very interesting (and quite fun, with opinion polarised so far!)

[Mike Farley]

In the first instance you need to look at this video with Nick Devlin. I'll answer more fully once I have some time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3VjyHQiqdE

[davidc]

Mono conversion in Photoshop using the gradient layer method.

Missed this first time around, what do you mean by this?

[davidc]

When I tried with a larger aperture the shutter was around 1/400s and I did see a darker band on the lower third of the image, although it wasnt completely black, which I thought is meant to happen

Missed this too

No, this is caused by the the shutter curtains (of which your camera has two) moving faster than the burst of flash in the scene. What happens is current 1 moves down the scene and a period of time later curtain 2 follows it - this is how we get stupidly quick 1/8000th sec shutter speeds for example. However when your scene is lit by flash such that most of the illumination comes from the flash, if the shutter speed is > the sync speed of you camera (usually 1/160th or 1/200th sec) then it catches the first or second shutter curtain in the frame.

The trick is to adjust the power settings of the flash, your aperture & ISO to render the scene - keep you shutter fixed at, or just below, sync speed. e.g. this photo of mine from last year -


Il Vino Italiano - 29/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

Exif for this is f/10, 1/200th sec and iso100. I shot it at night on my kitchen floor with the lights off. Without the flash, taking the shot of the scene with these settings generated a plain black frame. WITH the flash, the action is frozen because of the available light, regardless how fast the shutter moved. There is only enough light for a split second to expose properly, about 1/10,000th of a second, and for the rest of the 1/200th sec of the exposure the scene was black. If you go faster than the sync speed then for part of that split second your shutter MAY get caught in the shot. You might get lucky and it won't show but more often than not, part of it does get captured.

One thing that's interesting is that changing the "power" setting on your flash doesn't alter how bright the burst of light is. It just changes how long light of that fixed intensity is emitted.

[Mike Farley]

Mono conversion in Photoshop using the gradient layer method.

Missed this first time around, what do you mean by this?

It's a simple technique, steps as follows:

a. Select the Gradient Adjustment Layer (it's at bottom right of the options)
b. Ensure Foreground colour is set to black (press D)
c. Click on Gradient Map in the Properties box and select first option Foreground to Background
d. Adjust contrast as necessary with a Curves adjustment layer

It gives a very pleasing conversion.

[Mike Farley]

This is the other image I was considering for the day, the precints of Canterbury Cathedral at night.