An irreverent look at the Quattro vs Merrill thing....

D Cox wrote:

absquatulate wrote:

D Cox wrote:

A good analysis.

I disagree about using the sdQH for copying film negatives. This is what I bought the camera for and I am completely satisfied with the results (using the Olympus 80mm macro lens). It handles high contrast negs very well, and low contrast ones are no problem. The DNG output is what makes the camera usable for this purpose.

That may be the case for you, but the Merrill does it better for me, with a wider range in the highlights, where the most data actually is. It's also dead easy to set up in comparison to the SDQ, levelling the camera and pointing it down onto a lightpad. It's not that the SDQ/H is bad, I just find the DP3M better for that particular job.

I spent some time trying to get the DP3M to work for copying. Good but not quite good enough. The sdQH fits nicely onto the ChromaPro that I use as a light source and bellows.

This is the ChromaPro set up with a NEX-5N for copying slides. The sdQH fits nicely where the NEX goes, once you have a suitable adapter. For strips of film I use a neg carrier from my Beseler enlarger.

The alternative would be the Sony A7r2, but the sdQH is half the price, and money is very tight these days.

In general photography, on the whole, I find highlights to be less of a problem with the Quattro than with the Merrill. Shadows are still too black.

That doesn't match what I've found at all, the Merrills are clearly superior in terms of highlight recovery, and the reverse is true for the shadows, maybe the H has an advantage over the Q?

I guess it's a case of whatever works for you, my set-up is a lot simpler, a tripod (inverted), with my camera shooting down onto negatives on a cheap thin lightpad (used for sketching apparently, an Ipad could do the same job). I find the histogram, after photographing the negatives, has a wider distribution of tones from the Merrill shots than what I can get from the SDQ. This bears out when I carry out any digital corrections to the shots. I can pull more detail in the highlights from the Merrill shots, as I would expect to according to my findings in my OP. The shadows are not a problem from Medium format film shots, nothing the Merrill can't handle at all. When I move onto MF colour I suspect the Quattro my prove to be better, but we'll see.