A Canon user considering an A900 for studio use

[Henry Richardson]

The Canon 1D series has got a "built for eternity" feel about them,
which neither the 5D nor the A900 has; but for my purposes, cameras
of the A900 (or 5DI or 5DII or D700) level works just fine, since the
pictures from these are exceptional and are not impacted by the
camera's "build".

This is just my point of view, but a DSLR that is "built for eternity" is not as interesting as in the film days -- unless you need a very tough camera in your daily use. The problem with a "built for eternity" DSLR is that the insides (sensor, associated electronics, firmware) are not "built for eternity" since in a year or two technology will have improved so much that even if the body is still fine most people will want a new camera. The OP is a perfect example!

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[hhh2]

How do you like the operational aspects of A900? Maybe, compared to the 1D series? According to what I read A900's focusing seems to be very good and most functions are responsive. Also, I am aware that the view finder is nice.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[hhh2]

Andrea, that sounds great. Thank you. I shoot with tungsten (I'm
just comfortable to be able to see what I shoot. I got a few Tota
lights) and I usually use f11 for enough dof to get the piece in
focus with a second or two exposure (I use 50mm). The pieces are
usually 6 to 12 feet away. Is this sort of routine easily be done by
a MFDB setup with 80mm lens?

Since I am totally new to MF, I would certainly want to go for one
that's easy to operate and reliable. That's why I thought of those
packaged deals. They all make it sounds easy to get into and the
prices are lower than they used to be (still quite high, yes...).
But If I decide that MFDB is the way, I will have much to learn, I
guess. Is it that much different from using 35mm bodies in studio
settings?

Well, I really should hold my horses for now and wait to see your
comparisons between the P30 and the A900...

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

I read a little bit about what I asked above. I was vaguely aware that depth of field will be different. And I guess going MF makes it harder to get things all in focus. Could anybody tell me how hard it will be in my case?

I was also not too conscious about diffraction issues. I am not too sure that stopping down to f11 with my 50mm with Canon has been a good thing in terms of resolution... I probably have been compromising the quality somewhat. With the size of the pieces I have I should be able to open up the aperture a little more. I need to be careful with that, I guess.

My A900 came today! Andrea, did you get your P30 yet?

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[hhh2]

It makes me wonder what it is about 1Ds. You think it's the built quality? I can't quite pin point that. I actually think it might actually easy to shoot with. I like the weight that makes it stable in my hands and I also like good amount of focusing points. Vertical grip is also nice. Anyway, I guess this should be in the canon forum...

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[Henry Richardson]

My wife and I fell in love with Tokyo and we love it so much that we
are moving to Tokyo sometime this spring. Studying japanese at the
moment.

I like Japan and Tokyo very much too! I lived in Tokyo 1990-93, 1996-97, 2004, and 2007. Also, since 1985 I have travelled to Japan many times. Good luck with your Japanese studies! I studied Japanese full-time at schools in Tokyo in 1992, 1996-97, 2004, and 2007. Do you know what part of Tokyo you will be living in? I have lived at Takadanobaba (Shinjuku-ku), Hatagaya (Shibuya-ku), Tokorozawa (Saitama-ken), and Motohasunuma (Itabashi-ku). How long do you expect to live in Japan? Japanese people are wonderful and you are going to enjoy your live there a lot! Just keep an open mind and remember that every country (including your own) has its good points and bad points so choose to focus on the good points!

I wish I could join friends at an izakaya for a bounenkai! Kampai!!!

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Henry Richardson]

By the way, I have many Tokyo photos in my Japan gallery:

http://www.bakubo.com

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[hhh2]

Thank you for sharing the photos, Henry. Impressive traveling records! I'll go back and check out more.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[roweraay]

I think the operational aspects are just fine in the A900 and Minolta ergonomics (which is what the Sony Alpha is based on) are second to none. You will however need to acclimate to it a bit, but once you do so, everything works like second nature. The AF is definitely not the 1D class of AF but then again, the price difference is not even close. The A900's AF is, IMO, better than the one in the 5D (1 and 2).

Yes, the 100% view finder of the A900, is big and bright and larger than the 1Ds, 1DSMKII and the 5D (1 and 2). Of course the 5D-level viewfinder are not only smaller and less bright, but are also sub-100%.

How do you like the operational aspects of A900? Maybe, compared to
the 1D series? According to what I read A900's focusing seems to be
very good and most functions are responsive. Also, I am aware that
the view finder is nice.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[roweraay]

I agree a 100%. This is definitely my view too. Unlike a film camera, where an "eternally lasting build" matters, in the world of electronics, a cutting-edge camera's electronic innards get out-dated within a couple of years, even though the camera itself may be usable and generate pictures just as it did, when new. Even when people talk about a 100,000 shutter life-span vs a 300K shutter lifespan, a quick check on what it would cost to replace a shutter will reveal that it should be in the $150-200 ballpark.

I pointed this out to people who were praising the Leica M8's "build" and making nonsensical statements that Leica has built the M8 for future upgradeability. Obviously utter nonsense ! Once you start changing the electronic innards (buffers, memory, data pipeline, image processors, firmware, rear LCD etc), it makes better sense to start with a fresh design than try to fit all of that into a legacy body that was built for a different era or deliberately limit yourself to what you can do with an old body.

What does a film Canon 1D-class body cost ? 1.5K ? The equivalent Digital 1DS body costs $8K. That $6.5K difference is essentially in the electronics. So engineering "upgradeability" into the cheaper $1.5K portion and deliberately limiting what you can do onto the rest of the $6.5K, is not smart and camera companies clearly know that.

But having said all that, you will realize when you use a 1DSMKIII type body or a Nikon D3 class body, that the whole product is definitely a cut above the more budget priced bodies like the Canon 5D or the Nikon D700 or the Sony A900, in terms of its innate abilities and overall usability. But a significant number of the shooting public, just don't need the additional abilities that these high-end bodies provide.

The Canon 1D series has got a "built for eternity" feel about them,
which neither the 5D nor the A900 has; but for my purposes, cameras
of the A900 (or 5DI or 5DII or D700) level works just fine, since the
pictures from these are exceptional and are not impacted by the
camera's "build".

This is just my point of view, but a DSLR that is "built for
eternity" is not as interesting as in the film days -- unless you
need a very tough camera in your daily use. The problem with a
"built for eternity" DSLR is that the insides (sensor, associated
electronics, firmware) are not "built for eternity" since in a year
or two technology will have improved so much that even if the body is
still fine most people will want a new camera. The OP is a perfect
example!

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[Henry Richardson]

Thank you for sharing the photos, Henry. Impressive traveling
records! I'll go back and check out more.

Yes, I love travel.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[andrea buso]

andrea buso wrote:

I like Japan and Tokyo very much too! I lived in Tokyo 1990-93,
1996-97, 2004, and 2007. Also, since 1985 I have travelled to Japan
many times. Good luck with your Japanese studies! I studied
Japanese full-time at schools in Tokyo in 1992, 1996-97, 2004, and
2007. Do you know what part of Tokyo you will be living in? I have
lived at Takadanobaba (Shinjuku-ku), Hatagaya (Shibuya-ku),
Tokorozawa (Saitama-ken), and Motohasunuma (Itabashi-ku). How long
do you expect to live in Japan? Japanese people are wonderful and
you are going to enjoy your live there a lot! Just keep an open mind
and remember that every country (including your own) has its good
points and bad points so choose to focus on the good points!

I wish I could join friends at an izakaya for a bounenkai! Kampai!!!

Hello, You surely know Japan and speak Japanese very well after all those years. That must have been an incredible experience.

We were thinking of staying 1 or 2 years and we have not decided where we would like to live yet. We like Daikanyama, Tokyo Mid town, Shibaura or some of the areas you mentioned.

When we went for holiday and work we were staying at Shiodome or Shinjuku and we love to hang out at least for a couple of days at the Conrad.

I really like Japanese people their culture and the country is really attracting us. My wife is from Seoul and has been in Tokyo many times and always said she would love to live there for a while. Well, that is going to happen soon..

I love their food and with our local friends we have been to many different restaurants. I'm sure I will have a million more to discover.

I'm Italian and generally I fancy italian food at least once a week. I think Japan is the only place where I could go on for a month without missing a plate of pasta.

I like the atmosphere of those places that Japanese people like to go after work and they serves home made style food, they drink, joke and sing with an atmosphere reminiscent of Italian Osteria.

Interesting thing is that the Michelin guide of 2007 awarded more stars in Tokyo than in any other city in the world. that include any kind of restaurant not just japanese.

I have to be more disciplined with studying japanese because I forget very quickly.... very likely I will take classes once I will be in tokyo.

I'll definitively check your gallery of photos.
thanks.

 

[Henry Richardson]

Hello, You surely know Japan and speak Japanese very well after all
those years. That must have been an incredible experience.

Japanese is a tough language, particularly all the kanji. Good luck! My speaking ability is fairly good, but my big problem is kanji. I study hard, learn new kanji, and then quickly forget many of them. I am in Hawaii these days and when I am not in Japan I just don't need reading and writing much. I do send and receive Japanese e-mails to friends though regularly. Studying in Tokyo at a school is fun though. Always an international group of students in the class.

I love their food and with our local friends we have been to many
different restaurants. I'm sure I will have a million more to
discover.
I'm Italian and generally I fancy italian food at least once a week.
I think Japan is the only place where I could go on for a month
without missing a plate of pasta.

You can find good Italian food in Tokyo too. Japanese like Italian food and, as is pretty much typical, the Japanese are fastidious at trying to get things just right.

I like the atmosphere of those places that Japanese people like to go
after work and they serves home made style food, they drink, joke
and sing with an atmosphere reminiscent of Italian Osteria.

That is an izakaya. Yes, I love them too!

I have to be more disciplined with studying japanese because I forget
very quickly.... very likely I will take classes once I will be in
tokyo.

There are many Japanese language schools in Tokyo. I have always had a great time going to schools in Tokyo and my international group of classmates were always a blast.

I'll definitively check your gallery of photos.

Yes, please do!

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

 

[hhh2]

I really admire you guys for learning Japanese! It was really tough learning English when I came to the States (I moved when I was 18 because of my dad's job)! I could only imagine how it would be to do it the other way. Kanji is rough. I can read most but it's hard to write many thanks to emails. Best of luck for you two!

Andrea, you are an Italian and you have a wife from Korea and you are going to Japan? You are really set in terms of culinary pleasure! That's great. I love Korean food and Italian food as well as Japanese food. Well, I just like to eat and cook.

When I was in college I took a study tour of Italy. And it turned out that I was the only student who participated (small college with not many art student). I was with three art teachers who were just eager to eat good food and enjoy wine, and look at great master pieces of art there. We just went one city to another eating, and enjoying the art. It was such a blast. An amazing country.

Henry, I looked at more photos at your site. You are really enjoying the trips and it was really fun looking at the pictures. Thank you.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[andrea buso]

Andrea, that sounds great. Thank you. I shoot with tungsten (I'm
just comfortable to be able to see what I shoot. I got a few Tota
lights) and I usually use f11 for enough dof to get the piece in
focus with a second or two exposure (I use 50mm). The pieces are
usually 6 to 12 feet away. Is this sort of routine easily be done by
a MFDB setup with 80mm lens?

Since I am totally new to MF, I would certainly want to go for one
that's easy to operate and reliable. That's why I thought of those
packaged deals. They all make it sounds easy to get into and the
prices are lower than they used to be (still quite high, yes...).
But If I decide that MFDB is the way, I will have much to learn, I
guess. Is it that much different from using 35mm bodies in studio
settings?

Well, I really should hold my horses for now and wait to see your
comparisons between the P30 and the A900...

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

I read a little bit about what I asked above. I was vaguely aware
that depth of field will be different. And I guess going MF makes it
harder to get things all in focus. Could anybody tell me how hard it
will be in my case?

I was also not too conscious about diffraction issues. I am not too
sure that stopping down to f11 with my 50mm with Canon has been a
good thing in terms of resolution... I probably have been
compromising the quality somewhat. With the size of the pieces I
have I should be able to open up the aperture a little more. I need
to be careful with that, I guess.

My A900 came today! Andrea, did you get your P30 yet?

Hello, I got it yesterday.

Today I did some lens testing with the mamiya lens on order to asses their capabilities. At the end of the mamiya "run" i made some shots with the a900 and the 85 and 135mm zeiss. Since I took the photos with natural light from the window, there are some discrepancies on exposures. therefore I will not posts these tests, because it will cause more noise from some of the purists that hang around the forums, than anything else.

After Christmas I will set up a test with strobe flash which normally equalize light condition, using the Mamiya AF 150mm (not the last D version) and the 135mm Zeiss for the Sony wich are both the sharpest on their respective canera. the 150 mamya is about a 140mm on the mamiya and DOF it is very similar.

Bear in mind that the 31mp from Phase and Hassy, the 28mp from leaf are a little smaller than the others backs and the difference in DOF is not that large compared to 35mm. This is not medium format film. Let's never forget that.

Yet the shots I got today were all focused properly, with bracket focusing, and I could make myself an idea of where the two systems are. I do not know if you saw some of the comparisons made with hasselblad H3 31mp at the Polish site, which showed that The a900 was very close or even better. That was all nonsense, I think there was something very wrong with those tests. There is a tangible advantage on the 31mp back compared to the 24mp DSLR, on both detail and the way gradients and nuances are reproduced.

Anyway, I hope to post something that could be informative on a few days.

 

[hhh2]

Andrea, I am very anxiously waiting for your report. With your ability to get images out of A900 properly, and with the impressive eyes and skills you have shooting all those photos in your site, I am sure that the testing results would be very informative to many.

I did see the Polish site testing. Although the samples were small, I did think the images from P30 and A900 are more or less equal. Also, I found a thread here comparing P30 and A900 ( http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1037&message=29852201 ) by Douglas Boyd. He also concluded that the A900 produced equal quality image to P30 (actually, the 100% view at the thread heading shows A900 looking more natural to my eyes). I saw numerous responses to these two cases at various sites. Many seemed to share your view that there were problems with the procedures. However, I couldn't find any conclusive posts suggesting how they came to be so off... Does anybody have good quality digital back files that clearly shows what they do?

Also, that leads me back to the question I asked here. Is it much harder to get it right with the digital backs? How hard it is to shoot with MF cameras? That's certainly a serious concern for a person who doesn't have any experience with MF bodies if those experienced shooters can come out with questionable results...

Well, Andrea, I am literally holding my breath waiting for your results!

Happy holidays and I wish you all a wonderful new year.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[hhh2]

A couple of days ago I invited myself over to Andrea's place to check out his gears and some prints. He was generous enough to welcome my desperate request and let me see both his digital back system (Mamiya 645 afd II with a Phase One P30) and his a900 with various Zeiss lenses.

As you've read here and else where they are different systems intended for different purposes. In terms of maneuverability, I felt the a900 was excellent. The auto focus seems pretty quick and snapping nicely. I felt the view finder was nice enough even next to the Mamiya's MF view finder. There were so many little things that can make studio shooting easier also.

In terms of the quality of the prints, I couldn't get really definite answer since Andrea told me that the prints were made quick without adequate adjustments. But it was enough to see that if the print size did not get to really large, the results could be quite matching. The prints I saw were about 11 x 17 inches (right, Andrea?) and after observing carefully I pointed out one of them as P30 since I thought it looked more natural and "together" somehow. As it turned out that one was done by a900. Andrea pointed out that the other one was sharper in details. And yes, even at that small size, the P30 file looked sharper in details. This however really didn't say much about the tonal capability of the two cameras (except for the resolution perhaps) since it was not under strict condition, but to me a lot seemed to do with raw processing than the differences of the cameras if the prints were small (Andrea pointed out that certain colors were more correct with P30 and others can be more correct with the a900).

I also emailed Bill Caulfeild-Browne who did a Luminous Landscape a900 article to ask about usable print size for a900 since he mentioned in the article that the difference between P45 and a900 was quite obvious in terms of resolution and tonality when the print size gets to be big. He kindly answered my question and he was quite confident in saying that about up to 13 x 19 inches, the quality can be quite equal on both systems and difference between 16 x 20 inches might be quite hard to see.

I'm quite impressed with the a900 and while there seems to be better options, I feel that price I pay for such systems and the time I spent to get myself accustomed for the new format might not be justified at this time. While I still keep myself open for other options, for now, I am going with the a900. It will be a good upgrade from my Canon 1Ds MKI.

Thank you all for helping me out.

Best regards,

Hiroyuki

 

[Henry Richardson]

I really admire you guys for learning Japanese! It was really tough
learning English when I came to the States (I moved when I was 18
because of my dad's job)! I could only imagine how it would be to do
it the other way. Kanji is rough. I can read most but it's hard to
write many thanks to emails. Best of luck for you two!

In my case, I have studied Japanese off and on since 1986, but didn't do it seriously until the times I went full-time to Japanese language schools in Tokyo in 1992 (5 months), 1996-97 (12 months), 2004 (3 months), and 2007 (3 months). Last year when I was studying I pretty much didn't even try to learn new kanji though because from long, sad experience I already knew that the huge effort would only result in a lot of hard work and then I would quickly forget the new kanji since I would soon go back to the States. I can't tell you how hard I worked on learning hundreds of kanji in that year of tough studying in 1996-97. I then returned to the States and quickly forgot many, many of the kanji. The first thing that goes is the ability to write them, but even reading slips away also. Of course, I still can read quite a few and when I am back in Japan for extended times a few more come back to me, but most are gone. With e-mail I have the advantage of online kanji dictionaries that I can use.

I haven't done any of my studying for work or any reason other than I have long liked Japan and Japanese people a lot. I worked in Tokyo 1990-93 at a computer company there and had some wonderful co-workers (out of about 500 people at the branch office I was the only non-Japanese). Also, since 1985 just many great experiences. When I lived in California in the 1980s and 1990s I also hosted 4 Japanese exchange students over the years.

When I was in college I took a study tour of Italy. And it turned
out that I was the only student who participated (small college with
not many art student). I was with three art teachers who were just
eager to eat good food and enjoy wine, and look at great master
pieces of art there. We just went one city to another eating, and
enjoying the art. It was such a blast. An amazing country.

It sounds like you had a wonderful experience in Italy. Italy is also one my favorite countries. I hope that in 2009 my wife and I might get back there. I have traveled there 3 times, but my wife was with me on only one of those trips. She loved it too! My wife is Japanese and we met when I was studying in Tokyo in 1996. The 4 months traveling in Europe with backpacks in 2001 was her first experience to do that sort of traveling. Since then I take her sometimes and we have traveled that way in Thailand a couple of times and also Mexico. Sometimes she doesn't accompany me though.

Henry, I looked at more photos at your site. You are really enjoying
the trips and it was really fun looking at the pictures. Thank you.

Yes, I have been traveling for many years. I don't care much about too many possessions which tie me down, but I do care about seeing and experiencing many different cultures in many different places. I have always been a fan of the National Geographic magazine and Life magazine style of photography. It is sort of a photojournalistic style, sort of a street style of photography.

--
Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com