HASSELBLAD CAMERAS IN MASSIVE PRICE CRASH

Mark1 wrote in post #14465484
Canon and Nikon are not even close to encroaching on their turf. Once you work with a MF camera you will see what I mean. Its is not about the number of pixels. Put in all you want, you will never get the same look. It is wholey and entirely about the sensor size. This is what gifes MF photography its distinctive look. I would rather shoot a 22mp MF camera than a 36mp 35mm format any day...

Those who think FFDSLR's will encroach on MFDSLR's are the true
amatures who think they will encroach on professional photographers.

'PIECE OF CHEESE IN MASSIVE FRENCH STICK'

EL_PIC wrote in post #14491154
Those who think FFDSLR's will encroach on MFDSLR's are the true
amatures who think they will encroach on professional photographers.

Ture professionals are never elitists.

pyrojim wrote in post #14495393
Ture professionals are never elitists.

If only that were true...

rjx wrote in post #14490376
Any existing or potential Hasselblad user that abandons them for the Nikon D800 was only using Hasselblad for the megapixels and not the other superb qualities Hasselblad medium format cameras offer.

What superb qualities might those be? =p The abundance of auto focus points? Super-speedy AF? Awesome walmart-level plastic build quality? The designed-by-a-third-grader ergonomics? Totally awesome battery life? Just checking... =p They aren't like the old Hasselblads or the Contax 645 bodies or something...the Phase one bodies are also pretty shocking--supposedly they are developing a new one that will change that, though.

People buy these things for one reason: the sensor gives sweet results at base ISO. Guarantee the 5d2/1dS3/D800 have hurt hslbld/P1 more than they have hurt each other.

in the 90s, pretty much every wedding was done on medium format (maybe before that, but I wasn't around). Now it's probably 90% FF digital. That can't have been good for the medium format companies. The trend continues as the cost of entry into medium format is half a year's salary and FF digital is good enough at low ISO and much better at low light.

Legion5 wrote in post #14490402
35mm Lenses have a maximum resolution of 28.3 megapixels based on any current 35mm lens design including all supertelephotos, macro lenses and tilt shift lenses.

Medium format lenses based on current lens designs have a maximum resolution around 70 megapixels.

If anything the next revolution in pro dslr cameras will be to put medium format sensors and lenses into a 35mm body package.

The DSLRs with pointlessly large megapixel counts do very little to bridge the gap between medium format and 35mm image quality and resolution.

End of story.

Would love to know where you got this information from.

Mark1 wrote in post #14465484
Canon and Nikon are not even close to encroaching on their turf. Once you work with a MF camera you will see what I mean. Its is not about the number of pixels. Put in all you want, you will never get the same look. It is wholey and entirely about the sensor size. This is what gifes MF photography its distinctive look. I would rather shoot a 22mp MF camera than a 36mp 35mm format any day.

It is true they have a small market. But they do very well in that market. I do agree they may feel the loss in the entry level camera to the new 35mm full frame set. But I doubt they are overly concerned. its 2 seperate markets. My guess is the price reduction means the next generation of body is about to come out.

True enough, well said.

Jahled wrote in post #14465258
Some one just dragged me over to Ken Rockwell's website for a read, which actually turned out to be quite interesting. I appreciate he has quite a controversial reputation as a camera reviewer, but his current anti-Nikon rants are actually quite interesting; especially if you go back a bit and read his admittance he may have been a bit over excited when the 36MB D800 was announced in the D4 review

so Ken now hates Nikon and the D800.
I find that hard to believe (but I won't click on Ken's website to find out!)

watt100 wrote in post #14510068
so Ken now hates Nikon and the D800.
I find that hard to believe (but I won't click on Ken's website to find out!)

He gets $ per click so he will do whatever to draw the audience's attention.

Echo Johnson wrote in post #14501137

Legion5 wrote in post #14490402
35mm Lenses have a maximum resolution of 28.3 megapixels based on any current 35mm lens design including all supertelephotos, macro lenses and tilt shift lenses.

Medium format lenses based on current lens designs have a maximum resolution around 70 megapixels.

If anything the next revolution in pro dslr cameras will be to put medium format sensors and lenses into a 35mm body package.

The DSLRs with pointlessly large megapixel counts do very little to bridge the gap between medium format and 35mm image quality and resolution.

End of story.

Would love to know where you got this information from.

I do consulting with various review websites on how to measure and test cameras and I picked up this info a while ago when reviewers started testing crop cameras with super high pixel desities, I can't really say which one source it came from, but if you look at any review looking at resolution, such as photozone, lenstip etc reviews no lens excedes 28.3 megapixels of resolution. In fact most of the charts on those websites don't even go to the maximum resolution of the bodies they use any more on crop cameras because no lenses score that high.

The only direct test of the maximum resolution of current crop lenses I know of was a test done by lensrentals on the D800 which shows that while using the best lenses they didn't even come close to the D800's maximum resolution. (I beleive it was called D800 resolution test).

It's also worth mentioning that no zoom lens design outresolves 22 megapixels for more than 10% of it's imaging area.

Hope that helps.

You can't assign a lens a megapixel value that it will resolve, that simply doesn't make any sense, lol.

We are nowhere near the point where having more samples won't give us better data. 36mp gives more detail than 22mp on just about any modern lens. 100mp will give more detail than 36mp on most good modern lenses, eventually we'll hit a point where the difference will be negligible, but we aren't there yet.

As someone who uses both medium format digital and 35mm digital, I believe that the current price drop is a combination of things, not entirely attributed to the most recent offerings of canon and nikon.

First off, the H4d camera system that is now on sale, was released in 2010, the H3d was in 2008, and so on. This could be one implication of an attempt to clear stock before a supposed 'H5d' comes out. As of now that is just a speculation.

Secondly, despite what canon and nikon currently offer, even considering the D800 with its 36mp sensor, it still does not match the quality of medium format digital. The current hasselblad HC fujinon lenses are actually sharper then the old CF zeiss lenses, and the way they render an image is actually sufficiently better than any canon I have used (I have owned several canon flagship bodies, as well as lenses and still believe the hasselblad 80 f2.8 'kit' lens blows any of them out of the water. Part of it is optical design, another part is the quality of the glass and the actual lens. Quality control is much greater than canon or nikon who create and pump out lenses at massive volumes. Canon lenses in particular are 'sharp' but ultimately lack tonal quality, I will admit that the nikon G lenses, in particular the 85 f1.4 G do come close to the D800's resolving power though.

Another thing to consider is as someone previously mentioned, a lenses resolving power. If you use a not so good lens on a large MP count body, it really shows. Again having shot with and tested a D800, the G lenses performed well, typical other lenses really started to fall apart on the larger sensor, but by no means did it compare to a Phase One digital back with a Fujinon lens in front of it. If anything, Hasselblad has to worry about Phase, because they are currently the leading medium format digital entity (they have acquired both Mamiya, Leaf, and work closely with schneider)

Lastly, for professional use, medium format digital has no second (at least in regards to digital)

Most professional photographers are typically going to also be using profoto or broncolor lighting, with all the modifiers to make the light look great, even on location. Having the high sync speeds that only medium format offers with its leaf shutter lenses is a huge advantage. Lets see any canon or nikon body shoot at up to 1/1600 with a legitimate studio strobe firing and syncing with the flash. I am not talking about using a speed light and high speed sync, that won't cut it in a broncolor para 330. Also for a professional using this type of equipment, using a Phase One IQ180 delivering 80MP files which can be blown up to billboard size, as well as the back having a touch screen that is up to par with an iPhone 4s, makes it a great combination. As for battery life, most of the professionals that use these cameras shoot tethered into capture one, where the back is powered by the firewire cable.

Now, if you have read all of this you may think, sure 35mm can't do a lot of that, but it can do so much more!

Very true, 35mm cameras dominate in some fields, but not all. This includes: frame rate, ISO, focusing, and lens options.

If you are shooting an event such as a wedding, or a sporting event, you want a body that can hammer out frames for hours on end, can handle any lighting conditions the world may throw at you, and be able to capture that precise moment that counts. That is why most professional photographers that shoot medium format digital, also own a 35mm camera, despite it being Canon or Nikon. Don't forget video, these cameras can do high definition video in an affordable package that mostly anyone can afford these days.

Not everyone can afford to shoot with a high end camera like Hasselblad, Phase One, Red One, or Arri, but the high end professionals do still use them and there will be a market for them. A perfect example is the new Marvel Avengers movie was shot with Arri Alexa cameras (100k+ digital 4k cameras that are better than RED) but still used Canon 5d Mark IIs for a lot of the smaller action scenes. Why you may ask? It's small, portable, and costs 1/40 of just 1 Arri, that's much easier for them to accept the camera getting damage or trashed.

35mm becomes increasingly competitive, but the pros still use the pro systems.

Sorry for the long post, but it needed to be said.

woos wrote in post #14516391
You can't assign a lens a megapixel value that it will resolve, that simply doesn't make any sense, lol.

...

Certainly it does. Any lens has a minimum angular resolution (how far apart in angle a point must be before the lens can detect the difference). Applying that and the lens focal point to the size of the sensor tells you how close the pixels can be and still resolve more detail. What those numbers actually are I have no idea, but the principle is not that complex.