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Contax ND

Kenneth,

I hate to burst you bubble, but the fact that the ND costs more than a car from the 70's is totally irrevelant. Everbody in their own mind has a price to benefit ratio. Yours is 4K. Mine is 6K. Comparing the 645 as 1/4 the cost of the ND is a non-issue. The ND costs alot less to operate, and on some levels offers superior performance. The 645 has some advantages, but they are the advantages of a medium format.

It would be interesting to list the "satisfied" buyers vs the dissatisfied buyers. Your jumping from the ND to the D1X to the D100 seems to indicate more a lack of "understanding" digital technology rather than a reflection on the relative cameras.

michael.

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Marc,

Unfortunately the buffer size issue is a hardware design decision. You will never be able to improve that without changing the hardware. It's like adding more RAM to your PC, except here you would need to change the "motherboard", because there are no chip slots available. Faster media I see as the only way to improve this. Under some circumstances you may be able to sacrifice quality to get speed (e.g. use JPEG 2, which is really quick
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).

The other issues could probably be improved through firmware upgrades, like they did with the 1.07 and 1.08 upgrades.
 
My First Real Shooting Experience

I went out to a wildlife preserve under beautiful sunny conditions (and muddy from previous rain). I came back a happy dude. I have to say, this camera takes pictures every bit as good, actually better, than my old RTS III could when loaded with Reala. I shot at ISO 100 under super contrasty situations with harsh specular sun reflections, and could not hope for better.

POWER SOURCE
I shot about 140 shots in about two hours with the included Sanyo batteries charged with the Powerx charger. After 70 shots, the camera went dead. I was shooting in Continuous drive - I have heard about possible lock-ups in C mode? Turning the switch off then back on restored it, and I was able to shoot another 70 or so more before it went dead again. Another off-on let me shoot another couple before it was really dead. I had more batteries but I was done anyway.

AUTOFOCUS
The sensor selection controls are intuitive and very well designed. I had no problems with the autofocus, except when too close (out of range). Under some low light situations some hunting occured but nothing overtly annoying. As mentioned in other posts, this is not "action photography" response, but I had no problems getting quick focus on swans moving around in a pond with the 70-300 at full tele.

LENSES
Had the 24-85 and 70-300 (not a light lens, but beautifully balanced). No need to elaborate - typical Zeiss excellent quality, sharp, crisp, beautiful tones. No zoom creep or looseness. Flare only when sun straight in front, and then very tight and controlled with little or no degradation of surrounding area. I really like how the display (when set up accordingly) shows you the actual effective f-stop set by the lens mechanism as you zoom in and out.

METERING
I shot everything in straight matrix mode, as I wanted to get a feel for its behavior. A couple of times I also shot with exp compensation to compare. My conclusion is, unless you are doing specific spot metering analysis based on your familiarity with the sensor characteristics, shoot straight. Yes they may look under exposed, but it appears to me this is done intentionally to preserve the extensive tonal range especially at the highlights. Remember we are dealing with a two-phase process, recording and presenting. The two mediums have very different characteristics and need to be optimized independently of each other. In recording you want to optimize the capture of the full range of the specific image. If there are sharp highlights, it's best to under-expose to prevent wash-out.

OVERALL FEEL
Just like using my old Contax equipment - great ergonomics overall. I do wish you could easily see the current ISO though - didn't we use to have a big frame in the back for this?
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PRINTS
I did a quick one-minute monitor gamma calibration to the Kodak 8500 printer so I could judge density. With a quick adjustment to the shot's gamma to bring the sensor's tonal range to the printer's, and minor teaks to brightness, contrast and saturation, I had a great print set up in less than a minute of mouse pushing (trackball rolling in my case). No rocket science here, just good old-fashioned photographic eye-balling. I'm not even using Photoshop - just a cheap $70 organizing & cataloguing program (ThumbPlus). Hell you can use MS Photoeditor which is included with Win NT/2K/XP. Sure, you want to make selective image changes, then there's Photoshop or one of its cheaper variations, but this is a digital darkroom decision based on image content regardless of which camera you use. The results coming out of the Kodak thermal printer could not have made me any happier.

PARTING THOUGHTS
Beautiful prints from difficult images in four minutes from loading the image on the screen to warm print in your hand - enough said. For me, it works beautifully within the parameters indicated. As always, your mileage will vary because your needs may be different in some respects (e.g. Marc). Sure, I'll be pissed if I find waiting a couple more weeks I could have saved $1500!

Cheers,

DJ
 
DJ,

This is my first weekend with the ND. In fact this is my first weekend with an SLR in a very long time. Of course, I have very little digital experience to compare the ND (other than a P&S Kodak - OK on color, baaad on noise). I am absolutely amazed by the entire concept of digital.

I have been able to track exposures without a notebook (Exif reader) and experiment with near instantaneous results. ThumbPlus is a great tool (thanks for the tip) but since I have Photoshop, I used it too (occassional auto image adjust worked just fine for me - my goal is to get the image right the first time, though).

The lenses are amazing, the white balance has been right on target (I used manual settings - indoor, out, flash) and the color saturation seems close to perfect for me (see above). I used the +0.3 compensation recommended by http://lonestardigital.com. I feel that in two days, I have become easily familiar with the technical controls...now all I need to practice is composition and lighting.

By the way, any of you have tips for B&W? I did quick conversions of a few shots to grayscale mode in photoshop and the histograms look good, but if anyone has any special tips, I'd love to know them.

Imagine how relieved I am to have had such quick success given that I paid a near fortune for the equipment. I'll try to post some pix real soon.

Diane
 
Diane,

I should have mentioned I was using the 1.08 profile with + chroma settings. I only experienced a bit of highlight texture loss in the case of the swan, which was about the only pure white thing in the shot and the surroundings fairly dark. Such things are best spot-metered. I set up my "A" custom mode to "+ Chroma" and everything else standard 1.08, and the "B" mode to "+ Chroma" and Soft tone curve. I will try the soft contrast setting next time for such subjects.

I too will post some shots, real "nature cliche" stuff mind you, nothing spectacularly original
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.

DJ
 
DJ,

I also forgot to mention I shot at + chroma. I do need to upgrade from 1.06. I have the strangest problem with the Contax website at my home computer. It freezes up and requires me to reboot. I suppose I can download from my office computer and send the file home. Has anyone else experienced this problem on the Contax site?

I haven't played with the custom settings yet, but I like your idea.

Diane
 
In relation to the ISO 400 issue – it is worth re-reading Frazer Allen’s comments in the “Contaxinfo.com invites Contax to talk about the N-Digital” thread where he states that the camera is designed to be used below ISO 100…

Incidentally, the British Journal of Photography also reported that the N-Digital was being reduced in price from GBP 6000 to GBP 4500. In fact, Robert White has been selling it with the 24-85 for GBP 5000 for some time (although some of the large camera chains still try to sell it for list price).
 
The N-Digital discussion here of late has been interesting regarding the anger over the price drop. While I know it doesn't feel good to know you could have spent less money by waiting, that does happen. In fact, if you had been an early user of the Better Light digital systems, you would have found yourself with an even larger price drop (considerably larger!) than the one we're talking about here. Technology changes, companies need to change with the times to remain solvent, production situations change, user demand changes, the competitors offerings can create difficulties, but they don't do it to tweak noses. A guy I know spent well over US$50K on his first Better Light studio set up some years ago, but in this last year he could get a far better system from Better Light for far less then he initially spent. We make the decisions we make, such is life.

One thing I am curious about though, many people here have mentioned which profile they use for their digital images (in Photoshop), however no one has mentioned how they have calibrated their monitor for viewing. I mean, you can select a profile, but you still don't know if you've viewing properly through your monitor for any tweaks you do. Can someone shed more light (pun intended) on what you have done about this?

Thanks,
Lynn
 
I use Adobe Gamma to calibrate my monitor. You can find this utility under Start -> Settings -> Control Panel if you are using Windows and have Photoshop installed.
 
I tried to use Adobe Gamma but it wouldn't work properly with my dual-head setup. It recognized the two monitors but it would adjust the first monitor when it should have been adjusting the second. I ended up using the more rudimentary but fairly effective gamma adjustment in my organizing software, ThumbPlus. Good enough so my printed photo density under good lighting is an acceptable match to the monitor image.

DJ
 
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