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WE WANT Digital Back for the Nikon F5

Well, hey there, John - welcome to the conversation...8 months late.

I guess the question is what do you think you want? A 24x36mm CCD? Then get a Horseman digiflex1 - it accepts a back that has a CCD of that size AND takes it Nikon lenses! Have a party!

Oh, and by the way - let me know how many millions Horseman has sold of those bad boys so you can rub it in Nikon's shortsighted face. Because based on the way folks on this list have been whining OBVIOUSLY the entire professional world is beating down the doors to get a "full frame" digital camera that uses Nikkors.

Or, wake up and smell the coffee. Or get the Kodak.
 
Innocent! You're (full frame) back too! Say, you're the perfect person to grab up one of those Horseman Digiflex1's - and you can tell us all about how fantabulous it is.
 
Innocent said:
"The DX lenses means we should abandon such huge investment we've made on nikon lenses or suffer their near incompatibility with the digi cameras such as the d2h."

Even with a full frame digital sensor on an F5 body, lenses designed for film may or may not work well. The requirement for optimum performance with a Beyer mosaic CCD or CMOS sensor is very different from that of film. Kodak 14n owners who had an arsenal of great Nikon glass, found a lot of the lenses to be unusable. There was great anger in the community.

The Foveon sensor would be the solution, of course, since it images in layers - like film - instead of a mosaic of sensors. However, it would introduce an even more obnoxious crop/magnify factor than the Nikon DX sensor. Sigma owners have to put up with a 1.7x factor - the worst in the industry among contemporary cameras.

The obvious solution is a full frame Foveon sensor, right? I covered the introduction of the Foveon for a Brit hi-tech magazine. When I asked repeatedly about how it would scale, I got nothing but evasion. On one occasion they promised a SMALLER sensor for point-and-shoots within a few months. Years passed and finally Polariod announced a camera with this sensor at PMA last February, I have not heard of it shipping, even though half a year has passed.

Foveon claims that they have a 10MP sensor in the Sigma camera, but it still only yields a 3.34MP image. I got the impression that there was a lot of hype from the company at the time. Without doubt a great idea, but probably impractical. They let it be known that this device was of great interest to all the major companies, that Kodak was a prime investor and so on. They raised a huge amount of investment capital, but we see little beyond what was announced that first day. Sigma certainly is not in the same league as Nikon or Canon, and Polariod is in precarious straights, still recovering from bankruptcy and breakup of the company. Zero response from the majors.

To get an idea of what you actually have in the way of useable lenses, I suggest you rent a Kodak 14n or SLR/n for a few days and test your lenses with it. It will certainly show you a worst-case situation. The Kodak is currently the closest thing on the market to what you are promoting. Certainly the F5 would have to be far better, but you would get a feeling for the problems that would have to be conquered.

Nikon is quite certainly working on one or both a D2X and an F6. The rumour is that the F6 will be designed from the ground up, as was the Hasselblad H1, to be a hybrid camera with interchangeable backs. I expect however that Nikon is totally committed to the DX sensor. I would be greatly surprised - and delighted - to see a full-frame sensor, but I don't think it figures into future plans.

I have no doubt that an F5 could be modified for digital, but the cost would certainly be in excess of a new Hasselblad and 22MB back. It would have to be entirely gutted of electronics, with the electronics being replaced to accommodate the digital back. This would be economically viable only if there were tens of thousands of users willing to pay for this kludge.

I expect that there would be some who would pay the price, but I doubt that there would be that many. I see no reason why Nikon could not do the conversion for $20,000 or less if there were thousands, where some sort of practical production line could be implemented. Fewer conversions would require technicians remanufacturing the cameras by hand, which would push the price to astronomical figures.

Remember that Leitz claims they anticipated a digital back when they designed the R8 and R9, and built the necessary goodies into the camera. However, there is substantial doubt that they will actually be able to deliver. Many companies announce products at trade shows, just as car makers show hand-built dream cars at automobile shows, in order to assess potential buyer reaction and raise capital. Every PMA and Photokina sees well disguised wooden cameras in sealed glass cases. The fact that a company sends up a trial balloon has absolutely no connection with the camera actually shipping.

Kodak made the mistake of actually announcing a shipping date for its prototype 14n. It missed that deadline and several more, finally shipping a hugely unfinished camera. A steady stream of firmware updates followed as Kodak attempted to finish the camera even though it was already in user's hands. Though announced to be a breakthrough general purpose camera, it really only performed acceptably in studio photography where adequate light was available. Kodak will buy back your 14n for a generous price if you buy their SLR/n or SLR/c - pretty much an admission of failure.

Kodak had the budget and the time to build a fine successful camera but even the current replacement models are receiving quite unenthusiastic reviews. Now imagine the problems of kludging on digital technology to a camera that was never intended to be digital.

Nikon is skating on thin ice as Canon brings out a constant series of very fine cameras. The 1Ds has replaced medium format in many studios. If the F5 back turned out to be a Kodak-Moment, it would be devastating to their reputation.

It is a new era, and I never expect to use my arsenal of Nikon lenses on a digital camera. My F3 and all that goes with it are for sale. I have not used it in over four years. Strictly CP5000 and medium format.

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/
 
Hello Larry

Just wait for the new "Nikon D2X" - and you will never ask again for a F5 - digital back....

I know that the Kodak cameras improved their quality and are really admirable... but I am a Nikon user for the last 20 years ......

I am sure, that the new Nikon DSLR will be the TOOL, everybody is waiting for.

Kind reagards from France

Walter
 
Walterfr said:
"Just wait for the new "Nikon D2X" - and you will never ask again for a F5 - digital back..."

I think it would be totally impractical for Nikon to build a digital back for the F5. It is a camera that is nearing the end of its shelf-life, and the conversion would be incredibly expensive. The D2X will be a third generation Nikon flagship dSLR, benefiting from the pioneering work of Kodak in their early dSLR cameras on Nikon chassis and the D1 and D1x. I realize that a lot of us hold arsenals of great legacy lenses we would love to use, but times have truly changed.

Personally, I am quite fascinated, but not really concerned. At some point, I will haul the 35mm stuff to the camera store and trade it in on something - no idea what.

With a medium format film scanner, in the near future all high quality stuff for large prints will be shot medium format wherever practical. Most of what I do now tends to be "decisive moment" work and the Nikon CP5000 is far better than the Leica ever was for this genre. Even before digital, I tended to use the SLRs for shooting chromes commercial and magazine assignments only, and used rangefinders for personal work. Now that I am finally doing primarily personal work, the SLRs lie dormant.

Perhaps Nikon will come up with a CP8000 at Photokina this fall, which will get my attention. If not, I am certainly getting loads of response to my CP5000 work. I am in no hurry to trade at all.

While I have used Nikon from the beginning, I have also shot with many other brands and formats. I bought the CP5000 - not because it was Nikon - but because it had the combination of features I wanted to do the photography. In fact it is the essential accessory to the WC-E68 lens that gives me the equivalent of a 19mm->58mm lens on a 35mm camera. I find this ideal for perhaps 80% of my photography.

It is a gentle camera that people tend to ignore even when they are fully aware that they are being photographed. I always used the Leica when photographing potentially dangerous people, but it is far more provocative. With the CP5k and its enormous wide angle capability, I can work very close, getting a great deal ofintimacy in my shots.

For architecture, panoramas and epic landscapes, I have medium format and a WideLuxe. Eventually, I expect that there will be an affordable compact format camera of sufficient quality that I can retire them as well. Even though Nikon has been a constant for most of my career, I don't consider myself "a Nikon-guy", any more than I consider myself a Linhof, Bronica, Plaubel Makina, Leica or any other brand of camera-guy. I use the best tool at my disposal for the requirements of the shoot. In fact, I have long used an excellent 50mm f-1.2 Canon lens on the Leica as the normal lens. It only gives up about half a stop to the Noctilux and I think it is crisper at wide openings.

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/
 
Valid and very informative points Larry, though they contradict my digiback c&aign. Like a sportsman, I am accepting defeat gracefully. I hope that the d2x will turnout to be another F5 in digital form or better still, then Nikon can count on my continuing loyalty. As I mentioned earlier, I have subscribed to the d2h for the sole reason of joining the band wagon, a very silly thing to do, but there you are.
 
Innocent

One should never buy a camera to join the band wagon, but rather buy a camera that enables you to best do the photography you do. If you are doing professional sports and/or photojournalism, then the D2H is superb. A resolution of 4MP is fine for newspaper and most magazine reproduction.

However, if this is not your goal, you are paying a lot for the huge buffer and very responsive processor as well as the wireless capability. I spent more than a dozen years as the lead sports shooter on a daily paper, and I would have killed for this camera - specially the wireless. Now it is of zero use to me. It is a very specialized piece of equipment.

There have been dozens of cameras come through these hands over the years, and every single one was purchased to address a specific photographic need. Never a matter of getting on the band wagon, or honouring a camera company with my loyalty.

I will say that when I was a working pro, Nikon was loyal to me, and I appreciate that. I was a member of Nikon Professional Services which meant instant repairs, being able to borrow any equipment and so on. This is only available to pros and is certainly not advertised. At the same time, I was shooting with many other brands as well as formats all the way from 35mm to 8x10. Nikon was fine with that.

Having a F5 and arsenal of lenses gives you considerable freedom in choice, using it for trade-in. In my case, 35mm photography ceased the day I bought my first digital camera, the 3.34MP Nikon CP990. My F3 has been dormant for over four years. In fact I opened it on the weekend, and found a partially exposed roll of film! 35mm ended in the middle of a roll!!!!

When Nikon came out with the CP5000 and the superb WC-E68 lens component, the nail was driven into the coffin of 35mm with such force that it will never be pulled out. There is no camera in existence at ANY price for which I would trade. My needs were completely defined, and finally a camera was designed that perfectly met them for almost all my shooting. I have rarely held an instrument that involved fewer compromises and it shows in every image.

I found that even when I was using SLRs daily for shooting chromes for publication, when I was shooting personal work, it was almost exclusively with rangefinders and negatives. I expect that when a major camera appears on the scene that fits into my workflow, I will dump both the Nikon and Bronica systems. My Plaubel Makina will be my main traveling camera with its extraordinarily sharp 80mm f-2.8 Nikkor, along with the WideLuxe for panoramas. If I ever take on product work, need either superwide or telephotos in medium format, I have a Linhof system. Clunky to use, but rewards one with excellent quality. SLRs will go out the door.
 
Drat! Hit the send button!

So define your photographic goals, and use that to determine the camera. You may find as I have, that the compact prosumer camera far better meets those goals than does a big clunky SLR. You also might find that the D2X is far more to your liking than a 4MP press camera. With the F5 as a trade-in, you may find it to be an accessible purchase. The announcement is somewhat overdue, so it probably will be shown at Photokina next month.

It will certainly leave nothing to be desired from an F5 users' viewpoint, and will be far more integrated and perhaps 1/6th the cost of a Nikon back which is really just a dream. While the F5 was clearly the top 35mm camera in 1996 when introduced and one of the first to be digitally controlled, the digital technology of the time was that of 486 or Pentium 1 processors. My CP5000 has pretty much the same digital control features that made the F5 so revolutionary back then. 2004 technology is a very long way from 1996.

Even with the D2H or the expected D2X, you may find that your lenses give disappointing results. The Beyer mosaic sensor functions best with lenses that project the light in as close to a perpendicular direction as possible with current optical design. Every optical company is scrambling to bring to market designs optimized for this new type of imaging. This is NOT a scheme to just sell new lenses.

Since the likelihood of full frame sensors is slim with Nikon, realize that with a D2H, every lens will in effect become longer by a factor of 1.5x. My 28mm PC-Nikkor was always a bit too long at 28mm. With the cropping/magnification factor, it would become an entirely absurd 42mm shift lens.

So, to reiterate, the greatest value of your current equipment may well be the flexibility that trading it in will give you. It is a new era, so take your time to educate yourself on what is available, how you plan to work and find the best fit. It may be Nikon, it may not be. It may be a SLR, and it may not be. For me the combination of medium format and digital for everything I would have sot on 35mm is ideal. You essentially have a clean sheet of paper. Start figuring.

I do have a good bit of information on digital photography on my web-site, including an essay on film and digital that I need to update now that I have a scanner for medium format film. Please avail yourself of it. URL in my sig below.

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/
 
Thanks a lot Larry for your advice, which reminds me of my instructions from the NYIP course I"m currently undertaking. The d2x would have been my Ideal camera but I have to settle for the d2h for now, reason being that when the d2x is lunched it would normally be cheaper come six months time by about £400-£600 (pounds sterling) as it is the case with the d2h.

In the meatime I'll be using my F5 with the ML-38 multi-function back to shoot chromes for specific photographic needs such as automatically photographing objects at set intervals or where a large file format is desireable.
Though, I have not specialised in photographing any special theme, my interest lies in architecture, landscape, flowers and garden with occasional portraits of family and friends. Hardly any sports but the seasonal Ascot photography. The d2h is hardly the ideal camera for these kinds of photography you will advise but among its vestiges, it has got the colour meter like my F5 a feature which is lacking in the prosumer models or indeed other brands. I have read that it is possible to produce a fine pix of 20'' x 30'' prints by upsizing the images with special upsizing softwares. I have to say that the GFractal produces very soft result with any upsizing over 150% though it is claimed that you can achieve 500% without loss of image quality. I must be doing something wrong with my images then.

Hopefully when the d2x is launched and after allowing a minimum of six months for those who enjoy beta testing to proceed with ots purchase and if it replicates my F5 in all aspects then I will subcribe to it without given up my F5 which I hope will be passed on to a museum by my grand children come 100 years time as a legacy of an excellent 35mm slr.

I have always derived inspiration from your website and I thank you for that.
 
Innocent said
<font color="0000ff">"I have read that it is possible to produce a fine pix of 20'' x 30'' prints by upsizing the images with special upsizing softwares."

This is indeed true of pretty much any digital camera. As the print is made larger, viewing distance increases. Our eyes are a reasonably low resolution device, allowing very large prints to look very good.

As a test, I scanned an ideal medium format negative to 5"x 7" at 240 dpi - the requirement for my photo printer. Without changing any settings but the resolution, I also scanned it at 120 dpi - one quarter the information. I printed both at the maximum quality of my printer, side by side on a sheet of Premium Glossy paper. At reading distance, the difference is striking. However at arms' length it takes a little concentration to see the difference. Beyond that, they look identical.

An octogenarian friend was much taken by a portrait I took of a magnificent blue and gold macaw I know, and wanted a 24" x 36" print of it. However, I shot it with a 3.34MP Nikon CP990, so tried to discourage him. He insisted, so I did the best job I could of upsizing it. I delivered the file on a CD for him to get printed locally in the city where he lives, but really did not expect much.

A couple of months back, I was in his city and visited him. The print was framed and hanging in his living room. From anywhere in the room, it looked magnificent. I was really quite astounded. More pixels are certainly desirable, but resolution obviously is not everything. I don't do photography for the terminally anal twit who carries a loupe in his pocket and leaves nose oil on my prints. I expect them to be viewed at an appropriate distance to the size of the print.

<font color="ff0000">=•=

Another thought occurred to me. The Nikon D70 might be well worth considering as well. Film camera technology goes back about two centuries, with a flagship camera appearing about once a decade now. I recently sold a Brooks VeriWide 100 that had served me for decades, and others before me. It was built in the late 1950s. Linhof, Horseman, Alpa and others still build cameras that are functionally identical to it. I would have gained absolutely zero by trading it for one of these. This type of superwide medium format camera, simply had no need to evolve. I never felt the slightest need to update my F3 either.

Now to let you know my bias before I go on, I am not a camera buff - I am a photographer. My cameras are tools that I respect, but have no affection for. When a camera buff came up to me and started admiring my camera, it took a moment to understand what he was getting on about. Same sort of reaction if one came up to a construction worker and admired his jack-hammer. I realize there are people who buy Leicas and never take them out of the box. I also know that people buy cameras to wear as jewelery. I simply can not relate to this, To put it politely, my Leica M3 is "battle-scarred".

So I am looking at your situation from a purely function viewpoint. Digital cameras are incredibly good. When I bought the CP990 four years back, 35mm photography effectively ended for me. I may or may not shoot another roll sometime in my life, but the chances are pretty slim. When the CP5000 came on the market, it answered the weaknesses of the CP990 and felt like Nikon had read my mind and built a camera system precisely for me. I have not been disillusioned, it has served me beyond expectations. It is just that good. However, if Nikon were to come out with a CP8000 this fall, I would trade in a flash.

While film camera technology proceeded at a glacial pace for the past two centuries, digital camera technology is thundering along at a blinding pace. Time Magazine named the CP990 as "Machine of the Year" when it was launched. I was astounded at the progress made in the two years leading to the CP5k. Not only did it have more pixels, but everything just worked better. It is more a matter of subscribing to subsequent editions, than buying a camera for life as with many of my film cameras. A 30 year old film camera may still be near the state of the art, while a ten year old digital camera barely exists.

It makes sense to keep the investment moderate, and trade frequently. The D1X was the state of the art when it was launched, but now been eclipsed in pretty much every way save build-quality, by the D100 and the D70. Since one buys for the short term, build quality is simply not a major consideration with digital. If you are in pursuit of photographic quality, you will trade long before the camera ever even begins to wear out. It is a whole different mind-set from film camera ownership.

This is not planned obsolescence as with cars in the 1960s where a bit of chrome was shuffled around and the car was declared new and improved. A long time back Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, postulated that every two years the number of devices on a chip would double. He later revised that to 18 months. This became known as "Moore's Law", and it has been extended to every aspect of digital technology. The camera announced at Photokina 2006 will be dramatically better than those announced later this month - and will cost no more and probably less.

With current cameras being so competent, it is impossible to imagine what they will be like in five or ten years. Light, cheap, mobile, incredibly fast in response, giant buffer and able to shoot the quality of an 8x10 view-camera I would imagine.

A top of the Coolpix line is perfect for me. Inexpensive enough that I can trade every few years. A SLR is great for commercial work or when an editor demands chromes, but I would not think of using one for personal photography except in the rarest cases. For people photography, it is cruelly intrusive. I am processing a shoot I did last Saturday - all people shots - and in over 250 exposures, there is not a single shot were the subjects behaviour is impacted by the presence of the camera. However in the past, whenever I raised the big cyclops eye of the F3 or Bronica, everyone was fixed upon it.

So where it made some sense for an enthusiast to buy an F5 for the long haul over an entry-level camera, it makes little sense for the digital enthusiast to sink that sort of cash into a camera. While an entry-level Nikon takes identical pictures to the F5, its build-quality dictates its use by working pros and heavy shooting enthusiasts.

A number of friends bought the Canon 1Ds and found it paid for itself in a few months. It would be a most foolish purchase for anyone other than a busy pro. I fully expect the superb image quality of which it is capable will be available in under $1,000US bodies announced in the 2006 Photokina.

larry!
ICQ 76620504
http://www.larry-bolch.com/
 
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