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Logic be damned I bought an ND

OK, a few s&les
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Hopefully my html will work in here.

These are nothing special but since they are first out of the box I thought I'd pop them up for fun.

http://www.boomweb.com/images/Indy2.jpg
http://www.boomweb.com/images/Indy3.jpg
http://www.boomweb.com/images/Rock.jpg

To me the third image shows some of the excellent tone rendition.

Kent
 
Nice! Looks like you're getting the knack
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. One thing I now do is to check the image at high mag when setting the saturation to avoid unwanted image detail loss because of very aggressive saturation.

Hmm, looking out my window it seems I'll be able to get some wintery scenes this week-end. If only I didn't have to shovel that darned white stuff (the cold weather stuff, not the nasty stuff I have managed to avoid so far
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Have fun!

DJ
 
Hi Kent,

with which ISO setting did you take the shots?

If I look at the images of Marc in this thread with ISO 250, I would have no problems at all with that kind of "noise", which is not disturbing me at all IMO. But maybe on computerscreen it is looking better then on prints. Or it is beacuse I am still at the beginning of my digital SLR experience
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@DJ

if you made some bad experiences with ISO 400, could you post a typical "bad" image in this thread to show what the worst could be after and before improving the image in Photoshop/ any other software?

I have the feeling that many potential buyers are simply not satisfied with the images seen immediately without any tweaking out of the camera. If the images can be improved significantly with Photoshop or other software, and this would be communicated, this would help many Contax fans already a lot
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Regarding AF & N-system. I set my N1 always on Manual focus and only uses te AF by pushing the little button on the upper right hand of the camera-back. So I use it only, if I need it. Maybe this reduces battery consumption too. I can imagine turning on the AF always will activate AF (and battery consumption) even if you only "look" through the VF while thinking about taking a picture.

I use it that way mostly to prefocus faster with moving objects. After that I prefer to make the fine-adjustments manually (I have the split-focus screen with my N1). Not because it is not sharp with AF. Just because it is more fun to focus manually. And it slows me down to make me think whether this is really the shot I want to take and how to frame it etc. Similar like shooting medium format without Pentaprism...
 
Hello Dirk and Marc,

I did contact SRB and this was their response.

"The Zeiss response really says it all.

To focus to infinity the ordinary CY lenses have to be precidely 45.5mm from the film (or chip). As the N system has a register of 48mm, this means that even if we could mount the lens on the front of the camera, the infinity image of the lens would fall 2.5mm in front of the chip. This is made worse by the fact that you need an adaptor between the bayonets, so this distance increases. This is exactly the same as using an extension tube. You can no longer focus to infinity, but you can focus much closer than the lens originally allowed. The actual distances are dependent on focal length of the lens. W/A lenses will focus to a few mm, tele lenses may be to a few metres.

This can be overcome by using a correcting lens element to move the image back to the film plane. Nothing is for nothing, and depending on the shift needed, you increase the focal length of the lens. Its a bit like using a 2x converter."

I reckon that pretty well settles it and of course one would expect Zeiss to know!
Thanks,
John
 
Dirk,

The few shots I took at high ISO were at 400. I intentionally wanted to see what was produced at the highest ISO as I had heard that it was a problem spot for the system.

I will pop up one of the shots when I get on my other computer later today. I too have seen some terrific shots from the 200-250 ISO area.

Kent
 
This discussion made me curious about the NDs performance at ISO 400 ... and how much more critical proper exposure was at that setting. I suspect to many shots are under exposed when at 400 and lifting them results in unacceptable levels of noise.

So I did a studio test with more careful exposure controls... and found that there is nothing wrong with ISO 400 on this camera if exposure is attended to as if shooting slide films rather than more forgiving neg film.

Here's a shot I slapped together to see how it really works. ND @ ISO 400 RAW, 85/1.4 @ f/11, Processed as largest PS RAW file (143 meg).

323882.jpg
 
Marc,

Although not bad, it appears to me I can see some noise in the smooth gradients of the green cup and the grey background. And this is with perfect lighting - how often does that happen outside your studio
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. Granted probably many people wouldn't notice it unless maybe alerted to it, and I was certainly looking for it, and maybe even inadvertently making it up. Maybe I'm just getting old and crabby
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Crabby Old DJ

BTW, how's Irakly's eye doing?
 
As processed in PS, the print would be 20"X13" with very little noise even at that enlargement. The background paper had some texture in it, which is not noise from the camera, so look at the green glass pitcher and the darks in the silverware handles.

Here's a detail from the above shot @ ISO 400

323885.jpg
 
While certainly not up to ISO 100 standards, I think it does just as well as ISO 400 film that's been scanned... maybe better.

The detail was done separately without applying any noise controls other than those in the RAW developer. My processing included running a Fred Miranda interpolation action to enlarge the detail, and then more carefully adjusting the levels ... which says to me blow the photo up and correct it, then reduce it to print size.
 
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