DPR Forum

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Contax ND

I sent my broken ND to Contax for repair, and they charged me mere $450, which is almost like they pay me
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Also I spoke to Laurie McGinnis (head of repair dept) for half an hour and told her everything about moire that shows up on files developed with RAW Developer. She seemed very surprised and concerned, and said that would definitely relay this info to Japan on Monday.
 
Laurie McGinnis was very helpful to me, too. I had to send my RTS III back for a second time, and she took care of the problem pronto!
 
Hi All,

Happy 2003. I've been back from beautiful southern New Zealand for about three weeks, got over some bad jet lag and am pretty much done with my photos. Of about 1200 shots that came back with me (after the daily culling) I ended up printing about 170, and made a JPEG slideshow with 83 of those. All I can say is, now I know why movies are getting made there (besides the cheaper costs ...).

Many of the shots were made through a tour bus window, but still came out much better than I had a right to expect. They do keep their bus windows clean
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. As I found out, this is prime time in NZ and 'most everything is booked, so I consider myself lucky to get what I did.

The ND behaved very well, other than the known factors. I averaged 110-120 shots per battery charge, including some reviewing and histogram checking, not great but I had three sets and never ran out. Two or three times it did the freeze, fixed by a quick dis/re-engaging of the battery pack. And the rear display is hard to see in bright daylight without shading it.

But I really enjoyed using the camera and the two lenses (24-85 and 70-300). It got fairly wet under some rain and on an run under a waterfall by the fjord boat (as did I) but did not complain as I shot and kept wiping water off.

And yes, ran into some dust spots, which seemed to come then often disappear by itself - is this thing self-cleaning? I think about 40-50 shots in all had dust spots, which were fairly readily removed with Photoshop, bless them. What I thought was going to be a catastrophy turned out a mild annoyance. I did find cleaning the sensor pretty straight-forward with the aid of my lens air-blower squeeze toy.

Post processing was mostly quick adjusts to contrast, brightness and saturation, and occasionally did some more elaborate adjustments with the tonal curves, kind of burn-in and dodge if you will. Once I removed phone / electric lines, and three-four times I removed obnoxious shadows or objects. But I did not play around with colors, or add more cows or rainbows and such
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. If it's there it was there.

I sent the camera to Contax to check the freezing, but they couldn't duplicate it after several (including Blake Ziegler I am told) tried using it over several days, which doesn't surprise me as it's not a common situation. They actually gave me another set of batteries to try at my dealer's request, so now I have four sets (two 1700mah Sanyo and 2 1800mah Powerex
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).

Well, overall I'm a happy c&er. Yes, I do hope they fix what's wrong, and don't sweep it under the rug, but it can and does deliver beautiful images within my modest requirements.

Sorry for the long post. Cheers,

DJ
 
John,

Well, I'm in sick today, like yesterday. Danged winter weather occasionally gets to one
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. I should have stated I shot in JPEG 1 mode with chroma +. I actually set up the A and B presets so I could quickly switch to RAW and back, and maybe shoot some RAW duplicate images, but never did - too busy admiring the scenery I guess.

The ND's JPEG 1 format ends up in the high-2MB low-3MB size range. After processing in Photoshop, if saved at the highest setting, they end up mid-4MB to low-5MB size, which I believe is the range of the JPEGs put out by the EOS D60. Has anyone done any good comparisons between the ND and D60 images?

DJ
 
Hi there,
I just found this very interesting forum and browsed through it a little.
I also was facing the question whether to get me a ND or wait for Kodak's 14m as my 35mm bag carries some top-of-the-line pieces of glass with Nikon mount.
The Contax world first got me with the G2 which is my precious and banned my Nikon in the closet for many and one shoots - the lenses are just impeccable compared to anything in 35mm I've seen before.
Now I got my hands on a ND and - still in the playing around mode - found, that I wouldn't want a 14m (not to speak of any Canon which I simply dislike in ergonomic terms).
At low ISO settings (< 160), I could blow up a well exposed ND RAW shot far beyond anything of the size of a magazine page - which is what I need digital for. I tried this with a Nikon D100 - and failed...
The ND definitely is not the tool for high speed action shoots (nothing beats a F5 on this one) but the quality of the lenses and the excellent results of the sensor overcompensate this for my application.
Sure, there are some shortcomings: if you are used to film Nikons, the AF seems just poorly slow - but I found the ND's AF/MF being more effective: I pre-focus with AF or MF, whatever I deem faster and get a clear OK (if needed even idiot-proof with a beep) in no time.
Some other things are different as well and have brought be back from just relying on the camera to thoughtful use of a tool - I think of it as a different concept - more creative than technical.

But two things really suck: the software and the buffer size...

Christian
 
I have talked to a few digital pros whom explained to me that the number of mega byte is not the only factor for quality prints. If you do it right, a 6 Meg D SLR can produce very impressive result even larger than 16x20 prints. Some EOS 1D user will not interested in upgrading to the EOS 1Ds because the burst rate is too slow. Like some of the photographers, my attention has always been to the higher mega byte cameras. The 12 Meg EOS 1Ds and Kodak 14 Meg seems to be so impressive comparing to the 6 Meg ND technically. But I think the ND still very attractive to me personally; especially I have been slowly building up my Carl Zeiss lens collection.
 
One of you guys posted that Kodak has 14n s&le pics on their website and I took a look. The TIFFs pretty much looks like they used the JPEGs and converted it to TIFF - which is not exactly what I would expect from Kodak.

Besides that, I found in a screen-only comparison between the "Large JPEG" and a ND "JPEG1", that the ND is at least par if not a tad better when it comes to fractals and rendering. (comparing TIFFs is bollocks if they're really converted JPEGs)

The disappointing part in the Kodak s&les is the skin tones that are rendered way to steep and appear reddish - even for a JPEG. This is something I find much more natural with the ND sensor.

I also have to take back a part of my bitching on the software: I downloaded the DEVELOPER 2.0 and the 1.08 Firmware. (thanks for posting the link, Leon)

The developer is much better than the piece of junk I had on CD with the camera although it is still pretty cumbersome and slow when loading RAWs from the camera.

But here I found a workaround: I just plug the CF-card or drive in my computer's CF-slot and that is as fast as it gets.

I define the development settings (that now even can be saved!) use the high quality preview on a few s&les (that's still quite slow) and check the usual suspects with the high speed preview and correct and save them individually if needed. The rest goes with "save all image" and I go for a cup of coffee and a cigarette (bad habit, I know).

For the 1.08 firmware I am not really sure, what it does but I think I'll know more after some test shots.

For me this looks like we're getting there...

Christian
 
I have read DJ and Christian's recent postings, which have renewed my interest in the ND. The only images I have seen which have been shot using the Digital N, other than those in the Contax ND printed brochure, are those on this site. Most of them are the work of obviously good photographers, but are all low-res downs&les of originals, and it's impossible to make comparisons with other professional models, all of which are represented in other forums, reviews and manufacturers' sites. I'm not a professional, and my day job prevents me from spending the time in the darkroom that I used to, and I'd rather spend money on camera and lenses than a slide scanner good enough to produce images that compare to a good 6 mp+ camera. I've enjoyed my Sony 717, but am prepared to spend a lot more than it cost for a better image quality from a full frame sensor. I've looked into an adapter that will allow me to use Contax lenses on a Canon 1ds, but I would have to use stop-down metering. Does anybody know where on the web I can find a JPEG-1 from this camera, or make one of their own available? I would even pay for a CD containing several in this format or TIFF. In any case I want to thank everybody who has taken the trouble and time to post to this forum. There is nothing to compare with this forum for any other brand of camera.
 
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