Corine with a G9

I promised this a long time ago but forgot a few times.
Today I picked up my G9 and shot a few pictures during the workshop with Corine.
Normally I shoot all the studio work with a Mamiya + Leaf Aptus digital back

Of course I don't have to tell you that there is a huge difference in colorreproduction and sharpness but also in dynamic range.
However the reason I shot this was because alot of people see pictures and look at the camera and say that they could never shoot it like that because of the more expensive camera used by the photographer posting the shots.

So although when you look at the raw files there is a VERY clear advantage for the Leaf (would be terrible if not) but I hope it proves a bit that you don't need a 22MP digital back to make nice looking photographs for the internet or even A4 prints.
On the internet we are looking at very small pictures sRGB which destroys all detail and colorrange, again the only reason I did this was to show/prove that when you use the correct lightsetups/model/MUA etc. you can make nice pictures with everything, as long as it triggers the strobes of course.

Problems I ran into :
Skin structure is almost completly destroyed on the G9
Skin smoothness is terrible, with more blotches and uneven transfers
Maximum aperture is f8 on ISO80 and that's a bit limited for the strobes we use in the studio
Noise at ISO100 is compared to even a DSLR noisy, ISO80 is nice looking but the Leaf on ISO200 is MUCH cleaner
AF in the studio was difficult because the live view monitor is very slow to update due to the very low light to focus
Files are rather soft and need sharpening, which introduces more noise

two of the G9




And one for fun (Mamiya 645AFD/III with 35mm lens)

From us amateur's point of view....

...you have pretty much shot, stabbed, killed and buried our (albeit misguided) belief that if given a camera that cost's more than my home, we too could capture great images!
I cannot find the appropriate words to compliment this image. It is simply spectacular. Given the fact that you managed to create such a perfect image with a mere point-and-shoot is very humbling.
Equally important, I can only imagine the time spent on the lighting. The years of training, education and practice are apparent. I truly admire your dedication to the craft.

It has been a long time since I have last agreed so comletely with another post. I really like this series, and I consider it one of the best you have posted in this forum. Somehow the technical limits compared to your usual equipment seem to have worked to the pictures' advantage, they have, for a lack of a better word, some lightness to them. Could it be that your model was feeling less restricted here, as opposed to a more "formal" setup?

Christoph

Don't think so, they were shot next to my normal setup

Very interesting Frank! Thank you for sharing!

Hi Frank,

What you show is important. Thanks for bringing some reality to the forum! The pictures with the G9 are impressive as the lighting is stellar, the model is Corine and she has attitude to go with her good looks and you will shoot with the same judgment and experience you have developed over the years. They are in fact, so beautiful that, at least on an iMac high quality monitor, there's no clear advantage to the Leaf camera.

Then, as Christoph points out, Corine has a certain lightness to her pose and that might be the informal mode set by the tiny camera.

As far as the skin issues you talk about, I cannot see them.

Two immediate questions then:

Frank Doorhof said:

Problems I ran into :

Skin structure is almost completly destroyed on the G9
Skin smoothness is terrible, with more blotches and uneven transfers
Noise at ISO100 is compared to even a DSLR noisy, ISO80 is nice looking but the Leaf on ISO200 is MUCH cleaner
Files are rather soft and need sharpening, which introduces more noise

Click to expand...

Next question:

Frank Doorhof said:

Maximum aperture is f8 on ISO80 and that's a bit limited for the strobes we use in the studio

Click to expand...

Just for the record, for folk wanting to use the G9 or G10 with strobes but no ability to limit the light be having f stops larger than f8. Try this: an ND, (neutral density) filter will cut down the light. So now one can now get into the range of normal adjustment for the studio lights!

Frank, I can't state enough how such comparisons are important to those with limited budgets.

Asher

I am just going to jump in having been shooting with the 1DSMkIII for a couple of weeks now. And of course I really like the Mamiya.

The DS does focus much quicker, no question, especially in darker lighting. Also with moving subjects the DS is faster. In difficult lighting the Mamiya will hunt, the DS will lock in quickly and can be 're-locked' in before the Mamiya would finish hunting. I didn't do this side by side, just can tell you from experience.

With high ISO there is no comparison. I have shot the Mamiya with a Phase P30+ back up to 800 and it was acceptable. I have found the Leaf backs ok up to 200 but not beyond. The DS is pretty substantial right through 1600 anyway.

I am just now printing some photos from my DS shoots so I don't have a real comparison yet but expect them to be good up to any sizes that the 22 mpx Leaf backs would be for the most part.

I don't have a G9 so no opinion here. I am holding out to try a P65+ back and don't want to ruin my expectations by getting good results with a sub $500 camera!

Hi,
AF is a different kind of AF on the Mamiya.
The 1DsIII and 5DMKII (which I also own) is much faster BUT also less accurate.
Normally this is not seen but when you try to focus through hair or something hanging in front of the eyes, the Mamiya will focus EXACTLY on the eye if you point the focus point there, the Canon will not.
Again, normally this is not an issue but it can be.
I find the focus of the Mamiya dead accurate but a bit slower.

High ISO is not the realm of MF cameras I use the Leaf up to ISO400 regulary but anything above ISO100 is noisier than my 5DMKII.

I don't have 100% crops available at the moment, I'm in bed with the flu but the G9 is more blotchy as described, this is rather easy to explain.
The Leaf captures a 16 bits image and the G9 a 12 bits image.
The graduates are much more smooth on 16 bits, my workspace is prophotoRGB and especially there the difference is obvious.

I can see the difference between the G9 and the Leaf on almost all prints, let's say from A4 and up.
The Leaf gives me a very 3D like image where the G9 is as flat as a....... photo
Or in other words the Leaf gives me a life like image where the G9 gives me a very flat 2D image.

Both systems are TOTALLY different.
If I had to choose ONE system to do all I would opt for the 5DMKII.
If I have the choice to choose two, for studio work I would ONLY use the MF system.
There's really a big difference in sharpness, smoothness, skintone and 3D look.

When I just got the 5DMKII I did some comparision shots and found that the skintones on the 5DMKII were much more reddish than with the Leaf, even when I did a graybalance shot, maybe with a custom profile this can be solved but the Leaf is dead accurate out of the box.

It is interesting what Frank says about the skin tones from the Canons being redder (and darker). I completely agree. I did an ad shoot a couple of months ago with a Leaf camera and a 5D side by side. The Leaf was completely accurate, very real.

Now if you had nothing to compare to, the Canon skin tones would be acceptable if not in some shoots, pleasant. So it is not that the Canon is bad, it just produces a skin tone that is perhaps designed to make people look 'better', maybe with a tan, but not real. Did I make that clear? Hard to explain, maybe later I will try to post a couple to show you.

With the higher iso, in Leaf I have only shot the Leaf 65 and the AFi-7 so my comparison is based on that. I understand the Leaf 75s and the later Leaf AF series are supposed to be better at higher iso.

But like Frank said, the Canons and the medium formats are two different systems for different uses. And the Canon 5D series is a great buy producing great images. Used 5D's have to be the really economic way for getting a system you can use for serious photography of all kinds of work.

Ian L. Sitren said:

It is interesting what Frank says about the skin tones from the Canons being redder (and darker). I completely agree. I did an ad shoot a couple of months ago with a Leaf camera and a 5D side by side. The Leaf was completely accurate, very real.

Now if you had nothing to compare to, the Canon skin tones would be acceptable if not in some shoots, pleasant. So it is not that the Canon is bad, it just produces a skin tone that is perhaps designed to make people look 'better', maybe with a tan, but not real. Did I make that clear? Hard to explain, maybe later I will try to post a couple to show you.

Click to expand...

Ian,

I'd really like to see how the Nikon D3 and D3X show the color of skin. Historically, some folk went for Nikon or Fuji for that reason alone!

Asher

Comparison

Ok, here is side by side, the 5D and the Leaf AFi-7. These were both imported and exported using Lightroom. I used Lightroom for quick review, but I must say that in my opinion Capture One does a better job with the Canon files as does Canon DPP. I have not used the latest Leaf software but one would expect that to be also better on the Leaf files which were the non-compressed mos Leaf format. I am sure Frank can tell us more about that.

But anyway, I left these set on the Lightroom defaults. The final image of one of them was used for an ad and tweaked in Lightroom and then further refined in PhotoShop. The 5D had the Canon 24-70L lens and iso100, the Leaf camera had the 80mm lens and also at iso100. I guess I will let you decide which is which, although I did post the final in another thread.

Left one is Leaf!

Good to see your still alive - LOL

Bill Miller said:

Left one is Leaf!

Good to see your still alive - LOL

Click to expand...

Obviously! The muscles are so much bigger, LOL!

Asher Kelman said:

Obviously! The muscles are so much bigger, LOL!

Click to expand...

The muscles are on the photography for carrying around the Leaf camera as compared to the 5D. But aside from that I will see if there are any more guesses before I reveal the answer.

I think there needs to be some kind of grand prize!

Hmmm!
Though the left one looks sharper, my guess would be the left to be the Canon's.
Because of DOF and colors.
More DOF on the DSLR than MF, reddish skin colors form Canon files derawtized by LR2! Would be less reddish if extracted with Capture One…

But what a 3D effect on the left one! So I'm still not sure <:-{}

Nicolas Claris said:

Hmmm!
Though the left one looks sharper, my guess would be the left to be the Canon's.
Because of DOF and colors.

Click to expand...

I agree. Also looking at the details in the hair and the trousers, my guess is that Leaf is on the right.

Cheers,

PS: Having written this, I'll now check out the earlier post of Ian as I do not want to wait for an answer, LOL.

Cem...

Don't leak the information!

Ian L. Sitren said:

Cem...

Don't leak the information!

Click to expand...

My lips are sealed.

Frank,

If you guess which is which I will buy you dinner (big expense by the way if you have met Frank). But you have to come here (or your next trip anyway)!

It's hard to see for a few reasons:

If you shot both pics with a comparable lens and aperture than the right one would be the MF because there is a smaller DOF.
HOWEVER I don't recognize the skintones as from the leaf they are too saturated, also the patch in the trousers are too saturated.
To top it off the contrast on the right one is higher than the left one, if you used a S curve setting that would explain the more saturated and blocked up shadows.

The left one looks better overall but misses the depth I normally see in a MF file, actually the left one has a more 3D feel than the right one but this is also due to the different angle in which it was shot, also the red in the skin is a bit too magenta, and the detail on the stitching on the pants is less defined than with the right one, but this could very well be due to the different angle in which you shot the file.

So if I had to guess the right one is MF BUT it's butchered in photoshop.

Remember however that's it's often very difficult to see the difference on an internet version your looking at a 8 bits sRGB small file, zoom in on the real file or work on the files and the difference is MUCH MUCH more obvious, the MF files will not break, or break WELL beyond the DSLR files

About diner, although I'm a big guy I don't eat that much (you should know that), not every big person has it's problems due to eating

Frank I did not mean to imply you were a big guy because of eating, not at all!!! Si if it came across that way, I apologize, that is just one of those things that did not come across well because it being a post instead of in person. I fell very bad about that now. I would never make fun of someone like that, my own weight increase in recent years was more than my eating or exercise habits, which are excellent.

Nope no PhotoShop on either, straight out of Lightroom with Lightroom defaults. The right is the Leaf file. The Leaf file is sharper, you can especially see it in the hair and the threads on the pants. Also the blacks of the dumb bells appear to be be black as opposed to kind of a muddy black on the Canon. The pants are actually very faded like the appearance in the Leaf where is the Canon they are more green.

A big point for me is the shadows along the muscles on the body. On the Leaf file the shadows are clearly defined whereas on the Canon they are just dark areas again.

As for the skin tone saturation, remember my subjects are very tan and as in this case tanned additionally artificially with tanning sprays etc. The skin tone on the Canon is too magenta for sure.

What would be in interesting comparison would be to runt he Canon file in DPP or Capture One and the Leaf file in the Leaf software.

But for sure the Leaf produced a sharper file and overall better file with a native output of almost 17x22 inches at 300ppi. When my clients blow these things up to 8 ft high although it can be done with 6mpx files it is nice to be able to deliver the Leaf file.

The final

Here is the final. You will see there a dust spot that was removed from his shoulder that was not in the Canon photo. Also some body creases were removed. (actually I guess this all actually should have been in a different thread)

Don't worry about the remark Ian, I know you and know you would never post something to "hurt" me

Sharpness on the Leaf and shadow detail should be much better because of extra dynamic range and no AA filter, however I don't know how the skin should look indeed so that's an extra problem

I think when you process them in DPP and Leaf Capture the difference will be different.
Remember however that on internet versions it will stay difficult to see a difference when both shot from the same position/angle there should be more 3D look in the MF files.
Well at least that's my experience