[ogl]

IQ250 Back Announced

LIVE VIEW video here

[jonny1986]

today i shoot some iso 1600 with my 645d ...very good iq and shoet clean with just a tad of luminosity noise...the problem i suppose was with the other brand...phase on at iso over 800 was a not good and is not a case they used a don resizing to manage better noise control.
ii hope penta keep the ccd route and not the sony route...in that case there will be no sense in buying a cmos pentax645d at 12000 whn a nikon d800 cost 2000 and offer the same iq.
i bet this back will be a disappointment in terms of iq for those who have used the old phase one. and please those who never has shot a medium format ccd camera

[tuco]

today i shoot some iso 1600 with my 645d ...very good iq and shoet clean with just a tad of luminosity noise...

It's also not just the noise. The DR at ISO 800 & 1600 can be 2EV+ more on some FF cameras. And according to falconeye's post on the the CCD vs CMOS color myth, it is only a matter of Pentax making the colors the same if they adopt this CMOS sensor. But beats me on that.

[Pioneer]

It is nice to have choices in life. If Pentax/Ricoh goes the way of the CMOS sensor then we end up with another CMOS camera like the Nikon or the Canon, and our choices narrow again. IMHO CCD is a better choice for a low production medium format camera. DXO is not the final arbiter of image quality. The eyes are and I still believe that CCD provides better image quality, though at lower noise levels.

[tuco]

It sounds to me if the 645DII uses this sensor, you'll have more choices than if they don't. You can buy the classic or the new one. And, though market speak and remains to be seen, the IQ250 is advertising 14 stops of DR across *all* ISO sensitivities. That's pretty amazing to me anyway. I'd love for that tech to trickle down. Imagine capturing 5 more stops of light at ISO 1600 with today's 645D but yet with the flexibility to go even higher. More flexibility for handhold shots without a DR penalty. What's not to like about that, I wonder. So it's a matter of what type of shooting you do with it if you love it or hate it, I suspect.

[Paul MaudDib]

I think its the idea of a MFD that is made to adapt 35mm lenses with full auto functionality so you can shoot it as either a 35mm camera with reduced MP count or native mode. Kind of like shooting DX lenses on a FX Nikon camera where it automatically adjusts.

It would have to be a mirrorless, probably, because the register distance for a 645 body is pretty big. I'm pretty sure at one point I saw a body that was basically just a flat plate with a set of adapters that mate lenses and backs. It was made by one of the custom MF gear companies, Zoerk or someone like that.

[Paul MaudDib]

However it seems as if sensor technology (CMOS definitely, probably CCD) has plateaued over the past 3.5-4 years.

Over the last 3-4 years we've gotten sensors that could shoot at 6400, then 12800 and 25600. We've gotten more dynamic range, we've gotten on-sensor phase detect pixels, and through all of this the sensors have gotten cheaper and larger. The megapixel counts haven't been climbing as fast, but that's due to an inherent physical limit to small sensors.

Nikon's current prosumer model in 2009 was the D90. Not a useless camera by any means, but its sensor is clearly inferior to the modern-day Sony and Fuji sensors.

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Last edited by Paul MaudDib; 01-25-2014 at 09:25 PM.

[ElJamoquio]

Over the last 3-4 years we've gotten sensors that could shoot at 6400, then 12800 and 25600. We've gotten more dynamic range, we've gotten on-sensor phase detect pixels, and through all of this the sensors have gotten cheaper and larger. The megapixel counts haven't been climbing as fast, but that's due to an inherent physical limit to small sensors.

Nikon's current prosumer model in 2009 was the D90. Not a useless camera by any means, but its sensor is clearly inferior to the modern-day Sony and Fuji sensors.

I'm not talking at all about megapixel counts.

The SNR, etc, of the best CMOS sensors today are basically the same as the K-5, intro'd in Sept 2010.

[donesteban]

I don't believe in color differences between CCD and CMOS. I believe in former times, the color filters of the Bayer matrix were just stronger, and former times means CCD, CMOS was not that common in the beginning of the DSLRs being used by many photographers. Then, CMOS became more popular. And at the same time, they started using weaker color filters, to get some extra ISO.
I think, if a CMOS sensor uses the same strength of color filters as the 645D CCD, and gets the same micro lens design (including gap size), it will be hard to find the difference. The only problem I see is Sony might be putting more weight on high ISO and not use the old, strong color filters and might also consider removing any gaps between the micro lenses as an solution to get some additional ISO on top, too. In this case, we will see a difference at low ISO, with the CMOS being a bit weaker in terms of colors and maximum resolution. But not because it is CMOS, it is just because it is a different kind of optimization.

[ElJamoquio]

1.2 fps
http://www.phaseone.com/en/Camera-Systems/IQ2-Series/~/media/Phase%20One/1-C...et_200114.ashx
IQ2 series digital backs | Specifications

1.2 fps is fine by me (for this camera).

[revdocjim]

This is certainly a very interesting observation. It would certainly be interesting to know why the Japanese photographers have not made the move. It could be a combination of factors but I am sure that a big one is that it is very difficult to fault a 645 chrome. Once you have seen one then digital output doesn't really capture your imagination in the same way. For myself this is the only camera I own that still gets a steady diet of Fuji slide film, and I am happy to pay the price.

My read on current photography in Japan is that a lot of professional photographers have made the move to digital. This is just based on what I pick up in the two main photog mags, Nippon Camera and Asahi Camera and various exhibits around Tokyo. But if there is still a holdout it is definitely among the landscape artists. And yet the one's I find to be most resistant to the digital tech are longtime advanced amateurs who specialize in landscape. I've met a lot of them, and I've seen their work in the myriad photo contests that grace the magazines every month. The most popular cameras are definitely the Pentax 645 and 67 lines and Linhoff 4x5 cameras. These folks tend to be rather old with an average age in the seventies. They are wealthy and they are notoriously opinionated and hard to get along with, and profoundly conservative!

Recently our local club was having an exhibition and one of these guys came in. He claimed to just be passing thru for another meeting in the same building. But when he signed the guest book and introduced himself he immediately identified himself as a member of the "so and so photography club" and even had a custom designed business card to prove it. Apparently this club is led by a professional landscape photographer and everything he says is gospel truth. Without being asked, this visitor to our exhibition immediately started spouting the philosophy of his club's "guru", which included the obvious "film only" but also had caveats like "no people are ever allowed to be in the image" and "if you're going to include sky in the frame it has to be sky that has meaning!". We all had a good chuckle after he left, but this guy is not the exception at all.

In fact when the 645D came out the magazines wanted to include user reports but had a terrible time finding anyone of any stature willing to go public and admit they were using one. In the end they selected a good friend of mine who has been on staff at one of Tokyo's best known used camera stores for something like 30 years, and even though nobody knows him as a photographer, his association with the store was deemed to be of some worth. The hilarious part was that he had his own secrets too. He actually admitted in the published article that he had yet to tell his wife about buying the camera and that he had used up a big chunk of his retirement bonus to finance it! I asked him about the wisdom of making such an admission in print and he chuckled and said, "My wife never reads those magazines!"

[sanename]

Hi, I'm a completely new user at the forums here, but have been looking at buying a 645D for sometime, but been waiting for the mk2 before buying one.
Now this CMOS sensor has come on the market, I've had a quick idea.

A little background, I've spent a lot of time shooting with Sony NEX cameras and have as such become used to two things:

1) The ways of the EVF. I know some people think of them as an evil, but they work for me.
2) Lens adapters, specifically the metabones speed boosters.

Idea for the 645d mk2
The new CMOS sensor is a 1.3 crop, which means lenses aren't as wide as they should be and they waste a lot of light.
You can't add a speedbones style adapter on to the current mount, because the mirror box dictates the flange sensor distance.
You don't need a mirror box because the CMOS sensor supports live view and therefor an EVF.
You could build an adapter into the camera where the mirror box is...

But there's probably loads of reasons why not to do this.

[Adam G]

Battery life, for one.

Seems a lot of people have been enchanted by the mirrorless fairy. Note that with mirrorless, you need to power the sensor, the image processor and EVF continuously whilst in use.

I'm partial to optical viewfinders. Analogue technology is often just better.

[Pioneer]

Welcome Sanemane. Enjoy the forum.

It would certainly be interesting to see how a mirror-less digital medium format would fare. I think a revival of the old Fuji G690 series in digital would be awesome, but by making the changes you suggest to the 645 it really becomes a completely different camera. Good ideas but maybe the wrong platform.

[sanename]

Thanks for the welcome.

I agree that it probably would be a different beast altogether and perhaps doing what I suggest and calling it a 645dmk2 (or whatever) would be akin to Leica's mini-M escapade.

I just think what I suggested would be a rather elegant solution to the problem of the inherent wasted light in using a cropped sensor and given the current size of a 645d, there should be room for quite a hefty battery.