Equipment Canon G10 vs....Hasselblad H2 with Phase One P45 back?

Very interesting...actually pretty damn unbelievable.

 

That's bizarre. Like he said, it's great that even low end cameras can produce impressive results.

 

I have often said here, when the BS starts to get too deep, that the proof is in the print. High ISO noise, high MP, resolution. It's all just jibber jabber. Show me the print.

And to be sure, how many people out there regularly print at 13x20?

Yeah, I'll stick to 12 great pixels a while longer.

 

True but you've got two different usage bases. G10 is geared toward consumers who normally won't print any higher than a 4x6. Whereas the Hasselblad is used by commercial photographers who print in magazines, posters, billboards, etc. If there is a commercial photog out there using his medium format to print 4x6s, i'd call them a fool. But fortunately, I don't think there are any out there doing it with that in mind.

I don't think any of us will be using digital medium format for personal purposes.

 

Is THAT what they use them for?

seriously....I think you missed the point.

 

It's all about image! (no pun intended)

It's far cooler to tell someone that you own a Hasselblad as opposed to owning a standard Canon camera.

 

But pretty embarrassing when someone can virtually match a print from a 40K kit with a $500 P&S

 

No, I think I got the point of the article...

Quality of lower end catching up to top tier, top tier plateauing in advancements...

I was just commenting on your 13x20 portion.

Its nice and all that Canon got the G10 to get sharp IQ on a $400 piece of equipment, but billboard photogs will still stick to their hasselblads is all I'm saying.

 

Agreed, in fact, I'm about to get my D700 (if B&H will just ship it already). I don't understand the immediate dismissal of using DX lenses on the D700. Understand the squandering of more than half of my resolution, but that's still plenty in most cases. I'm sick of the megapixel race, at least in consumer level products. I want IQ.

The G10 does look really impressive, but then Luminous-Landscape doesn't really know what they are talking about... They think that the D3 has better low ISO performance than the 1Ds MkIII, I'll wait until I read the same results from a Canon discussion forum.

 

to be fair, some professionals still use the D2H for print work. Although most magazines now have a minimum megapixel requirement for photos.

but I do feel jaded in that if I had a D700, I would like to have the entire 12MP when using DX. But its understandable thats not possible.

 

Yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm getting a whole new set of lenses to take advantage of the full frame. I just don't understand how much the act of using DX lens is looked down upon and dismissed. To me, it's the quality of most DX lenses that effects my decision not the megapixel size. I still use my D50 for professional shoots and that's 6mp. The D700 IQ is much better, especially in low light, so what.

 

The D700, like the D3, allows you to turn off the Auto DX crop when mounting a DX lens. I know for a fact that the 17-55/2.8 only vingettes at 17-20ish and 50-55ish. So, as long as you are careful with your zoom range, you can get full use of the sensor.

 

AFAIK, my 17-55 is usable from 17-28. And that's what I meant by not being able to use your entire 12MP because of vignetting issues.

Although I haven't tried 50-55, but that seemed counter-intuitive.

 

So which one would you own?

 

is that an either/or question?

 

That is too low res for my taste. Anything below 2 megapixels is usually worthless.

With 12 pixels I can't even write my name...

 

I only have 6MP and I find it is plenty for what I do. More pixels and I'd just fill the memory quicker.

 

Not really IMO, that's like complaining that your million-dollar Ferrari gets worse gas mileage than some $20k Civic hybrid. Point and shoots are designed to take great shots that you can get usable prints up to (you do the math based off of the MPix), or very mediocre shots at the same resolution if you don't know how to operate a camera. The blads are designed to enable a competent photographer to have usable prints up to (you do the math with 3x the MP).

Further, the P+S models are far less complicated since there's one lens designed specifically for the sensor in that body. Any SLR or digital medium format body is built to accommodate a wide array of lenses, which are designed to excel at one thing but generally aren't great at the others (the super-wide-range lenses like an 18-250 are very versatile in exchange for IQ, very fast lenses let you get the shot in low light but tend to have more vignetting and are always primes, etc). It's like how Macs are more stable than PCs despite using essentially the same generic set of hardware - when you design things around a certain setup rather than try to accommodate everything, you can optimize the hell out of it and thereby increase the bang for your buck.

Of course, the fact that they were shooting under ideal conditions for both bodies helped quite a bit. In short, take it with a grain of salt. I can get quite acceptable-looking shots on my iPhone under ideal conditions too, provided I never take them over the original 3.5"/160PPI, and with a bit of creativity I could get something that looks identical from my 40D.

At the end of the day, it's the photog making the photo and not so much the camera, and I think it's safe to assume that most people using a $40k camera body are, on the whole, better photographers than everyone that's using a G10. But I'd also bet that most people shooting with a Hasselblad could take a pretty damn nice photo with a G10 too. It won't be printable up to 40x60", but I've heard from a few people that you can take publishable photos (probably half-page magazine) with the latest high-end P+S models if you can keep it at ISO100 or so.

 

The most important thing about photography is the end result. We're talking IQ in a small-med sized print here--not handling, speed, ergonomics etc etc. The point is if I showed to a print from the two cameras which looked so similar that not even a professional couldn't tell the difference without pixel-peeping your damn right it would be pretty embarrassing. Having a $500 P&S achieve nearly the same result as a 35-40K system does not relate on any level to the difference in MPG between a Ferrari and a Civic Hybrid, unless I missed something (?)

 

In some respects, that depends on how the image is processed and printed. In our division office we have a 40x60 print from one of the recent Shuttle-ISS flyrounds, and it looks pretty good. Yes, from 5 inches away the DCS760's 6.1 megapixels are apparent; however, when you view it from the intended distance the print holds up remarkably well.

-monkey