PDN: Phase one IQ180 Back Review

[Hamish Gill]

Although this is probably of little relevance to the massive majority of us here I though it would be interesting to a few of us! This I suppose is close to the pinnacle of digital camera technology in terms of quality, yet even at $44,000 it still reads as though it isn't quite perfect! There are also quite a few circumstances that this wouldn't be the ideal camera! I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that even the best part $50,000 doesn't get you the perfect camera for every situation!

PDN Product Review: Phase One's 80MP IQ180 Digital Back

 

[Darren Bradley]

I'd love one, but could never justify the price. With the fees for professional photographers continuing to decrease (especially architectural photographers, who would be some of the most likely candidates for such a sensor), I can't imagine the market every driving the price down. Oh well...

 

[Paul Lange]

I have thought for a while that photography is very much devalued these days. Many reasons I suppose, one being the low cost of basic cameras that can do a plausible job and lower expectations from people being another.

It is natural for manufacturers to continue to push and innovate but I do wonder if they are in a race where the results give diminishing returns and a disproportionate increase in price to obtain it.

 

[Davie Hudson]

I have thought for a while that photography is very much devalued these days. Many reasons I suppose, one being the low cost of basic cameras that can do a plausible job and lower expectations from people being another.

never a truer word said, I had this discussion with the Heritage Director of the venue I'm having my show at, she was talking about previous shows with original oil paintings going for £2000+ and her saying that of course no one would be willing to pay that for a photograph.

Now of course I would never expect anything near that possibly closer to a tenth of that price but it shows the difference in attitudes... now, that even extends to different genres of photography with film having instantly more gravitas than a digital (or so it seems) even down to people thinking landscape is the easier of the photography disciplines , I have to admit to it getting right on my thr'pennies

 

[Pete Askew]

Certainly in the UK, the market for photographs does seem to have become devalued. In the US though it seems rather different and there appears to be a fairly bouyant market for landscape and fine-art photography (in the same way as there is for hand crafts). A number of these image makers have already purchased IQ180 backs (despite the odd problem they appear to be much better suited to field work than the older, P-series). I suspect that there are a fair few in the advertising sector also and technical image makers will usually pay to gain increases in quality whether it be for scientific work of for reproducing artifacts. I guess the price of these backs will fall in the same way as the previous generation did once the next generation come along. I bought my P45 back when the + backs were released as I didn't need the extended ISO performance but did want an increase in resolution over the P20 ad H20 backs I already had (39MP vs 16M).

Like Darren, I quite often need to crop images. Not to correct perspective or to re-frame but to gain magnification. OK, not often with the MF backs but certainly for DSLRs ( a rare example is http://www.realphotographersforum.com/specialist-macro-photography/3795-speolepta-leptogaster.html). For example, I have just got rid of my D700 and replaced it with a D3x. It used to live on top of a Tessovar (I don't like the handling of the D700 which is why I passed it on) and did a reasonable job. But with the D3x I can use lower magnification on a microscope or the Tessovar to get the same resolution as with the D700 at the same object size by cropping the image. And the advantage is depth of field. On a microscope with a 40x objective the depth of field it tiny (around 1µm) whereas at 10x it is up to 10x more. So by shooting an image at a lower magnification and cropping I can gain depth information that is difficult to achieve with a higher magnification without image stacking (and the artefacts that this can introduce) and thus record better what you can see through the microscope by eye (as you can focus back and forth the understand what you are seeing).