Hi Lance
Since this Phase T/S lens is made by Hartblei, what are the improvements for the price difference?
Thanks Denis



http://www.captureintegration.com/2008/07/...t-shift-lenses/

http://www.hartblei.com/lenses/lens_45mm.htm

Since it's 3100$ more than the Hartblei I sure hope they did some major improvements, like say replaced the optics with custom Zeiss or Schneider glass.

Note the message in Red at the top.....

http://www.hartblei.com/price_list.htm

hmmm....

Obviously, there goes the days of the $800 tilt shift.

Actually there goes the days of the $22,000 31mpx, medium format camera system with lenses.



I'm starting to have great pride in owning equipment that nobody will ever see again.

Sure hope you medium format boys and girls know what your doing.



JR

Yair,

Don't be so overly positive about all this.

Show us your true feelings.

JR

Hey James, I hope you're all stocked up on those $800 T/S's, you can make a small fortune now as their price has gone up 300% overnight

Y

All that Phase One has told us is here are the specs, there will be one version out this summer in very limited quantities and then a second version in September. I am trying to get confirmation on exactly what will be different.
I have been watching http://www.hartblei.de/en/optics-by-carl-zeiss.htm and they have redesigned their 35mm versions to be manufactured by Zeiss and also their prices have jumped for those versions as well.
So no confirmation from Phase One, but they are working on answering requests from users. They will also have software correction on Capture One.

Lance Schad
Capture Integration - Miami/Atlanta
Direct: 305-534-5701 x1 | Cell: 305-394-3196
Toll Free: 877-217-9870
Capture Integration
lance@captureintegration.com

i would hope that the other TS lens that Phase is designing is better than slapping some lipstick on that Hartblei Sputnik pig. someone showed me that lens once, and i've never seen anything harder to manipulate than that lens. and even under the best of conditions, in studio with strobe, we're not talking about zeiss quality. for phase to wade into fred sanford territory, and start mining the junkpile for scrap lenses just does not speak well for their judgement. let that lens die, unless you're going for impressionism, or you're shooting barbara walters and need to kill the sharpness. can't wait to see the phase samples from this one: $42 thousand dollars, and sixty megapixels of total and absolute mush. one step forward, and two steps backwards.

and for the record, can anyone explain the enthusiasm for mounting any tilt lens on a fixed-back camera? i could see an architectural guy getting excited about a lens like that, if the back would also move too, but at best, the gains with using a TS lens with a fixed back camera seem limited. it seems to me, the best you'd expect would be the "stop it down to f22 and just hope i could carry focus deep enough into the frame where the client won't notice i'm not shooting a view camera", which seems half-hearted at best, for a real professional. as anyone who's shot a lot of jobs knows, there's nailing the focus, and then there's trying to carry focus; which are really two different things. there's sharp, and then there's almost sharp.

i guess there is the stitching crowd out there too, that don't need to tilt, but it would seem that that Really Right Stuff pano thing would be better than that Hartblei mess. Find the nodal point of each (great) lens that you already own, and stitch away, at much higher quality.

Your right, the Boris T/S is pretty much a shoot, look at the powerbook, adjust and shoot again lens if you want to hit focus.

The cool thing is the glass has a soft curve to it and really is pretty, but in the brave new world of 60mpx, check the sub atomic level of pixel sharpness photographhy, as the Boris Lens stands it's going to be a tough sell.

I am sure they will stuff some Zeiss glass in it and lube down the controls to make it work semi ok and then do about a billion software corrections so when it gets to that sub atomic level-check the edge to edge pixel sharpness of the guys that zoom in at 400%, they will be happy enough.

Personally, I think it's a good $800 lens and not one I use daily or even monthly. $3,100 . . . hmm.

Then again the few times I use it, I really use it.



But I don't think you could use it for Barbara, it would stretch her nose.

I hope they up their supply chain, cause because mine came in through the stuffed in the suitcase, style of customs entry.

JR

Yes Yair I have 4 cases (uh make that suit cases) of Boris tilt shifts just waiting to go, but the big money earner is going to be the 3,246 Contax bodies I've been collecting.

JR

The Boris lens is a dog. It's an unwieldly lens with very mediocre optics. I ended up selling mine on ebay and replaced it with a Mamiya 50mm shift lens. The optics on the Mamiya lens are very good. The Mamiyas can be bought for a song on ebay too. The only problem is that they're 50mm instead of 35mm.

I only have One Contax left but it's a mint one so I'm keeping it till the right moment/ buyer comes...

You think it'll be worth more if I re-badge it? If I go Contex I'll have to pay you for copyrights so need to think of something else...

Yes, you have to pay me.

I'm working on the early adopter price now.


Thank You,

Your Contex team.

Man, thank god Contex has an early adopter program. I just got off the phone with Red and they won't sell me an incomplete Epic for $10k off. Man that burns me up . . .

If I'm not mistaken, that three lens set was introduced at the last PhotoKina,two years ago.
They looked like a very interesting way to 'squeeze' a little more 'quality' out of ones
35mm dslr but,from what I could ascertain by asking around,was that these lenses really
didn't seem to make it into the hands of many endusers. Seemed like one had to buy
from a limited set of 'prototypes' if i recall how the sales pitch was worded on their website
at the timne.

Guy (Mancuso), I recall you had a dialogue on one of the forums,at the time,with the
representative from Hartblei. Maybe you could shed some light on their availability


Mark

From memory which stinks. They where going to make them with Zeiss glass and improve the quality quite a bit and the price was pretty steep but they sort of fell off the map with follow up on it.

Not sure what Phase is going to use here but the price reflects it should be top quality. I think a lot more will clear up as we get closer to Photokinia. Lance did mention that production models will most likely hit the streets in September in limited numbers. I honestly think there are still building this lens and it is getting tested to spec.

I would really like to get one myself. I'm still waiting to see the 150 mm 2.8 D hit the streets , that one I want for sure. Adorama has it listed but they are worthless in my book. Take your money than you wait until stock comes in.

I've got a older copy of the Hartblei that I picked for way less than $1000. Would I spend what they're asking for it now? No. Do I use it all that much? No. Am I glad I have the lens? Yes.

don

Hi Lance
Thanks for your reply. I was also told by the Phase rep at the Brisbane photo show 6 weeks ago that they had other people working on this lens from Europe & the USA. What I could gather is this was a big improvement over the current lens.
Thanks Denis

No it isn't, not for what it does.

Show me a less unwieldy way of providing a shift and tilt capability on independent rotatable axes and I'll agree with you.

The optics could use some tuning up, thats true. But for what it does its pretty unique.

I use it because sometimes (usually) the emotion in an image is more important than the pixel density.

Whatever turns your crank. That lens never did much for me. Its color rendition was also off, kind of greenish as I recall.