39mp underwater

[Troy Aitken 0]

Hello everyone,

 

I have recently purchased a new housing from UK-Germany designed for the H3D by Hasselblad. A medium format digital camera with 39mp's. I am using 2-Subronic Nova strobes that have the batteries built into the arms. Also a spotlight overhead to create contrast if needed. The lenses I use are the 120mm Macro, 80mm and the new 28mm wide. I use the flexcolor software to edit the raw files along with Photoshop CS3.

 

Observations:

 

Housing

built like a tank and well balanced u/w (more on housing later)

 

Camera

all functions operate to 40ft/basic functions to 120ft

crazy detail and colour reproduction (raw file 55mp/tiff file 225mp)

camera can produce 5ft.x8ft. prints (16bit through colorbyte rip)

with no loss of quality on Epson 9800 printer.

looks like film w/o the grain

wide angle focus is fast enough and ultra sharp

macro focus is an area that I am still learning. (more on macro shooting later)

 

Strobes

produce wide even light

Each battery lasts up to 185 shots on TTL and 140 full power

dials are at your fingertips and work perfectly

 

Photos soon to come

 

 

Thanks to Uwe at UK-Germany my dream has come true

 

regards,

Troy

[james 0]

Hi Troy,

 

Welcome to Wetpixel. I think we can count you as our first MF underwater digital shooter. At least you're the first one who's admitted it :-)

 

I'm excited to see your shots. How wide of a field of view do you get with that 28mm lens?

 

Cheers

James

[scubarobot 0]

I use a p45 39mp back and a Hasselblad at work and it is amazing. I would be afraid to take it underwater. I wonder what your insurance premium is like for a high end system. Happy shooting...I can't wait to see the photos.

Edited October 10, 2007 by scubarobot

[craig 0]

How do you plan to shoot smaller subjects? The 120mm, if I interpret right, can only get down to about a 220mm wide frame. That's 10x bigger than a Canon cropped sensor can do with a 1:1 lens. It also has an 80cm near focus limit; that's further than the maximum working distance most people want.

[Troy Aitken 0]

Thank you for the welcome. Out of water is 95 degrees. But u/w it sure looks alot wider. Here is a shark photo shot 3-4 ft away. shark was 8ft.

[Troy Aitken 0]

Hello again,

 

I have been in close contact with Uwe at UK-Germany for 10 months during the design. It is the first of its kind with another one owned by a German photographer whom tested it first I think in Bora Bora.

 

Insurance is a must and yes a loty of money u/w. I am passionate about photography/videography so I gladly take the risk with proper care and respect.

 

120mm Macro lens can focus on an object 5inches away from the lens or port capturing an area of about 1.35"x2" which can blow up to 5ftx8ft. At this point I keep it on maual focus and antisipate my shot to be framed considering the distance from port to subject. Auto focus hunts alot and I think with more experience I will do better with auto. A tiny subject in front of a coral with a few inches between them causes the auto focus to hunt too much and you miss the shot. More later with images

[loftus 42]

Looks pretty sharp on my 72 dpi screen.

I'm very jealous - how can I bring this up with my old lady?

 

Thank you for the welcome. Out of water is 95 degrees. But u/w it sure looks alot wider. Here is a shark photo shot 3-4 ft away. shark was 8ft.

[craig 0]

Is this the macro lens that you are using? Hasselblad Macro 120mm f/4

[dmoss 0]

I'm very jealous - how can I bring this up with my old lady?

 

You might want to be careful with your approach. Normally when I hint around about new toys mine just rolls her eyes and walks away. I mentioned THIS new rig last night and she got downright mean about it.

 

Impressive shot. We all want to see more.

Edited October 12, 2007 by dmoss

[Troy Aitken 0]

Yes, thisis the one. I use it professionally for small product shots and glamour

best,

troy

 

 

 

 

 

Is this the macro lens that you are using? Hasselblad Macro 120mm f/4

[Guest Dan Schwartz]

Hi Troy!

 

Do you have contact info for UK-Germany? Their website has gone TitsUp.Com ...

 

Thanks!

Dan in NJ

 

Hello everyone,

 

I have recently purchased a new housing from UK-Germany designed for the H3D by Hasselblad. A medium format digital camera with 39mp's. I am using 2-Subronic Nova strobes that have the batteries built into the arms. Also a spotlight overhead to create contrast if needed. The lenses I use are the 120mm Macro, 80mm and the new 28mm wide. I use the flexcolor software to edit the raw files along with Photoshop CS3.

 

[cut]

 

Thanks to Uwe at UK-Germany my dream has come true

[hoovermd 0]

Hi Troy!

 

Do you have contact info for UK-Germany?

Thanks!

Dan in NJ

 

info@uk-germany.com is what I use...

[loftus 42]

Troy,

May I ask what this housing costs, what ports are used for the 28mm and other lenses, what ports cost etc.

Jeff

[Guest Dan Schwartz]

Troy,

 

Are you going to be at the H3D-II launch in Manhattan this Thursday (in conjunction with the PhotoPlus Expo)?

 

With images like yours, they should pay for your plane ride to EWR so you can show them off at the launch!

 

Cheers!

Dan

 

PS to all: I'll be stalking the exhibit hall for most all of the 3 days, as I gather info for others in faraway places, and also talk to vendors.

[Troy Aitken 0]

No problem

 

With the 2 cases for travel, Subtronic set up, housing, dome port, flat port and extension flat port cost around $13 to $14k US Dollars. Excellent build, easy to handle and everything in the right place. German built like a Mercedes. Surprisingly light except for the Subtronic Strobes but the quality of light is exceptional

[Troy Aitken 0]

Hello Dan,

 

I will not be going as business calls. Thank you for the compliment. Just after Christmas I plan to pull my images together and market them at our Gallery and on the internet. Too upgrade from the H3D to the H3Dll is a wopping $15k plus. Had a good deep teck taik with Hasselblad and was relieved it made no sense to upgrade at this time. So at least I won't be tempted to upgrade. What I might upgrade to is the optional Hasselblad's GPS that works with Google earth for my arial photography for real estate and government mapping. Be careful, you might catch the bug though I hope you do.

 

Best

Troy

[loftus 42]

I recently acquired Subtronic Novas; yes they are great lights. The strobes are about $2K apiece, so we are looking at about $10K for housing and ports, right?

No problem

 

With the 2 cases for travel, Subtronic set up, housing, dome port, flat port and extension flat port cost around $13 to $14k US Dollars. Excellent build, easy to handle and everything in the right place. German built like a Mercedes. Surprisingly light except for the Subtronic Strobes but the quality of light is exceptional

[Troy Aitken 0]

Yes, there about or less

troy

[echeng 0]

Hey, Troy. I heard last year at DEMA that Patima (Korean housing company) was planning on selling digital MF housings made out of titanium. I don't know if they ended up pursuing that project, but it would be pretty cool.

[Paul Kay 62]

Somewhere I've read that Titanium doesn't like high pressure oxygen (perhaps it becomes slightly reactive) but I'm not sure if there is any substance in this. Can anyone confirm or deny? (It does seem odd that Titanium isn't used more in housings as it should be an excellent material unless it has a drawback other than cost/machining).

[Guest Dan Schwartz]

Hey, Troy. I heard last year at DEMA that Patima (Korean housing company) was planning on selling digital MF housings made out of titanium. I don't know if they ended up pursuing that project, but it would be pretty cool.

 

Titanium is a real Hillary! to work with...

 

On the other hand, my cousin was a machinist for an engineered ceramic company (up-armored Humvee panels, precision jet engine parts, etc...). Making a housing out of ceramic would be a breeze: Simply build a pattern, make the investment, cast the material in the investment, fire it, and then shave off what little is needed to get the tolerances down to +/- .001 (or even better).

 

Making the pattern is a snap with wax, using lasers fed by CAD/CAM. In fact, hearing aid earmolds are now made that way: The dispenser simply takes the client's ear impression with silicone, puts the impression into a small box next to his keyboard where lasers measure it. Then, the digital "impression" is sent to the lab where a wax copy of the impression is made (after the technician edits it & touches it up). Then, this impression is used to make the investment (the same way as if the impression had been mailed into the lab). Then, the earmold or shell is poured into the investment.

 

It would be a no-brainer to simply use a larger measuring device and scale it up: Just drop the new Nikon D3x into the box, scan it in, edit it accordingly; and make an investment to cast the ceramic. Then, do the final drilling & machining to get the tolerances just so...

 

No big shake, as Pee Wee Herman would say...

Edited October 18, 2007 by Dan Schwartz

[craig 0]

I'm not sure what the advantage of Titanium over Aluminum is for this application besides nerd appeal. Aluminum is half the weight, cheaper to buy and work, and is certainly strong enough. Fatigue life shouldn't be an issue either.

[craig 0]

This lens appears to be the one used, not the one I linked to before.

 

B&H lists this lens as capable of 1:1 at 15" nearest focus, so 5" working distance sounds reasonable. The 35mm equivalent perspective is 73mm, so it's basically like shooting a 60mm macro only with a minimum focus distance not quite as close.

 

A 1.7x teleconverter is available that yields a 124mm equivalent perspective and a 28mm frame width, about equivalent to 1.28:1 on a 35mm FF. A DX camera with a 100mm will be more powerful without diopters or teleconverters. A FF 35mm with a 150mm Sigma or 1.4x + 100mm is in the ballpark.

 

It would be interesting to see tests proving one way or another whether the 1.7x gives up any potential IQ advantage the MF sensor offers. Remember that a 39MP 36x48 sensor has pixels with only 10% more area than the upcoming 1Ds3 so the assumption that the MF camera will have greater IQ because of larger photosites is not justified. I'd wager that, if these cameras are in any way lens-limited in sharpness, then the smaller format would outperform the larger one once the 1.7x converter is factored in (assuming the 1Ds3 isn't using a 1.4x). A 1Ds3 could be considered to be a 1.33x crop of the H3 sensor...not nearly as great as people think and a smaller difference than DX is.

 

Perhaps H3 teleconverters are stackable, but it seems at that point that image quality would clearly be better with the smaller format and it's more suitable supermacro lens choices.

 

Unless there are other options, there's no equivalent to the Canon/Nikon/Sigma/Tamron 180s/200s, no equivalent to the Sigma 150 + 1.4/1.7/2.0x converters or 2x + 100mm options. It seems that 28mm minimum frame width is a practical limit for an H3 since there are no longer lens options and diopters will shorten working distances to unmanagable levels.

[Guest Dan Schwartz]

On more time...

 

Techniques for medium format differ from their smaller (35mm & APS) cousins, with MF techniques being closer to large format.

 

For starters, extension rings are commonly used, and Yes, even stacked, in order to simulate how bellows work on a view camera.

 

Also, actual bellows are used in MF for lens movements (shift/tilt/swing) -- Another set of LF techniques -- as well as macro.

 

Teleconverters are generally not used as often in MF, except out in the field with Very Expensive Lenses, since MF glass (like this lens I own) has higher aperture numbers, due to the fact the lens has to spread the light out over a larger film (or CCD) surface area without fall-off, yet still be manageable.

 

Teleconverters are more common in the 35mm world, because even if you add 1-2 stops (1.4x & 2x), good glass with decent gathering power (larger apertures) is relatively inexpensive, such as an 80-200 f/2.8 zoom: Pop a 1.4x TC on it and you just bought a 120-300 f/4, which is still quite good.

 

On the other hand, I'd never put even a 1.4x on my 645AFd using my 300mm f/4.5 lens, as that would take me up to f/6.3 at only 420mm, dimming the viewfinder quite a bit... In that case, I simply mount my 500mm f/5.6 MF lens instead.

 

[by the way, I didn't know until just now B&H cut the price by over half on that 300mm f/2.8 monster for the 645: It was $13,900 the last time I checked a few weeks ago!]

 

This lens appears to be the one used, not the one I linked to before.

 

B&H lists this lens as capable of 1:1 at 15" nearest focus, so 5" working distance sounds reasonable. The 35mm equivalent perspective is 73mm, so it's basically like shooting a 60mm macro only with a minimum focus distance not quite as close.

 

A 1.7x teleconverter is available that yields a 124mm equivalent perspective and a 28mm frame width, about equivalent to 1.28:1 on a 35mm FF. A DX camera with a 100mm will be more powerful without diopters or teleconverters. A FF 35mm with a 150mm Sigma or 1.4x + 100mm is in the ballpark.

 

It would be interesting to see tests proving one way or another whether the 1.7x gives up any potential IQ advantage the MF sensor offers. Remember that a 39MP 36x48 sensor has pixels with only 10% more area than the upcoming 1Ds3 so the assumption that the MF camera will have greater IQ because of larger photosites is not justified. I'd wager that, if these cameras are in any way lens-limited in sharpness, then the smaller format would outperform the larger one once the 1.7x converter is factored in (assuming the 1Ds3 isn't using a 1.4x). A 1Ds3 could be considered to be a 1.33x crop of the H3 sensor...not nearly as great as people think and a smaller difference than DX is.

 

Perhaps H3 teleconverters are stackable, but it seems at that point that image quality would clearly be better with the smaller format and it's more suitable supermacro lens choices.

 

Unless there are other options, there's no equivalent to the Canon/Nikon/Sigma/Tamron 180s/200s, no equivalent to the Sigma 150 + 1.4/1.7/2.0x converters or 2x + 100mm options. It seems that 28mm minimum frame width is a practical limit for an H3 since there are no longer lens options and diopters will shorten working distances to unmanagable levels.

[PRC 2]

Titanium is a real Hillary! to work with...

 

Hillary - that one went straight over my head - care to expand ?

 

Paul C