Off-Topic - advice, experiences and examples, for images that will be processed in PhotoLab

[mikemyers]

@George

As you might know I just bought a Z6ii. But the sound of the shutter is just the same as a DSLR. There might be a setting in the menu that I didn’t find yet.

Seems to me that the quietest cameras nowadays replace or augment the mechanical shutter with an electronic shutter. This brings up another set of potential problems. The LEICA M11 has both. But electronic shutters can create issues: " The most important potential problem with electronic shutters is the "rolling shutter" effect . Because the imaging information is read from the sensor pixels slice-by-slice, a very fast-moving subject can move during the time it takes to read the whole sensor."

@mwsilvers

As I’ve said many times I have no intention of trying to convince anyone to move away from a camera with which they’re comfortable. But I wanted to set the record straight that mirrorless cameras are not some kind of marketing gimmick.

When you have time, read this camera marketing report, especially towards the end. Maybe “gimmick” was not the right word for me to use, but mirrorless cameras are generating lots of sales. As with anything, there are both advantages and disadvantages, but as I see it, most buyers just follow the advertisements.
Camera Industry Report

[JoJu (Joachim)]

George, how about reading the manual? Search for “silent shutter”. Last page in the camera menu, you can put it on the onscreen menu ( i-menu).

[George]

@mikemyers

Seems to me that the quietest cameras nowadays replace or augment the mechanical shutter with an electronic shutter.

Just checked. The Z6ii does have a choice between mechanical and electronic, and automatic. I don’ tknow yet what that means.
But it has a curtain that opens when the camera is active and closes when the camera is standby, deactive.
The viewfinder is ok, Hardly any difference with a OVF.

George

[George]

It’s not in the i-menu. Wonderful that menu by the way.

George

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@mikemyers

When you have time, read this camera marketing report, especially towards the end. Maybe “gimmick” was not the right word for me to use, but mirrorless cameras are generating lots of sales.

First I have no desire to read the marketing report, and yes mirrorless cameras may be generating lots of sales, but perhaps that’s because of their general superiority and usability In many respects when compared to DSLRs. What point are you trying to make?

Mark

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@George

As you might know I just bought a Z6ii. But the sound of the shutter is just the same as a DSLR. There might be a setting in the menu that I didn’t find yet.

George

There is a silent mode available in Z bodies that is completely and totally silent. Literally no sound at all.

Mark

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@AttaBoy

dSLR can use LV for view and MF/AF and electronic shutter as well … how do you think they do video ? flapping mirror and clapping shutter @ 24/30/60fps ?

Yes and, and when they do that they actually operate very much like a mirrorless camera, using the actual sensor for focusing rather than the separate auto focusing sensor. With a mirrorless camera you effectively have live view through the viewfinder all the time without having to compose and adjust the image on a small LCD screen in variable lighting.

Mark

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

There is a totally silent mode on the D850

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@Joanna, is the D850 totally silent such that in a completely quiet room there is literally zero sound? Zero decibels from mirror slap when shooting through the viewfinder? I had a silent mode in my Canon 70 Mark II. It was relatively quiet, but nowhere near really silent.

Mark

[George]

I found it. I don’t think I’ll use it.

George

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@George

I found it. I don’t think I’ll use it

I don’t use it very often myself. Occasionally it does come in handy.

Mark

[George]

It is to silent for me. I don’t get a feedback if the image is taken. Due to the lack of a mirror the noise is much less as with aDSLR.

George

[JoJu (Joachim)]

I said

@JoJu

you can put it on the onscreen menu ( i-menu).

That means, if you want the ability to shoot silent, then again, read the manual, it’s described in the reference manual. Search for “f1 customize menu”, f1 should be sufficient. Was looking for a while myself, Nikon manuals are just stupidly bad organized. These idiots use the term “silent photography”, but it’s only about switching off the mechanical shutter.

Just read as well the limits for silent shutter. Z 6 can’t use a flash when in silent shutter mode. What also can become a problem is, photographing in artificial light with a frequency slower than your shutter speed, like using 1/250 sec but the frequency of the lamp is 60 Hz (= 1/60 sec for a change), Then you will get severe banding. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the blurb of people with no experience in mirrorless system cameras. Some of them don’t even know that Nikon’s flagship is using electronic shutter exclusively. With shutter speeds as short as 1/32.000 sec – marketing gag, no true movement-freezing high speed, only kind of inbuilt electronic gray filter for shooting wide open under bright conditions.

Oh, and btw., if you have the beep signals switched ON (AF ok, touch ok) you need to switch them separately OFF. Other brands do have a switch to bring the whole thing to quietness.

[sloweddie (Ed)]

@mikemyers

The focus speed seems “instant” on my D780. Press the back-focus button, and the camera reacts. I don’t know how mirrorless compares, but to me, it’s like comparing $4.98 to $4.95. To me, I consider them both the same, five dollars.

Let me preface this by saying I’m tend to go overboard sometimes with the technical aspects of a photo. Lack of critical sharpness is one of the qualities that used to get my teeth gnashing more than anything else.

I’m not talking just about focus speed but also about focus accuracy. All DSLR camera/lens combinations suffer from some degree of front- and back-focus error as a consequence of the technology used. Prime lens errors can usually be tuned out but zooms are another matter. Some zooms have a relatively smooth, consistent error over their zoom range and can be effectively tuned but others, even some big quality name-brand ones, have errors that vary all over the place as the zoom is varied and thus are difficult or impossible correct effectively.

I had a Nikon zoom 24-70 2.7 with my Nikon D810 that was just as described above. In a couple of spots it needed more than the +20 adjustment than the camera body could provide. Nikon service checked it out and said it was fine, all in spec, but it was never a consistent sharp focuser. I finally tired of dealing with it and replaced it with a Tamron 24-70 2.8 that COULD be tuned and was MUCH sharper.

Mirrorless? Forget about those errors, they just don’t exist in mirrorless.

[sloweddie (Ed)]

@mikemyers

sort of agree with you - BUT - twice now, I have gone to a camera store and picked up a mirrorless Nikon, and it felt to me like I was watching a TV screen. My impression was that it was awful, and when I stood in front of the first store, and “panned” the camera left to right, I almost felt “seasick” from the way the perspective changed.

This may have been the result of a too-low EVF refresh rate. My Fuji X-T5 has low and high EVF refresh settings that make a big difference in the quality of the view. The default is a low refresh rate. According to one camera tester the high refresh setting increased battery draw by a small amount, by something like 25 shots out of a total of about 700 or so. I don’t remember what the Canon R5 did.

The Nikon you looked at might have been set at a slow refresh rate by default. Or maybe not, dunno.

Just a thought.

[mikemyers]

@sloweddie

The Nikon you looked at might have been set at a slow refresh rate by default. Or maybe not, dunno.

Since I don’t own one, and only tried two “mirrorless” cameras, I have nothing to contribute to that part of this discussion. For me, I will stick with my D780 and M10, and if I ever did buy a “mirrorless” it would be the Z9 or whatever might replace it, but I don’t expect to change. Whatever the lens focusing is or isn’t, I am happy with my D780 and with the M10 it’s ME that has to focus correctly, as there is no autofocus.

So many choices nowadays, but the person I listen to the most in this discussion is @Joanna and her D850. Or, I can bypass the whole discussion and just use my M10 in manual mode. Or, I can just follow Ken Rockwell’s advice, and accept that for general photography, the camera doesn’t matter.

@sloweddie

This may have been the result of a too-low EVF refresh rate.

Sounds like a good reason to avoid anything that has a refresh rate, and stick with optical, where the only refresh rate is that of my eyes.

[George]

I bought the book Mastering the Z6ii and Z7ii from Darrell Young and he mentions that as well.

George

[sloweddie (Ed)]

@mikemyers

My Fuji X100F has most of those “advantages”, and I enjoy using that camera, but given the choice of the EVF or OVF, I almost always prefer the old OVF.

Unfortunately Fuji hasn’t yet made viewfinder image quality a priority even in the brand new model X-T5 that I just bought . Sony, Canon, and Nikon all have double the megapixels in theirs and that makes a significant difference in the image quality you see in the viewfinder!

[mikemyers]

@sloweddie

Unfortunately Fuji hasn’t yet made viewfinder image quality a priority

I think you mis-read me. I love my Fuji X100F, and I often use it set to “optical”, rather than “digital”. I would be thrilled if I had the same choice on my M10, but Leica can’t figure out how to do this without losing quality in their rangefinder system. Apparently they have tried.

My comments on mirrorless are from my going to two camera shops, one here in Miami, and one in India, and working with a mirrorless camera for a few minutes. Compared to my Nikon D3, D750, and now D870, and also a friend’s D4, the mirrorless image was a poor substitute. My good friend Ray is ready to dump his Nikon Z6 II because of the viewfinder - he prefers the optical viewfinders in his current and previous DSLR cameras.

I’m no longer going to comment on this, and feel all photographers should buy whatever they prefer. We all have our opinions, me included. I’ll only answer questions directed to me, as yours was. Thanks!!

[mikemyers]

I was just reading this article:

Large Format Photography

For me, it brought back so many thoughts jumbled together, the (few) images that I did take long ago with large format camera, and dealing with my darkroom that was fully set up to print 4x5 negatives. When I moved to Florida, I had already switched to digital, and while I hated the idea of selling all my old gear, my tiny 600 square foot apartment had no reasonable way to set up my darkroom gear. I never got as good as what’s described in this article - by then, I was back to processing 35mm film. This article brought up lovely memories, and thoughts, and “what if…”

@Wolfgang will ask why I’m wasting my time reading stuff like this, when I could be out “doing”. He’s right, of course, but I’ve always been a “dreamer”, and sometimes (but not always) I can get my dreams to come true. But then there’s that saying “be careful what you wish for, as you may get it”. That’s also very true. …but had I not been a “dreamer”, I never would have bought my M10, and my constant camera companion would be my latest Nikon, which has been the case for most of my life.

Anyway, @Joanna, I think reading this will put a smile on your face. This electronic magazine would probably love it if you submitted an article to them, and a lot of people would benefit. In the meantime, I accept everything I read, and also accept that for me this is all “dreams”, not my reality.

Of course, in today’s reality, I wonder how much of your Large Format Photography goes from camera to darkroom, and how much goes from camera to PhotoLab? It’s now 2023, and if I accept that I could some day buy a large format camera, and the gear to develop the negatives, I could use my flatbed scanner and get the image into my computer, at which point PhotoLab would take over (once I had learned how to properly scan a 4x5 negative). Now, in 2023, that would be plausible and do-able, and likely affordable.

Since this large format gear is almost certainly NOT recognized by PhotoLab, what are your impressions of doing this? How do you get your processed film images into PhotoLab?

The cost can be very reasonable - for a little over $300 someone can buy this, buy a lens, and the gear to process 4x5 negatives. It would be a start. This gear, along with a scanner, and a LOT of learning, would get someone into shooting in LF…

https://www.keh.com/shop/linhof-4x5-kardan-bi-view-camera-body-679649.html