N-Digital - the ultimate Contax Fan-Test....
Since we are waiting already so long for this digital camera, while the competition is introducing already their second generation digital SLR, you can see now slowly, who is really a Contax Fan and who is not
Because nobody knows exactly when it will really come in the store, we end up in speculating about the fabulous advantage of the full-size chip of the N-Digital – we do not have anything else to do anyway.
So I try to start a thread to get some interesting facts about the technology and pro and cons of the N-digital, before we can see one in the store. I am new to digital photography, so I will not talk here a lot about this, hoping that someone smarter than me will catch the line….
I do not want to go into details about the specs., knowing, that the last word is not yet spoken and changes might still come in the future. In the download-section you will find some information about that and if something changes, I will post it in the “news†folder.
What might be interesting are the advantages and disadvantages of a full-size chip vs. the 2/3-solution of the competition. If you see, how aggressive Nikon and Canon is coming now with their new models, it makes sense to think about pro and cons. That helps to decide, whether you still want to wait for Contax or start shooting today with another brand name on the body – and of course lenses. The N-digital will be more expensive anyway. This is for sure and everybody who thinks/hopes differently is dreaming (sorry to be so harsh).
You will always have to pay a premium, if you want to have Contax/Zeiss. It does not matter, whether there is another brand, which gives you the same quality body (if that would be the case with the N-digital). It just matters, whether you can put Zeiss glasses in front of it. This is the name of the game and it is up to you to decide, whether you agree and pay the bill, or you don’t and then you buy something else. Leica is doing the same – maybe even more extreme.
I am not a digital expert, so I can not tell you as of today, whether the Zeiss lenses are making a remarkable difference, assuming everything else would be equal. I think at this stage we can expect that there will be not everything else equal for the next 2 years. In my opinion there are right now too many different approaches in chip, software and camera design to be able to give an objective judgement. Probably “real life†tests will be the only satisfying way to find an answer – maybe you find it amusing, but I still hope, that there will be an N-digital this year (2002). So I am concentrating now just on the chip-size and someone more knowledgeable could help us with some comments out.
First you have a change in focal length, if you are not using a full-size chip. It is like a multiplier. If you compare full-size chip and a 2/3 chip, this is like a factor of ca. 1.6 to the “normal†focal length of a full-size chip. This is good news for people who use tele-lenses and bad news for fans of wide-angle pictures.
But there is also an advantage for the 2/3 chip. Because of the smaller size, you basically cut off the corner (in a circle) of the lens, which means you are just using the better designed (in image quality) centre of the lens instead of the often worse corners. If you are using a full-size chip, the full radius of the lens, as we know it from analogue photography, is used. That means all the inferior corners influence also the final picture. So the 2/3 chip can be an elegant way of hiding the potentially mediocre design in the corner of lenses. And this could be also a reason, why all new N-lenses have bigger filter sizes. I think with the quality of the Zeiss lenses I can live easy with the “cornersâ€. At least I did live with it happy for the last years in analogue photography.
This is not yet the end of the story. As a Contax fan, you hope of course that there are also some more positive effects of full-size chip then “just†the real use of wide-angle lenses. Otherwise why is Contax putting so much effort in it, if they could have had it a lot easier using a 2/3 chip? And there is at least one, which is in my opinion a pretty important one.
If you think about the “multiplier effect†of the 2/3 chip, there is also another important effect. It influences also the image quality if you want to enlarge your photo. This effect is almost as big as the switch from 135 to medium format. The multiplier is almost the same factor of 1.6x. If you are using a full-size chip and you are looking at the MTF charts of lenses, then you see line-pairs/mm (lp/mm) of 10, 20 and 40. If you are using a 2/3 chip, you must basically imagine the curves of 16 lp/mm, 32 lp/mm and 64 lp/mm. The difference between the lines is more or less always the same ratio. Obviously the image quality will be worse at 16lp/mm then at 10lp/mm. That means, if you want to enlarge a negative (I guess everybody wants that), you have worse image quality because of the need of enlarging the negative more often to get the same final print size.
Everybody knows, that medium format is superior to 24x36 in image quality if you enlarge to the same final print size and using the same film. Therefore I expect a “wow-effect†of the N-digital pictures, compared to the 2/3 chip-competition if you enlarge to the same print size.
It would be interesting to know, by how much a smart combination of hardware, software and chip could improve this disadvantage of the 2/3 chip or maybe even enlarge the quality difference in favour of the full-size chip.
For technical details: http://www.contaxndigital.com/
Since we are waiting already so long for this digital camera, while the competition is introducing already their second generation digital SLR, you can see now slowly, who is really a Contax Fan and who is not
Because nobody knows exactly when it will really come in the store, we end up in speculating about the fabulous advantage of the full-size chip of the N-Digital – we do not have anything else to do anyway.
So I try to start a thread to get some interesting facts about the technology and pro and cons of the N-digital, before we can see one in the store. I am new to digital photography, so I will not talk here a lot about this, hoping that someone smarter than me will catch the line….
I do not want to go into details about the specs., knowing, that the last word is not yet spoken and changes might still come in the future. In the download-section you will find some information about that and if something changes, I will post it in the “news†folder.
What might be interesting are the advantages and disadvantages of a full-size chip vs. the 2/3-solution of the competition. If you see, how aggressive Nikon and Canon is coming now with their new models, it makes sense to think about pro and cons. That helps to decide, whether you still want to wait for Contax or start shooting today with another brand name on the body – and of course lenses. The N-digital will be more expensive anyway. This is for sure and everybody who thinks/hopes differently is dreaming (sorry to be so harsh).
You will always have to pay a premium, if you want to have Contax/Zeiss. It does not matter, whether there is another brand, which gives you the same quality body (if that would be the case with the N-digital). It just matters, whether you can put Zeiss glasses in front of it. This is the name of the game and it is up to you to decide, whether you agree and pay the bill, or you don’t and then you buy something else. Leica is doing the same – maybe even more extreme.
I am not a digital expert, so I can not tell you as of today, whether the Zeiss lenses are making a remarkable difference, assuming everything else would be equal. I think at this stage we can expect that there will be not everything else equal for the next 2 years. In my opinion there are right now too many different approaches in chip, software and camera design to be able to give an objective judgement. Probably “real life†tests will be the only satisfying way to find an answer – maybe you find it amusing, but I still hope, that there will be an N-digital this year (2002). So I am concentrating now just on the chip-size and someone more knowledgeable could help us with some comments out.
First you have a change in focal length, if you are not using a full-size chip. It is like a multiplier. If you compare full-size chip and a 2/3 chip, this is like a factor of ca. 1.6 to the “normal†focal length of a full-size chip. This is good news for people who use tele-lenses and bad news for fans of wide-angle pictures.
But there is also an advantage for the 2/3 chip. Because of the smaller size, you basically cut off the corner (in a circle) of the lens, which means you are just using the better designed (in image quality) centre of the lens instead of the often worse corners. If you are using a full-size chip, the full radius of the lens, as we know it from analogue photography, is used. That means all the inferior corners influence also the final picture. So the 2/3 chip can be an elegant way of hiding the potentially mediocre design in the corner of lenses. And this could be also a reason, why all new N-lenses have bigger filter sizes. I think with the quality of the Zeiss lenses I can live easy with the “cornersâ€. At least I did live with it happy for the last years in analogue photography.
This is not yet the end of the story. As a Contax fan, you hope of course that there are also some more positive effects of full-size chip then “just†the real use of wide-angle lenses. Otherwise why is Contax putting so much effort in it, if they could have had it a lot easier using a 2/3 chip? And there is at least one, which is in my opinion a pretty important one.
If you think about the “multiplier effect†of the 2/3 chip, there is also another important effect. It influences also the image quality if you want to enlarge your photo. This effect is almost as big as the switch from 135 to medium format. The multiplier is almost the same factor of 1.6x. If you are using a full-size chip and you are looking at the MTF charts of lenses, then you see line-pairs/mm (lp/mm) of 10, 20 and 40. If you are using a 2/3 chip, you must basically imagine the curves of 16 lp/mm, 32 lp/mm and 64 lp/mm. The difference between the lines is more or less always the same ratio. Obviously the image quality will be worse at 16lp/mm then at 10lp/mm. That means, if you want to enlarge a negative (I guess everybody wants that), you have worse image quality because of the need of enlarging the negative more often to get the same final print size.
Everybody knows, that medium format is superior to 24x36 in image quality if you enlarge to the same final print size and using the same film. Therefore I expect a “wow-effect†of the N-digital pictures, compared to the 2/3 chip-competition if you enlarge to the same print size.
It would be interesting to know, by how much a smart combination of hardware, software and chip could improve this disadvantage of the 2/3 chip or maybe even enlarge the quality difference in favour of the full-size chip.
For technical details: http://www.contaxndigital.com/
