Contax ND

[Guest]

Well, boys and girls, Irakly and I made some progress yesterday. He walked me through a lot of what he has learned, and we were able to adjust my ND to better performance spec's. We loaded new firmware: first 8 then 7. and shot in RAW mode. A weird thin crisp red line appeared on the preview at first but wasn't in the tiffs after conversion and opening in PhotoShop. ????? It had both of us scratching our heads. Some of the color issues I had were solved by shooting + chroma in camera AND boosting the RAW file +2 or 3 using the new RAW developer software 2.0. I actually got decent flesh tones. I'm still a bit confused as to selecting Adobe RGB and which color profile to select when opening in Photoshop, but further shooting will smooth that out I'm sure.

I pulled out my Contax 645 with the Kodak 645C DCS Proback to show Irakly what it could do in the same conditions. We shot his cute little girl who was a very good little model for our experiments,
( In studio using Profoto strobes and an Elinchrom Octabox plus bounce for some shot and strip lights for other shots). We mounted a 120/4 APO macro
on both the 645 and the ND (via a Nam-1) and tried the same shot...a profile using the strip lights. At first the ND camera wouldn't shoot, but we discovered that when using the 120, which is a manual lens, you have to set the camera on manual focus not AF.

Well I was impressed with the results of the ND even compared to the big Kodak back. Not as good, but a lot closer than I would have bet on.

Aside from all the other iratations like the small buffer and no review in RAW while shooting, I still have one aspect to solve when using this camera:

The Blacks.

When you get everything else working as far as color, the blacks and nuetrals still look digital to me.
To be truthful, I had the same problem with the Canon 1D I had tested in my studio before deciding to concentrate on the Nikon D1-X as my workhorse professional camera. The Nikon has never displayed that problem. Nor has the Kodak capture.

Before everyone starts advising me as to solutions, here's what I've tried to date... adjust curves at that end of the spectrum; use selective color control and adjust only the blacks; select that part of the picture and play with contrast.

I'll figure it out eventually.

I'll try to post one of the images we shot on the Contax forum Gallery here. It probably won't do it justice, Irakly and I were viewing it on a LaCie Blue at huge
crops to inspect detail of even just the eyelashes.

 

[Guest]

Marc,

Glad to hear you're making progress. Can you be more descriptive of what you mean by "digital looking" blacks? What kind of artifacts are you observing? Unevenness in tone? Pixelation? I know it's hard to describe the stuff sometimes, but it might help me look for it in my shots. Sometimes less sensitive eyes can pick stuff up if you know what to look for (and then you start cursing yourself when you start seeing it everywhere

). God knows my eyes aren't as keen and trained as they were five years ago.

DJ

 

[Guest]

Irakly,

You have a beautiful daughter! My heart goes out to her. I actually hated photography until I was in my 20s because my father used to make us pose all the time while traveling. I finally caught the bug in spite of that. On the other hand, my good friend's 5 year old girl just LOVES the camera, so maybe your daughter does too. Thanks for all the great feedback.

DJ

 

[Guest]

The following two articles may rest your fears that Contax will be abandoning the N Digital in its current foem or at least newer versions to follow, or that the upcoming CMOS sensors are going to blow the ND family away, other than in higher resolution and the currently known shortcomings. We should notice that Kyocera made a conscious decision to go with the CCD instead of the CMOS in spite of some obvious advantages in speed, cost and simplicity of implementation, and we can get some insights as to why in the second link.

http://www.dalsa.com/news/news.asp?itemID=71

vfm.dalsa.com/shared/content/Photonics_Spectra_CCDvsCMOS_Litwiller.pdf


DJ

 

[Guest]

there is also a reference that about shipping ND's with this chip!! so we should see a new N Camera may be the same with a different chip and contax will be nice enough to upgrade everybody

 

[Guest]

Mehrdad,

That IS the chip in our ND - so you see the potential is indeed in there, just need some refinements in software.

DJ

 

[Guest]

i thought Philips was making the chip??

 

[Guest]

Dalsa bought the whole technology from Philips earlier this year.

DJ

 

[Guest]

Its as I said in my previous posts...Contax, fix the software. It would be intresting to see what other software programs have done with the same chip. Philips sold a ton of them to digital back manufacturers.

 

[Guest]

In answer to DJ and Mehrdad.
Dalsa indeed purchased the technology for this 6 MP chip from Philips. One may safely assume that this "smallish" company has been able build a new chip and technology since the acquisition early 2002, but have mainly spent their time on transferring the technology of the chip from Philips (people and brains) to Dalsa (people and brains). Hopefully some Philips people have joined this new company to safeguard the future of the technology, because it is not factories and documents, but people that make the technology work and win). My professional life the last two years has been mainly about such a business transfer process and I feel I know "a bit about it".
Hopes that this move from Philips to Dalsa will soon produce a new sensor should not be high, the fear that Dalsa will not be able sufficiently support the technology and be able to produce the chip is there, but that is more a matter of time and investments, than a risk of failure.
Let's see what the company Dalso have in store for the development of new generation of these sensors. I believe that a compay focussed on this business has more of a chance that a company doing everything a little bit right. In this business, however, the production is the key and this requires deep pockets. I assume this will be outsourced to the large fondries where required.

I do not possess an ND, but from what I read the problems as you experience with this camera are related to the integration of the chip into the ND concept more than the concept of the CCD chip
itself. The potentially very good performance is there (I appreciate the very nice ex&les on this forum), but given your comments on the useability of the camera has to be made more accessible and more solid/fast/battery life friendly etc. with todays CCD integration and S/W technology. As I mentioned earlier in the thread: Contax have been lured into a too early introduction, they were not seasoned enough in this market and technology to withstand the expectation level of the customer as raised by competition.
Their fault.
They have to fix this. From what I see I am not optimistic (fo seeing a solution soon), however.