Mark Gowin;2577 wrote: Beautiful lady and photographs. My first reaction was that I preferred background rendering of the Hasselblad HC210mm over the Leica S120mm and in general preferred the Hasselblad photo. However, upon closer inspection of the web sized images, I think the difference has more to do with the lighting than the lens rendering.
The Hasselblad photo has nice hair light (looks like natural light streaming in) and the front fill brightens the eyes and gives them a pleasing catchlight. Also, it appears the fill light allowed for a shorter exposure and darker background – although that could be a result of changing natural light. Anyway, the thing I first found most pleasing about the Hasselblad background rendering was the abscence of distracting circles/aberrations – the S120mm seemed to have more of them. Then it occurred to me that the difference between the photos is the background in the S120mm photo has more bright spots in it and show up as circles. The Hasselblad shot has circles also, but they are not bright so the major difference between the two renderings is the background lighting. The H4D/60 and HC210 combo appears to have a more shallow depth of field than the S2 and 120mm combo which may also account for some of the difference.
There is something about the S2 photo that I really like, but the Hasselblad photo is also very very good. I wonder if the comparison would very different if the lighting had been constant.
Mark, the point wasn’t to make a comparison in the literal sense of the word. I was shooting a job, not testing systems.
It just happened that I wanted to shoot the photographer with my H4D/60 in hand and I don’t have two of them : -) … so I pressed the S2 into service. For most of the shoot, I needed the higher sync speed of the H camera to control the background ambient … which you rightly observed in these two shots … the H shot was done at a higher shutter speed which altered the rendering of the ambient light. 1/160 at f/4 wasn’t an option with the S2 … but will be as soon as I get my hands on the H to S adapter, or the S/CS version lenses … which then will open up those options.
What I found interesting is the difference in draw … the background in the S2 120mm shot packed up the background closer to the subject than the 210 did, which appears further away. Interesting how different sized sensors and use of different focal lengths Provides different looks and feel to an image. However, we have to also keep in mind that the S2 was cropped a bit more to meet the 8X10 ratio for 16″ X 20″ prints.
-Marc
P.S., just completed a multi-location “engagement” portrait session where I used the S2 w/35/70/120 exclusively and did 90% of it ambient only since it was overcast … then the sun made an un-predicted reappearance (weatherman wrong again!) So, the other 10% really should have been done with higher sync speeds and powerful strobes like the Hensel Porty 1200L … but I made do with a large 1 stop silk scrim for those that I could. The couple up in the tree below should have been lit with off-camera high-speed sync and a big Fresnel at max spread … but, oh well, the SF58 had to do.
Take a peek if you have a minute … to stay in budget, all done in the space of 2 hours including driving time to two different locations and the clients changing wardrobe. A couple shots came out pretty good, and I had a bit of creative post fun with a few. The client is deliriously happy which is all that really matters. All in a day’s work : -)
http://fotografz.smugmug.com/Portraits/Sam/23645181_FGkFKt#!i=1913620314&k=XcfxqpG