Goodbye Betterlight, Hello Imacon

Having a studio on tap is becoming a real boon. It gives me time to seriously play and explore working processes without time and mess constraints. Over the past month I have made a few big changes to my own personal workflow. I sold the BetterLight. My much loved imaging beast with all it's pixels and fantastic pure RGB data is now gone. The decision to move on was born from a growing frustration at how time consuming it had become to make an image. Whilst perfect for a methodical fine art shot not so fun for something that moves or requires a fluid response. Add to this the ever growing need for continuous lights and my stretched budget for studio strobes. The real challenge for me has been to give up on having in camera movements and the precision that i have become accustomed to. After much fretting I settled on a Mamiya RZ67 ProII with an Imacon/Hasselblad iXpress 132C digital back. And since it's arrived I've not looked back...

Jenny & Cat - 132C/RZ67

The camera is big but not unusably so. Also it's lenses and accessories are super cheap compared to the most current medium format digital systems. And probably my most favorite aspect of the camera is it's close focus ability's thanks to using bellows. The 22Mp Imacon back produces fantastic files, although they look coarse compared to the Betterlight. To get the best from these files I have found it best to use Hasselblads own software, Phocus. I don't know how it does it but the images that come out of this software look spectacular when compared with what i was getting using ACR or Flexlight to process the files. But there is a downside..... even on my MacPro quad core 12gb ram beast it's sluggish and slow. Just browsing feels painful. Editing is pure torment. This is something I must fix asap. There is no way i could pull a real world job off with the current speed of Phocus.

Arms Folded , Bronze Resin - George Triggs - 2010 132C/RZ67