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 p.1 #8 · Contax N Digital price... | |
StevenPA wrote:
There are two things that stick out in my mind about the N Digital: the awesome WB button and the inability to see RAW captures on the LCD.
Another great thing about the camera was it's great handling and wonderful ergonomics. It worked like you expect a camera to work -- everything was where it should be, all the main controls were readily accessible and intuitive. A great user interface (especially if you liked using Contaxes over the last decade or so). You didn't need to study the manual for a few hours before you would use the camera. And yes, it had a functional aperture ring on the lenses. AF was VERY precise, if not particularly fast (there are trade-offs here). Then there was the innovative focus bracketing based on the DOF of the lens.
Other issues with the camera were small buffer, and inadequate software. These like not being able to review raw images on the LCD were small annoyances that could have been easily fixed. Kudo's to Adobe for including the N Digital in it's camera raw -- after the camera was essentially discontinued by Kyocera. This gave it a big step up in usability compared to the poor RAW conversion software provided by Contax. (this was something that Contax/Kyocera should have farmed out to Adobe or Phase One rather than try to develop this from scratch internally.
The other problem was noise. Noise in the shadows, even at lower ISO's, could make the camera unusable in many situations. The camera could not really go about 400 ISO.
Paul Yi wrote:
I saw many pictures taken with the camera, and they had certain characteristic I can't name.
Yes, exactly. Hard to put words on, but it produced images with a unique and lovely look to them. The look was much more of what we expect from medium format digital. This and the limited ISO range are due primarily to the fact that the camera used a chip similar to those used in MF camera, the Dalsa (née Philips) chip in subsequent iterations continues to serve as the sensor in many MF digital backs
This camera with a current generation chip (with perhaps a few other recent advances) and a few firmware tweeks would be great. I would be first in line to get one, as would many others.
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