Sorry that this question has nothing to do with creativity but it didn't fit anywhere else. In a recent and futile discussion with a Hasselblad owner about camera quality I mentioned that I thought Leica might be the best overall quality system from Europe. It was his strong opinion that comparing 35mm to medium format was like comparing apples and oranges. I don't see much difference between the two and the format should have nothing to do with quality. I would be interested to know how others feel.

-- andy laycock (agl@intergate.bc.ca), January 06, 1999

Answers

Quality difference between Leica and Hasselblad? Both are high quality cameras. NASA sent Hasselblad to the moon. Both are unaffordable. You can only buy a decent outfit if you have the budget of a government agency. (See above)

Notwithstanding toddlers shoving bananas into the lenses, both camera systems do keep functioning admirably with minimal maintenance.

The only real way that you can determine quality is how often the cameras break from wear. What's the mean time between failure? What usually breaks when something does break? Stuff like that.

By the way, Mason, did you just give up and send your camera back to the factory, or is it still embalmed in banana? :)

-- Brian C. Miller (a-bcmill@exchange.microsoft.com), January 06, 1999.

Leica and Hasselblad

I guess I should be more specific with my question. Is it even possible to compare cameras of differing formats? To me the only substantive difference would be the size of the negative but the Hasselblad owner disagreed strongly. I had also heard somewhere that due to physical constraints that medium format lenses may not exhibit that fine of resolution.

-- andy laycock (agl@intergate.bc.ca), January 06, 1999.

It depends what you mean by 'quality'. Does this include reliability, aesthetics, usability, etc? The larger format will generally give better results, even if the lenses give slightly lower resolution, due to lower enlargement factors. To really use the high quality of either system needs the slowest films and tripods.

I started using Leicas because of reliability rather than picture quality. I recently bought a 65-year-old Leica for #60, and it works fine.

I've only used a Hassie once (20 years ago), and I decided it wasn't for me. But that wasn't due to lack of any 'quality', more the bulk of the camera and limited speed of the lenses.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), January 07, 1999.

Response to Etc. question Leica vs Hasselbald

This actually gets to the crux of my argument, that quality is totally independant of format. Of course quality is also a broad concept. I'm not an equipment-oriented person myself and since it rarely comes up I suspect that few of the contributers here are of that ilk...and thank god for that. I find that those who are hung up on their equipment are usually armchair photographers who have no choice but to substitute 'advertised' sharpness for creativity. Personally I do not desire either a Leica or Hasselblad, although if someone were to offer them to me I wouldn't refuse.

-- andy laycock (agl@intergate.bc.ca), January 07, 1999.

Oh, boy: The "battle" of one great camera vs another. Might as well toss in Rollei and Alpa.

They are all winners. Shut up and shoot! :-)

One fellow did a test of his M3 and Hassy. The lenses do equal each other at the smaller apertures. So no great big deal there. The information is good to know if you make huge enlargements, but for me a 16x20 is about it.

The last time I actually saw anybody using MF or LF (besides me) was in October/September around Mt. Baker (Heather Meadows) Wash, US. I saw one guy with LF, and everybody else had a Pentax. No Rollei or Hasselblad. Nothing but Pentax.

So honestly, so what? All the $20,000 cameras are great. Duh. Fit and finish are impecable. They are not using plastic lenses. The engineers for all of these systems have worked to create wonderful technological achievements.

None of them are affordable.

How many people do you know own a brand new system of either one, let alone both? I don't know anybody. I met one Leica user who scrimped and saved to buy a very used Hassy.

So what if they are at the very peak of performance when practically nobody uses them? Doesn't that mean that they are irrelevant?

Yeah, Leica, Hasselblad, Rollei, Alpa, Sinar, Linhof, Arc-Swiss, .... All of them are fine cameras. Go buy one and use it!! :-)

-- Brian C. Miller (a-bcmill@exchange.microsoft.com), January 07, 1999.

I have never been very impressed by hasselblads (talk about expensive, even Ansel complained about the hassy prices), I used to own an rb 67 pro s and loved it, a real workhorse, but even these have become over priced. As lenses go, with todays computerized methods, its not too hard for anybody to make high quality lenses. I think anything that is made to such precision as far as fitting parts together is just asking for disaster with things such as dust or grit, with a mamiya it doesn't get wedged into the body, but for a hassy, well thats a different story. I also like the larger negative size with the mamiya.

Mark

-- mark lindsey (lindseygraves@msn.com), January 12, 1999.

Depends on film speed. With good old Tri-X I would say it is comparing apples with oranges indeed. How large is the final print you conceive for instance, how do you feel about grain in your print? With the new generation of films however, especially Delta100, testers have shown nearly unnoticeable differences between the two systems/formats up to 11*14", even in tonal values, an aspect in which MF is supposed to have advantage. I've put my H'blad aside because I don't like the resulting contrast on B&W, which is a very personal evaluation (there were other draw-backs for me though: movement caused by the mirror makes working on tripod necessary, which means I might as well work on 4*5). In colourphotography H'blad is a nice camera. I'm not very enthousiastic about Leica in colour (bleuish and a bit too contrasty), but Leica is incomprehensible beautiful and unique in B&W, which is a very personal opinion too. At the moment I have decided that the whole MF is not interesting actually - for my purposes. If I had such a MF-purpose (fashion, wedding) I would go for a rangefinder, e.g. Mamiya6 or 7.

-- Lot (lotw@wxs.nl), February 14, 1999.

Fot the skinny on MF go to http://www.exeter.ac.uk/mfd. Lots of opinions and experience over there!!

-- Gene Crumpler (nikonguy@emji.net), February 14, 1999.