Nice sharpness - rework your DSLR !

I have been quite lazy (busy?) the last year, so my blog was kind of left out, but today I want to talk about something which is a real improvement to your DSLR.
A year ago I ran into the German company Makkario:

http://www.optik-makario.de/

They will rebuild your Canon, Nikon or Sony DSLR and remove the anti aliasing filter.
This will actually give you about 25-30 % more resolution especially with our high end lenses which do resolve this extra by design.

I am using this now with growing fun, it is probably the best 500 € laid down for a Photo equipment since a long time. No change in usage needed,everything working (even the sensor cleaning !) - highly recommended !

I also had my UV and IR Cut Filter removed from the 5DMK2 I´m using and this is opening a whole new world of photography to everybody. there are nearly no drawbacks (you have to use a seperate Bluegreen Filter in front of your lenses when you want normal color)

So take a look at their website, you will be very pleased.

Greetings from Munich

Stefan

Hartblei Cam on Youtube

Well after my visit to Birmingham show "Focus on Imaging" there is now a short video on youtube - made by Photowalktrough.com John Arnold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXwUCopLAo

We had fun on the booth, so see our "FrankenCam"in action.

BTW a term that arose recently in discussions what the Hartblei Cam is:

Macro Four Thirds.........;-)

actually describing it pretty well if you think about it.

Final version launch next days, new display, new flyer see more soon.

Greetings from Munich
Stefan

Heureka - a CAM is born

After some months of silence, here I raise my voice again. Not because I did not have to say anything, but because I was so darn busy.
If you take a look at our new website, you will easily see what happened.
Hartblei has been pregnant and now given birth to something totally new, a medium format camera with a 35mm Nikon or Canon mount for the lenses.
I mean this sounds pretty crazy right ?

But after taking a close look to the fact that most backs use chipsizes well below 40x50mm it makes perfectly sense.

And- what was the dream of all Architecture photographers for some years?
Wider wideangles for MF ! If you use a Rodenstock 23mm that´s about as wide as you can get, but is this enough ? I would say NO !
Now we have a large scale manufacturer like Canon who has born a small miracle - a 17mm TS lens which seems to be a real gem. sharp (nearly)distortion free and "only" 2500 € which I believe is a bargain for this lens. Now what can we do with this and a camera which uses an EF mount and a Medium format back up to 60 MP ?
Yummy ! To make this even better, we have cooperated with Nurizon and their new Acolens software V2 Supershift will support our Camera. tata !

I think this will wake up some people in the industry, we will see what the big boys will do. At the moment I sit here with a big grin in my face and send you

Greetings from Munich

Stefan Steib

Final Versions Zeiss approved

After 3 years of hard work I can proudly announce that we have met the needs of our partner Carl Zeiss, we offer great MTF values in all tolerances now (down to 5% symmetrie which is superb !) even with our complex TS mechanics .
The 40mm delivers 200 LP/mm which is outstanding, probably one of very few lenses on the Photomarket which can reach this.

More reason to be proud: we made it to the top news on DPReview:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0903/09032403hartbleizeiss.asp
There will be an in detail test of our 120mm soon.

And DigLloyd.com the specialist for highend lensreviews with an indepth knowhow about Zeiss lenses will also get a test kit from us.

We have new partners now for Sales : there is Fotograf Dunyasi in Istanbul to whom I send a warm welcome, they are a large and competent supplier in Turkey, so thanks to Mr. Celtikci who was initiating this.

We are also close to get a new Japanese/Hongkong/China and USA distribution which is very good news more to this later.

And then we have available again our Color and Sharpnesstargets which are a real help for using your camera best at repro or all precise color work.

We will not stop here. There is the wideangle(28mm) we are working on and even a longer lens(180mm Sonnar) is one of my personal favourites. If you want to vote for this and leave a comment.I know this lens is legendary and with good reason.

So tell us what you think and drop a note here or at s.steib@hartblei.de.

Greetings from Munich
Stefan

Canon 5D Mark 2 or Video has reached our TS lenses

Today I unwrapped my new 5DII with a nice BG-E6 Grip and extra (expensive) batteries. After some tests (I already had a 5DII at Dinkels Presentation last year for a day) I quickly dug into the video stuff and now I have a problem. I think I either have to learn FinalcutPro or Premiere, because this output is so amazing, I think it will not leave me just store the files on my disks, now I want MORE ! And as you certainly can imagine the Hartblei lenses run into a new height of imaging quality here. Now you can literally see the smoothness of the real detail MOVING......... bosche moi it´s so nice.
I was a photography guy for the last 35 years. Well now it´s time to learn something new ! If I interpolate the time I have spent with photography to taking films now I´m a little afraid.... but nicely and Excited and I cannot wait to go on and do it.

There are some crazy guys in the US who do these Pro/film adaptions for the Canon 5D bodies, there is a lot of videoequipment (steadicam stuff and car mounts, smooth moving tripod videohead and a good mike I will need). So the camera is actually only the starter, Oh my and I need another bit of space in my appartment where to put this all....

So Life is interesting here, we are expanding our dealership, I welcome Volker Braun, Ex Sinar doing our lenses in Northern Germany now, we are in Contact with some more countries now and hopefully we will also settle down in the US of A soon.

Greetings to the new president and all my best wishes, he has a huge lot of work to do and I hope Amerika will solve it all.

greetings from Munich
Stefan

New products out

Huuh, what a lot of work this was ! Now shortly before Christmas we have some rest and take a look back to this year. We were establishing our relationship to Phase One and I have to say it´s a really good and productive "One". Thank you Espen for your patience with us, we have now delivered the final product and it can be shipped away to Phase customers, we did all this in 8 months from our first meetings until the finished product. We changed nearly anything from the first prototype to now and I think we can be proud on the product - so also thank you Sergeji and your crew in Kiev.
We had a lot of difficulties to solve from the exchange rate crashing down on the Grivna up to Banking problems with Ukraines suffering economy.
But nobody should underestimate the will and improvisation that EX-GUS People are capable of. I think we could all learn a lot here in cosy old western world.
I believe the Ukrainian Economy will come back and be stronger than ever,they still have growth, lets wait where _we_ go next year here in Euro land or US or Japan.
Then we also managed to prerelease our new improved 35mm Models, to the dealers and already tested by some key users, getting nice results and a lot of feedback.
And now we officially launch them to the website and the endusers.
I will do some finetuning to the german and other language sites the next days, so please don´t wonder if there´s content appearing and dissappearing. Tomorrow hopefully i will redo the flyer in german and english, if anybody finds a mistake on the website you´r welcome to send me an email,slowly I´m getting blind on too much detail.
It´s time for a break now.

Yup- a little tired Stefan sends you greetings from Munich
I hope you all have time now to lean back and see wht this year was all about for you, for your families and friends.

Merry Christmas and a happy new Year

Stefan

Full Format is coming heavily!

As I write this the new Nikon D3x has appeared. See here http://nikon.de/product/de_DE/products/broad/1726/overview.html. When we were starting the Hartblei Superrotator project over 3 years ago, I knew this would happen. The consequence was logical, the advantages too good to not go there. We have now 4 Over 20MP Bodies available from Canon,Nikon and Sony. We do lenses for all of these mounts and they work very well , especially with high resolution, where many lenses show they simply fail to resolve what these cameras can do.

I have today uploaded some samples of pics I did recently, there is a panorama and a cutout here http://www.flickr.com/photos/hartblei , I will do some more stuff with the 5D II as soon as I get mine (hopefully soon!) as well as with the new Nikons and the Sony.We are working right now with some pretty good and knowledgeable dealers, in this connection I want to welcome Andreas Tischer from Digitalstore Vienna http://www.knips.com who will also sell our lenses in Austria.

I have been on the Photoadventure in Vienna a week ago and did like the concept of the fair pretty much, combining outdoor photography and travel with trendsports.
Cool concept and nice people visiting to the booth, learned some new austrian words
(bad lens synonym: "Gösser-lens" - Explanation for the non austrians- Gösser is the biggest brewery in Austria...;-) whereas this was not attached to our lenses but after a look to my samples the customer declared compared to this most others are GL´s.......

Good as always: Austrian cooking, I´m lucky I do not live there, I´d gain 20 kilos in a month I bet.....Vienna what a city.

So this is maybe a perspective, maybe one day I´ll move there, but then I have to diet ;-)

Greetings from Munich

Stefan