ZEISS ZX1 and leaf shutter

Experience intuitive photography with the ZEISS ZX1 – like a seamless extension of your creative mind. That’s what they say about this soon to be released camera.

 

• 37MP – Full frame CMOS Sensor
• ISO 80 – 51200
• 35 mm f2.00 Prime Lens
• 4.34x Fully Articulated Screen
• 6220k dot Electronic viewfinder
• 3.0 fps continuous shooting
• 4K – 3840 x 2160 video resolution
• Built-in Wireless
• 800g. 142 x 93 x 46 mm

Here are my thoughts on it and how it might be a huge game changer of a camera for many photographers including myself.

First is the full frame sensor, at last, a fixed lens camera that is full frame that looks like it can be used in a professional way for portraits. 37MP I wish this was lower as i do not need 37MP for any print size we ever sell so this will be over kill.

Now the leaf shutter this is what gets my attention the most and would be the number reason for me buying one. May newer photographers do not understand what a leaf shutter can do and what you would want one so I will explain it a little.

Back in the film days, many cameras could shoot with flash at very high speeds and sync with the flash not needing a high-speed sync flash. You could shoot at a shutter speed of 3000 and use just any old flash and it would work as the leaf shutter can sync with a flash at high speeds.

So why is this so important? For on speed. If you have ever used a flash in high-speed sync mode the flash puts out a lot of power and after a few shots your recycle times get longer and longer making it harder to shoot. Also the flash gets very hot and it is not uncommon for people to burn up their flash using high-speed sync.

High-speed sync is most used outdoors in bright days so you can set your shutter speed up high to knock down the sun brightness and be able to use a more wide open aperture on the camera. This gives a very good look to the photos with the darkened background with rich colors.

In Use

For me I shoot family beach portraits so I am shooting in the sun in bright light all the time. Using high-speed flash sync is useless to me as we are shooting fast and taking a lot of photos. I would burn up a flash on every session ifIi did this and miss countless photos as I wait for the recycle times.

Now the ZEISS ZX1 with its leaf shutter can it help?. I hope so as long as it works like it should. Shooting using a leaf shutter is an art to itself as you will be shooting in a different way and exposing a lot different for your shot.

On great advantage the ZEISS ZX1 may have is it being a mirrorless camera you should be able to see your exposure in the live viewfinder something you can not do on a DSLR or older film camera.

So, for example, lets say you are shooting on a bright day a group of six people this would be a very normal day for me.

With no leaf shutter camera, I would have to set my camera to manual and set my shutter speed to the fastest the camera can sync to. Most cameras can sync to from around 180 to 250 mine i can do 250 so that is what i use. Then I point my camera at the brightest part of the sun hitting my subject as I do not want any hot spots on them and I set my F stop so the hot bright area is no longer blowing them out this may be around F11  to F16 remember it very bright out.

Next I point my high powered flash at them and take a few test shots as I adjust the flash output to match the F11 or F16. Some people use a flash meter for this but I have been doing this so long I know by now about what I am going to be at for flash output and that will be full power oir close to it using a Godax 360 bulb flash in a small softbox. The F stop is what controls the flash output and the shutter speed controls the outside ambient light.

Now I have everything set the shutter speed and the F stop and the flash and i can start taking the photos. The downside to all this is I am shooting at F11 or so and at F11 it takes a lot of flash power and that takes a lot of battery power and the flash gets very hot after 50 to 100 shots. The photos will be tack sharp at F11 but you will not be getting any background blur shooting like this. The flash is blasting at full power or close to it and the shine it creates can be quite bad on a sweaty face as not only is the sun bright but we are many times shooting in 100-degree heat so the subjects will get sweaty very fast.

With the ZEISS ZX1 and leaf shutter. This can be a completely different shoot by using a leaf shutter camera. For starters, for the same group of six people, I would set the camera to F5 to keep everyone in focus for making large prints. Then change the shutter speed looking at the live viewfinder to see as I crank up the shutter speed I will see the bright sky get knocked down so I might be at something like 1200 shutter speed.

Now I only need a flash output of F5 not F11 so my flash will recycle much faster not get as hot and the battery pack will work endlessly. The subject will now not get blasted with such high flash output as well making for a much better overall photo. The flash will last a lot longer and work faster for the full session and I would not need to be worried about of bright the sun it ever.

Then for single person shots, i might want to shoot at  F 1.8 to F2 to get a great looking blurred bokeh background so i would crank up the shutter speed to maybe around 3500 or so. Now the flash only needs to be on a very low output setting in fact with the 360 flash i have even at the lowest setting it is to much so I have to move the flash a lot farther back from the subject so it is just a small pop of the flash. The end result can be a super great looking image with fantastic background blur bokeh and a well-exposed subject and the bright sun lit background is knocked down to what every I want it to be giving me so much more control of how the final image will look.

So to wrap this up my hope is that the ZEISS ZX1 is an affordable camera and the leaf shutter works like it should. And it needs to focus well in string backlighting as well. I have no use at all for the built-in Lightroom I cannot see every using that myself. But i do like the idia of the no card just hook it up to download the images.

Will have to wait and see what the price is and see some first hand revies of the leaf shutter first before I would spend the bucks to get one but if it doses what it sounds like it might them I might just have to have this camera.

Here is an example from the lash leaf shutter camera I had the Fuji X100T I send it back it was just was not a professional level camera for shooting like this but it did work and was fun to work with not so fun to shoot with.

This is at 1250 of a second and F4 and just normal flash not much power was needed. Maybe a little over edited I was playing around. I also painted in the colors and lines on the cement wall using Lightroom brushes.