Sharing some X1D experience and tipps

[FirstLights]

Dear all, here are some personal learnings from working with the X1D II over the last weeks - hope you find them useful.
Holger

- Ideal f-stop range wrt sharpness vs. diffraction blur is f=8 to 11.
- Don't go over f=13 unnecessarily, else do stacking, e.g. with Helicon Focus (which I found very good).
- The shallower depth of field with Medium Format may require focus stacking to be used more often than with Full Frame.
- When shooting handheld, stabilize by firmly holding the camera towards you (camera pressed against forehead, right arm firmly against body, breathe in- then out and then shoot).
- I generally found, that the leaf shutter produces less vibration than a shutter curtain which enables me to produce more sharp handheld images at relatively moderate shutter speed than I had imagined.
- Consider using a monopod in some cases, it is light and much more easy to carry than a tripod, and an additional charming aspect is that you can hold the camera easily way above your head (e.g. with using 3-5 sec. self timer) to get fresh & unusual perspectives.
- Use magnified live view with manual focusing wherever possible, focus peaking is less reliable in my experience (especially with adapted longer HC lenses).
- For ultimate image quality with lenses >90mm try also to capture 8 or so identical pics on a tripod and average them (e.g. in Photoshop) to reduce atmospheric turbulences and random noise and thereby increase IQ.
- When using flash, I found that I get better results with more predictable foreground vs. background balancing when camera is in Manual mode, even with TTL flashes.
- Be careful with the battery as the sealing rubber O-ring gets lost easily.