Is Betterlight Still the Standard?

[Adamphotoman]

Rencay will need a US based repair service. It would be unfortunate if one had to ship a scan back to Germany if there ever was a problem with it.

[prohtex]

The image quality you get from a BetterLight system is absolutely unparalleled in the world of CCD sensors. The only way to describe it is, take a photo with your CCD based camera, open it in Photoshop, scale it to 50%. That level of pixel detail is what you get native from the BL back.

The good news is it seems there's a bunch of these on eBay with USB2 upgrades and not too $$ for what they are...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141392210929

[Adamphotoman]

And Mike still services these.

[Bob Salomon]

Talking to Larry Guyer this morning,
He is the former employee [at Betterlight] that I was mentioning.
The Rencay SuperFineArt model costs $43,000.00 plus shipping duties and taxes
The Rencay 6,000 X 13,000 pixel model is about 20 K cheaper

Feel free to contact Larry. He will be meeting with Rencay at Photokina mid month.

Also Rencay will be in New York in October at the photo show.

Actually, they are planning to be in the German Pavilion at the NY show. Most likely either in or next to the Kaiser booth. The show will be at the Jacob Javits Center from Oct. 30th through Nov. 1st.

[Adamphotoman]

Quote!
The good news is it seems there's a bunch of these on eBay with USB2 upgrades and not too $$ for what they are...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/141392210929

This unit may be overpriced by about 1K.

The original rig is less expensive when offered as a USB2 controller. I suspect the unit was upgraded a couple of times. The newer sensor is good news.
The older control box is not much of a plus.The upgrades may have cost but should not be added to the VLUE.

[Adamphotoman]

Hi Larry,
Are there any caveats using the Rencay such as problems inserting it into a spring back. How does the workflow compare to the BL regarding Viewfinder software capabilities. Is it both Mac and Windows friendly?
Who will service?

[Adamphotoman]

These are not LF digital backs so please remove from the forum

[Adamphotoman]

The Rencay 8K is very much comparable to Betterlights Super 8K. One is really not any different. Except the Rencay is 10 K more expensive. The Super Fine Art Rencay is 40 K.

The Betterlight is thin enough to slide into a spring back. The Rencay needs one to remove the GG Spring Back and use the Graflock.
Software is Both Mac and PC for the Betterlight, but only PC for the Rencay at this time. Rencay does have plans to release a Mac version in the next year or two.

Betterlights are not in production but they are still being serviced.
Rencay now has Larry Guyer @ Archetype willing to bring them into the US. Servicing is yet to be established.



One thing that does set both these scan backs apart from the multishot offering or & film, is when complicated lighting and layered files must be made. It becomes quite difficult to shoot a number of 4X5 films with lighting variations, then scan these,
and keep everything for registration purposes and then to layer and keep everything aligned.

It is nice to have a full sized file aligned. The scan back is inserted and not touched for the remainder of the activity. Lighting can be changed, polarizers can be tweaked but not much changes in terms of registration.


If one needs to shoot 5 or 6 sheets of film then every time a film holder is removed and another inserted there WILL be a change in register. Even how the film is inserted into the holder and also into the scanner later.
Good luck...it can be done but it will take time.

Even with multishot.
If one needs to shoot multiple shots [5 or 6] with different lighting IE Pola filters, then everything will need to be aligned.