you have to consider that it is a medium format camera he is shooting with. therefore the depth of field is much shallower than your usual dslr. shooting at 120mm gives you thin dof and because he is very near the subjekt he is photographing the dof gets even shallower. trust me you do not have much deof aven at f8.5 when you shoot in this configuration. and you have to keep in mind that he is focusing all manually so going to f8.5 leaves you a bit more room for safety
Due to the absolute sensor size of the PhaseOne, an aperture of 5.6 is shallow, and is the equivalent of e.g. 2.8 on a DX/FX sensor. 8.3 in PhaseOne would then be something along 4-5.6 on DX/FX
you have to consider that it is a medium format camera he is shooting with. therefore the depth of field is much shallower than your usual dslr. shooting at 120mm gives you thin dof and because he is very near the subjekt he is photographing the dof gets even shallower. trust me you do not have much deof aven at f8.5 when you shoot in this configuration. and you have to keep in mind that he is focusing all manually so going to f8.5 leaves you a bit more room for safety
Due to the absolute sensor size of the PhaseOne, an aperture of 5.6 is shallow, and is the equivalent of e.g. 2.8 on a DX/FX sensor. 8.3 in PhaseOne would then be something along 4-5.6 on DX/FX
why use a 120mm macro to "get the eyes sharp" and then shoot it at f8.5? I do like his posing technique-"just breath in..."