Adam, first thanks for all that info, you're great!
After a couple of days, how do you feel overall? Is image worse/better than M240?
Any obvious problems, freezing, sd card issues, slow etc?
How would you compare it to M240+28 Cron? Keep up your great work man!
And thank your beautiful wife
I would be curious to see how much native distortion the lens has before digital correction. It was suggested on Dpreview that the reason for the so so corner performance at distance is because of a lot of distortion correction being carried out automatically. Does Leica list the native optical distortion of the lens anywhere?
Tariq Gibran wrote:
I would be curious to see how much native distortion the lens has before digital correction. It was suggested on Dpreview that the reason for the so so corner performance at distance is because of a lot of distortion correction being carried out automatically. Does Leica list the native optical distortion of the lens anywhere?
It seems that the optical corrections are baked into the raw file, before it is written to the card. Therefore only Leica knows the extent of software corrections and I doubt they would be willing to disclose it.
edwardkaraa wrote:
It seems that the optical corrections are baked into the raw file, before it is written to the card. Therefore only Leica knows the extent of software corrections and I doubt they would be willing to disclose it.
Hmm, that's odd. Often one can use a different raw converter than Adobe - or open a dng with an older version of Adobe software - which will show an uncorrected file. I suspect eventually someone will post an uncorrected for distortion test but it's odd none of the reviews I have seen have done so (maybe Leica has somehow prevented this after all).
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Hmm, that's odd. Often one can use a different raw converter than Adobe - or open a dng with an older version of Adobe software - which will show an uncorrected file. I suspect eventually someone will post an uncorrected for distortion test but it's odd none of the reviews I have seen have done so (maybe Leica has somehow prevented this after all).
It sounds like Leica is correcting the RAW data (which isn't really raw), rather than just adding metadata.
Tariq Gibran wrote:
Hmm, that's odd. Often one can use a different raw converter than Adobe - or open a dng with an older version of Adobe software - which will show an uncorrected file. I suspect eventually someone will post an uncorrected for distortion test but it's odd none of the reviews I have seen have done so (maybe Leica has somehow prevented this after all).
Actually not odd at all as it was already done with all M versions for vignetting and color shading. Other brands like Sony include a command in the raw file instructing the raw converter what corrections to apply. This is reversible and some raw converters don't apply the instructions anyway. But Leica corrections are done by the camera processor so any corrections applied are final and irreversible.
The image data is written after correction.
Even wide open, the resolving power of the lens is enough to induce aliasing with the AA-less 24MP sensor. Corners, however, are notably less sharp wide open compared to the sharpest they get - at f/5.6. What's particularly interesting is that corners never quite sharpen to the tack sharp levels of sharpness achieved by more centrally-located objects. We have a feeling part of this is due to the mandatory distortion corrections applied to the Raw file by ACR. We took a look at the uncorrected Raw in RawDigger, and sure enough there's a good deal of barrel distortion that requires correction for a proper, rectilinear image. This correction of distortion requires stretching of the image at the edges/corners, which requires resampling of pixels, ultimately leading to some sharpness cost.
I wonder how close it looks to the FE28/2 without distortion correction?
Wow, look at the corners. Talk about using the full image circle. No wonder after correction DPR is wondering about the corners as it must be very close to the actual edge of the circle.
edwardkaraa wrote:
Actually not odd at all as it was already done with all M versions for vignetting and color shading. Other brands like Sony include a command in the raw file instructing the raw converter what corrections to apply. This is reversible and some raw converters don't apply the instructions anyway. But Leica corrections are done by the camera processor so any corrections applied are final and irreversible.
The image data is written after correction.
In the reviews I have seen for Leica M's and lenses by Sean Reid, he turns "lens detection" off in the M camera's to prevent the auto corrections from occurring. He is then able to process the raws and show the natural/optical color drift/ vignetting (often cyan) and luminance vignetting.
Holy fisheye Batman indeed! That looks really extreme. No wonder the corners suffer upon correction (combination of using so much of the actual image circle + major distortion correction).
Tariq Gibran wrote:
In the reviews I have seen for Leica M's and lenses by Sean Reid, he turns "lens detection" off in the M camera's to prevent the auto corrections from occurring. He is then able to process the raws and show the natural/optical color drift/ vignetting (often cyan) and luminance vignetting.
I turn them off too. No corrections occur whatsoever when they're off. M lenses don't need any except for color shifts.
rscheffler wrote:
Doh! I didn't even think about using the optical trigger mode and was so set on using the radio transmitter. Just tried it with a master flash on the M240 and it worked, of course, allowing me to set manual power output on the slaved flashes remotely... I guess I just wanted the ST-E3-RT to work so badly because it's small. One caveat was a dark band at 1/180, though 1/125 was OK.
I see what you mean by long fingers looking at that photo of you with the Q in your wife's blog post... your grip looks a bit... weird....Show more →
Yea, it's the exact same way I hold the M, but the M feels more comfortable in my hand. Just wish the M was lighter, but not at the sacrifice of strength or battery power.
I also feel the MP and M7 is to small, but I'm the only one it seems.
Glad it worked for you. The 600 is not so big on an S-system, but yeah it's a bit funny on the M.
dolina wrote:
Is the optical low pass filter absent on the Q?
It would seem so, or at least very weak? I hadn't really payed attention to the press nonsense, my focus was AF speed. I shot some basic patterns (tight weaves etc) out of curiosity and I have seen some significant moire. The camera actually isn't the worst offender though.
snowboarder wrote:
Adam, first thanks for all that info, you're great!
After a couple of days, how do you feel overall? Is image worse/better than M240?
Any obvious problems, freezing, sd card issues, slow etc?
How would you compare it to M240+28 Cron? Keep up your great work man!
And thank your beautiful wife
Thanks, sorry I'm not more scientific about this.. I'm going to be shooting all day today though
I don't think the IQ is worse then the M, but I'm so use to the M, that the Q seems to lack vibrancy and bite. Be it from the lens or sensor i'm not sure (could also be LR problems).
If I compare it to the 28Summicron, I do favour the cron, but again, it's just because I'm use to the M240 sensor. Keep in mind I favoured the 28cron on the M9 for the longest time, simply because I used the 28cron on the M9 so often, I couldn't really get use to it on the M240.. Now the Q will just need time.
My initial impression is that you couldn't replace the M240 but the Q could replace the need for a 28mm lens on the M240. And if you were into black and white street shooting, the Q is pretty fun, even manual focusing and high iso is insanely pleasing. I think Leica must have tweaked the sensor to remove color noise at higher ISOs??
Overall I feel the AF is far better then I expected, though I did run into a few problems where it's AF box was bigger then the area I wanted to focus on, so I got "approximate" focus. Like for instance the whole head in the box so it was sharp on the hair. Which isn't to bad with a wide angle lens, but if the AF box was smaller, it would have worked out better.
