brainiac
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 p.3 #11 · What happened to the DMR? | |
Sorry about terse response. I now have a moment to discuss.
While these pictures show the extraordinarily rich colours that we very often see with Leica lenses and DMR, for me there are major problems with contrast, colour accuracy and tone.
For example, the blond lady's hair roots, the shadowy area by her right ear, and the shadow under her necklace on the left almost make this look like a print made with an empty black cartridge. The shadows seem to suffer from an unnatural luminosity scale which compresses contrast in the shadows in a way which is at odds with the more recognisable contrast in the mid-tones. It helps to make the image look more 2D. I don't know if it's down to processing, and of course I don't know how this image will look on output from any given printing device, but I do see it looking wrong on my monitor, and that's not a good start.
The same goes for the balanced portrait on this page. The light and shade just doesn't look right to me, let alone the khaki trees.
My experience of Leica lenses is that while superb in most respects, they often suffer from a non-linear response to luminosity, or whatever you want to call it, as shown in the shadow areas of these portraits. I think the DMR exacerbates this unreal contrast problem while adding coloration of its own. This makes my eyes suspicious and images seem less real. Dynamic range and rich colour are not ends in themselves. The luminosity response, colour, and skin tone in these pictures corroborate (to me!) my opinion that the DMR is a less good portrait camera than a Nikon D70 with the Nikkor 60 macro. I like my images to look real, and to me, these aren't excellent examples of that.
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, here, in response to Richard's request, are some out of the box portraits, all taken with the DMR and the Summilux-R 80 mm. 
