Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Home · Register · Search · Software · Hosting · Software · Join Upload & Sell

FM Forums \| Alternative Gear & Lenses \| Join Upload & Sell
1 2 3 … 616 617 618 … 695 696 end

Gary Clennan
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #1 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

edwardkaraa wrote:
kosmoskatten wrote:
Hey birthday boy!

Are you on vacation? That does not look like BeeKayKay.

/ Henrik

Unfortunately the vacation is over. Back to beekaykay 3 days ago. That was back home where I spent the holidays with the family.

Where were you Edward? Looks like nice country...

Jan 07, 2013 at 06:05 PM

Gary Clennan
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #2 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

rscheffler wrote:
That's good to know Gary. I guess it shouldn't matter if the flanges are from Leica, Zeiss or CV...?
It's one of the small but actually significant peeves I have now with using non-Leica (factory) coded lenses. Either the marker ink wears off or I set the coding manually in the camera, then change lenses and forget to change coding back to auto.

Yep - he also does CV and ZM flanges as well....

Jan 07, 2013 at 06:06 PM

edwardkaraa
Online
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #3 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Gary Clennan wrote:
edwardkaraa wrote:
kosmoskatten wrote:
Hey birthday boy!

Are you on vacation? That does not look like BeeKayKay.

/ Henrik

Unfortunately the vacation is over. Back to beekaykay 3 days ago. That was back home where I spent the holidays with the family.

Where were you Edward? Looks like nice country...

Thank you, Gary. I was in Lebanon, my home country.

Jan 07, 2013 at 06:47 PM

joe88
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #4 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Thanks Allen, Charles, Michael, Edward, Joakim

Michael, that bear shot is excellent!! Those 50Cron shots are also really nice. BTW, I've been looking at your pic on the R lens thread, many excellent shots there as well, the 35Lux-R is really nice looking. Have you tried the 80Lux?
Jonas, the 1st and 3rd shots are excellent! The X1 is still an impressive camera in the right hands.
Allen, more wonderful street shots, all very nice.
Joakim, very nice set, 3rd shot is excellent!
Ash, really nice set with the 28Cron. Nice pp as well.
Edward, excellent shots from Lebanon! Love that first 35/2 shot as well as the 85/4 ones! Post more pics from Lebanon please.
wstam, nice set, although the pp seems more contrasty on these but it could be the ZM35/2?

zhangyue wrote:
What is the aperture setting of your son's portrait? 28cron could be my favorite lens from what I see so far from you guys. My next M purchase has to be this one.

f/2.8 I believe. I love this lens at all apertures. Beautiful rendering and magical.

edwardkaraa wrote:
Seems you have mastered the MM very well

Actually, far from it. I find it frustrating shooting deliberate and casually because of the sensitive highlight clippings. I always have to think about exposure and watch the histogram, more so than on the M9. I also find that with the MM, the files take more effort to pp compared to the M9 because the DNGs are flat but with lots of details in reserve, and sometimes require some effort to get the intended results. The pics posted online cannot really do justice to the output of the MM. You really need to look at prints or on a calibrated monitor such as Eizo or NEC PA, IQ and wow factor becomes more apparent.

Gary Clennan wrote:
For those who recall, I was inquiring here about getting a few of my lenses coded. I ended up sending the mounts to Jon Milich in the US to mill the coding grooves. Just wanted to let everyone know that he did a superb job and turnaround time was under two weeks. At $50/flange this can be an attractive alternative for some. Highly recommended.
Gary, thanks for the info, seems like a good price. Is it easy to remove the mount from the lenses? I called DAG today and Don charges $130 to code my older lenses.

rscheffler wrote:
Either the marker ink wears off or I set the coding manually in the camera, then change lenses and forget to change coding back to auto.
I have entire sets of 35Lux ASPH pics manually coded as a 90 Tele-E and then I wonder, wow those 90 Tele-E looks really sharp and quite wide

Jan 07, 2013 at 09:15 PM

Gary Clennan
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #5 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

joe88 wrote:

Gary, thanks for the info, seems like a good price. Is it easy to remove the mount from the lenses? I called DAG today and Don charges $130 to code my older lenses.

Very easy - just carefully remove the six screws on the flange.... Also do not overtighten when re-installing. $130 at DAG is pretty good as well.... I heard on another forum that DAG sends the flanges to Jon Milich for the machining as well.

Jan 07, 2013 at 09:49 PM

charles.K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #6 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Edward, yes definitely a wilder progression of the evening! Very nice series from your holidays in Lebanon

Beautiful scenery.
Michael, love that shot of the bear!!! I really like your PP'ing with the colours of the ocean and seascape rocks.
Jonas, nice family portraits!
Allen, great street set.
Ash, very nice perspective on harshly lit landscapes.
wstam, really like #2!

Jan 08, 2013 at 12:55 AM

zhangyue
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #7 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Thanks for comments. Edward, airfog, Charles, Joe. Appreciate.

Edward, nice sets from you! going back to home country always feel good

I really like the first fishing shot from your last set.

Weesin, For shots blow up highlight, convert them to BW is a way to save it. The leica's shadow recovery is really good. so better under than over exposure, especially for BW, the cases insensitive to color accuracy and noise.

Gary, thanks for the update about coding. I spend $135 code my 35cron goggled version at DAG, and it turns out Leica won't recognize it with 50mm frame line it bring up. I am disappointed that Don inform me after. I was told the only way is code it 50cron. but what is the point. Manually enter do work though.
I will leave rest of the kit for now. Since I save the customer profile, I haven't forget to set it so far. But for your M8, it is mandatory I guess.

Joe, Thanks for your comments and answer about 28cron. I haven't bought 80lux yet, I have the patience to wait right price

35cron R is the one has my love right now. It has very beautiful OFC rendering to my like.(might similar to your RX1 from what I see other than softer corner and strong FC) 35lux R is also very nice, but it is big and harder to use. I love Leica R and old M lens for their rendering for portrait. It is hard to describe in word. 28cron is probably the closest one to my like, so it is on my list.

Here is another one with 21 biogon at Qingdao. It is the best landscape lens I have right now. I have no complain what so ever, I am surprised with good WA lens can solve so many detail, the last time I have this feel is Nikon 14-24.

21 SEM and Distagon 21 might be better, but I can hardly imagine how it can be improved after f5.6.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Edited on Jan 08, 2013 at 09:20 AM · View previous versions

Jan 08, 2013 at 08:41 AM

joakim
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #8 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Michael, absolutely beautiful!

Jan 08, 2013 at 08:46 AM

rscheffler
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #9 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

zhangyue wrote:

Here is another one with 21 biogon at Qingdao. It is the best landscape lens I have right now. I have no complain what so ever, I am surprised with good WA lens can solve so many detail, the last time I have this feel is Nikon 14-24.

21 SEM and Distagon 21 might be better, but I can hardly imagine how it can be improved after f5.6.

I hope to possibly answer that question in the near future.

The ZM21 really is excellent, especially stopped down. I have images where I've wondered about a dust speck in the sky and after zooming in to 100% the speck turns out to be a very well defined jumbo-jet.

The CV21/1.8 arrived this evening. Too late to go out and shoot with it, but hope to do that over the next couple days.

Four M series 21mm lenses that I plan to compare:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

21 Lux vs. CV21/1.8 size:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

CV35/1.2II vs. CV21/1.8:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

On the M9:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

I was kind of surprised at how well reflections are suppressed in the coatings, at least when viewed directly into the lens:

This image is copyrighted by the owner

I weighed the lenses on a cooking scale:

CV21/1.8 414g
21 Lux 502g
21 SEM 264g
ZM21/2.8 260g

Both of the Leica lens weights are with hood.

Just from handling the lens, it's like a twin of the 35/1.2II in terms of design, fit and finish. Nothing really much to complain about in terms of quality, though perhaps not quite as smooth as the 21 Lux for focusing and aperture, but it's a very, very minor difference. Where the CV is better, IMO, is the much wider focusing ring vs. 21 Lux, hence the reason I have the 'Steer' accessory ring on it from Leica Goodies, because the focusing ring is too narrow and too close to the also very narrow aperture ring. But the Lux is 11 blades vs. 10 in the CV, resulting in a somewhat rounder, smoother aperture shape when stopped down.

I still have to figure out what to code the CV as. I tried marker coding it as the 21 Lux but the M9 won't read it for some reason. Initial tests shooting a white screen LCD display indicate it will probably be the usual options of 21 non-ASPH, 24/2.8 ASPH or one of the 28 Elmarit non-ASPH codes. But just leaving it on auto and unrecognized by the M9 also looks OK, though vignetting is heavier.

While testing that, I also did a comparison between f/1.8 and f/2 and there does indeed seem to be about a 1/3 stop difference, but primarily in the central 1/3 of the frame. Towards the edges, both look identical.

P.S. I'm not really an iPad fan, but I think I found a good application for such a device... The above images were lit with two MacBook Air 11" displays and a larger 21" display for the white background (though should have dialed it down in brightness to control edge bleed). The specular light in a few of these was a dollar store LED light. With a few iPads and a bit of gaffer's tape, one could do some nice product lighting...

Jan 08, 2013 at 10:10 AM

edwardkaraa
Online
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #10 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Wstam, love the drummer shots. The high contrast adds actually to the graphic effect, makes it look like film.
Zhangyue, breathtaking shot! Is that a flying dragon in the top left?

Ron, beautifully executed photographs of the camera and lenses. Pure camera porn

Gary, Joe, Charles, Zhangyue, many thanks for the comments. I didn't get very lucky on this trip. Only took boring photos. Maybe because I didn't go to interesting places, and also I had to divide my time between my principal wife (the M9) and my girlfriend

Edited on Jan 08, 2013 at 11:39 AM · View previous versions

Jan 08, 2013 at 11:21 AM

edwardkaraa
Online
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #11 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

ZM 35/2

Jan 08, 2013 at 11:23 AM

edwardkaraa
Online
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #12 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

ZM 25/2.8

(1st shot is a 50% crop from the upper part of the vertical frame to get corrected perspective)

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Jan 08, 2013 at 11:26 AM

wstam
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.617 #13 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

rscheffler wrote:
WeeSin: The solution is very simple. Get to know what exposure combinations you can use with the M9 in direct sunlight without blowing highlights and simply use the camera in manual exposure mode. In post, lift the shadows to taste. There is not much need for auto exposure in such situations as it will tend to overexpose for the shadows and sacrifice highlights. Also, if the light is constant/consistent, once you know the correct exposure, there is no need to change it. Auto exposure will constantly fluctuate exposure based on the reflective value of the scene even though the light intensity remains constant, which can result in more work later in post trying to equalize the changes from image to image.

I think it's been pretty well documented in this thread and elsewhere that one should avoid blowing highlights with the M9. While I've found I can pull them back somewhat in LR, avoiding clipping and brightening mid tones and shadows in post seems to work better for me. A compounding issue while shooting is that the M9's LCD is quite a poor indicator of image tonality. It has a tendency to appear very high contrast with blocked up shadows, which encourages setting brighter exposure settings, when in actuality the darker images retain a good amount of recoverable tonality. It might also help to turn on the highlight clipping feature. At least compared to the Canon cameras I use, it works when zoomed in on details, so you can at least get a pretty good sense of how close small, but possibly important, highlight regions are to clipping.

Hi Ron, thank you for the good advices. Yes, I was using the A mode. Will learn to stick to manual especially on such tricky light condition. I have been using auto exposure for my previous years of photography so I need to spend some time getting use to doing it manual (actually on focusing too). As this holiday trip was the first opportunity to do serious shooting after acquiring the M9, I though I will play safe with auto exposure. Unfortunately I can only properly review the photo after reaching home from the trip. So was not able to learn and adjust along the way. Anyway it's still good learning for me.

Thanks.

Jan 08, 2013 at 02:55 PM

wstam
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.617 #14 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

edwardkaraa wrote:
Wstam, love the drummer shots. The high contrast adds actually to the graphic effect, makes it look like film.

Thanks Edward. Love your serious of holiday photos. I can see you are getting good results from the ZM lenses.

Cheers.

Jan 08, 2013 at 02:58 PM

joe88
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #15 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Gary, thanks for the info.

Michael, really excellent landscape shot! Beautiful.
Ron, whooa.. thanks for the initial writeup and size comparisons.....looks sweet.. can't wait for your test shots!! Handy Apple lighting but I think there are way cheaper options

Edward, lovely shots of Lebanon. Looks like there is a lot of wealth there in that last pic. The first three with the ZM35/2 looks great, not boring at all! Please share more.

Jan 08, 2013 at 03:06 PM

wstam
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.617 #16 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

joe88 wrote:
wstam, nice set, although the pp seems more contrasty on these but it could be the ZM35/2?

Thanks Joe. The ZM35/2 may play a part. But I think it's mainly due to me not controlling the highlight well and let it blown. Still learning the M9.

Edited on Jan 08, 2013 at 03:12 PM · View previous versions

Jan 08, 2013 at 03:06 PM

airfrogusmc
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.617 #17 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

More from the MM and 35 lux FLE
This image is copyrighted by the owner

Edited on Jan 08, 2013 at 04:11 PM · View previous versions

Jan 08, 2013 at 03:10 PM

joe88
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #18 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

wstam wrote:
Thanks Joe. May the ZM35/2 played a part. But I think it's mainly due to me not controlling the highlight well and let it blown. Still learning the M9.

Have fun with your M9 and enjoy the process. I agree with Ron, shooting manually on the M9 is straightforward, brings us back to the basics of taking pictures and not let the camera take over.

Jan 08, 2013 at 03:13 PM

joe88
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.617 #19 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Allen, another excellent set! #3, 4 & 5 are my favorites

Jan 08, 2013 at 03:15 PM

airfrogusmc
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.617 #20 · Leica M8/M9/X1 Picture Thread

Thanks Joe....

You guys are all so inspiring with your words and most important with your work I am humbled by al that post in this thread. Keep up the good work everyone. You've all set the bar high.

Jan 08, 2013 at 03:17 PM

1 2 3 … 616 617 618 … 695 696 end
FM Forums \| Alternative Gear & Lenses \| Join Upload & Sell 1 2 3 … 616 617 618 … 695 696 end