brainiac wrote:
Pondria - I enjoyed a lot of your photos. Felt like I was joining you on your travels! Hope you don't mind me posting links to a couple here:
Pondria wrote:
Carsten,
I used to post a lot of images in Presentation forums ( Again OLD Timers can tell you ) Forum rule recommends that photos should be posted in the Presentation boards NOT in the Discussion boards, although some people here break the rule all the time.
I am not as active as before in taking photos since I got 1DsII. That is pretty sad indeed. However, I do maintain my gallery as up-to-date as possible. Just press the [WWW] button in the Sig line. Don't get me wrong. I know I am not a good photographer in Artistic sense. I just want to tell you that I do take photos because you asked
Please check the update dates for each album to find the 1DsII photos. I got it in Dec. 2005. ...Show more →
You don't need to make excuses, there are some very nice pictures there indeed. I think my favorite (I didn't look at them all though) is this one:
Strangely, it seems to be taken with the 1Ds2 and the 35L, at a focal length of 50mm The EXIF interpretor is maybe a little wonky.
Do you know why you aren't using the 1Ds2 much? Is it too heavy? Honestly, I am 40 and I find the 5D too heavy for my liking, which is why I have decided to switch to the M8. I can't imagine what you must be going through with the 1Ds2. An awesome camera, but a real brick. I handled one which a friend brought to a company anniversary day, and another time to a museum hopping day, and I was quite happy to hand it back. Interesting to try, but much too large.
Guy,
have you done or posted any M8 - DMR IQ comparisons?
If so, can you lead me to that post?
I just wonder how good or bad the M8 IQ really is and if I knew that it is as good as the DMR I wouldnt have to read all this "my Canon is better than your Leica/ my Leica is better than your Canon " debate any more.
Thanks, Tom
I may repeat myself but the think I really dont like about the M8 is that I have not yet received one.
A suggestion has been made that my M8 resolution test was not correctly focussed. I hope I can respond to that without being called a pedant.
I take Guy's and Jack's views very seriously, so I have looked carefully at the focus in the test shot that I did. On closer inspection I would say that the depth of field of the 21mm lens is such that not only is the 'UK Import' sticker as sharp as the camera can resolve, but so are the specular highlights on the ground a few feet behind it, and some parts of the display case in front of it. That explains why so many of the shots with slight variations in focus were hard to distinguish by sharpness: they all lie within the hyperfocal range. I did mention in the test description that we could expect plenty of focus depth with the M8/21. Please see below pixel level resolution on, behind, and before the stated focal point in the test image:
It is important to note that a specular highlight may be smaller than a pixel but still illuminate up to four of them by falling on their borders. The presence of singly illuminated pixels in these crops illustrates that the subjects of these pixels lie within the hyperfocal range.
There are many examples of edges which occupy two or three pixels, and lines which occupy one in this image. Therefore, the stated focal point, the 'Official UK Import' sticker, appears to be well within the range focussed to beyond this camera's intrinsic resolution, and focus is probably not the reason why it resolves less than the 5D. As far as I can see, the explanation for the noticeable resolution difference really must be the extra 3 megapixels.
brainiac wrote:
Marco - your book test is fascinating. Thanks for sharing it.
The first thing I notice is better retention of highlight and shadow information on the 1Ds. Look at the top corner of the strongly lit white pamphlet on the right of the first crop. The M8 burns it out but the 1Ds retains some texture.
The second big difference is even more interesting: the rainbow of colours in the bookshelf on the 1Ds shot, compared to a very limited colour pallet on the M8 shot. This may be due to the IR issue. The first crops reveal it especially. The Canon can do orange, as we see in the orange rectangle on 'Semieotica Pneumologica'. It can also do subtle pinks, purples, and reds as in 'Radiologia Urologica', 'Storia della Medicina', Squassadia's 'Curriculum' and 'Radiologia Pediatrica'. The M8 has made them all variations on a salmon/orange colour. The blues and greens we know about, but it is interesting how there seems to be compression in the red/yellow range too.
It is possible to shift the Canon's pinks toward orange and to desaturate the blues and greens to achieve a look very like the Leica's pallet. Going the other way is much harder, because colour compression, i.e. reduction of the colour pallet, is lossy: there is no way to distinguish what was pink from what was orange because they are both now orange.
Please don't flame me for this. I am just trying to describe what I see....Show more →
Richard,
thanks for you interest in my test
I didn't make it to judge color rendition as I shot the M8 without IR filter and we know there are still some issues with profiles for this camera. I'm sure they will be addressed in the next few weeks.
I made the test mainly for sharpness/resolution and I think we can assume that both cameras are similar resolution wise with *maybe* a slight edge to the M8 in sharpness department.
As for dynamic range, again I developed both files to get the best sharpness without paying attention to highlights clipping.
The M8 file was slightly underexposed and I goofed in bringing it to a level more even with the 1Ds.
After have read your post I looked again at the DNG in C1 and indeed I noticed what I found in the few days I've used the M8: highlights are retained like the 1Ds, as you can see from this crop with -0.6 stops exposure from the original
But while you can't recover 1Ds shadows without revealing noise which somewhat hides details, the M8 can handle easily 2 stops of shadows recovering without noise and with nice shadows details.
This makes life easier, because in many situations you only need to expose for the highlights and then recover the shadows to your liking.
Cheers
P.S. Obviously I can refer only to the 1Ds. As far as shadow noise and noise in general the 5D and 1DsmkII should perform much better.
Sell you soul Why not pick up an M6 with a previous-gen 50 Summilux? This is a much cheaper way to test the waters, and the lens is a keeper. You may also like shooting a roll of film once in a while.
You do have rather a lot of equipment in your sig. Do you really use all of it?
How about a sagittal slice of the brain using a really expensive imaging device? No need to worry about skin tones there, just gray-white differentiation.
Guy Mancuso wrote:
Jeff the 35 lux is a very nice lens, I tend to think the 50 is better in the Lux. i was actually thinking of selling my 35 Lux for the 35mm F2 sumricron. Which I tried this weekend and was extremely good. Jeff if you have any more questions or anyone else please e-mail me, I will not be posting much here any more but will be happy to answer private e-mails. i simply have no desire to put the effort of keeping this place afloat on factual information . Good luck with this thread , I can be found elsewhere...Show more →
Guy
You are my photographic hero but I must say that I feel the 35 Lux asph is one of Leica's very best. I was in Pennsylvania this past week ansd shot mostly M8 35lux images. I will post a few very soon to show why I love this combo.
Woody Spedden
P.S i also have the 35 cron but it is back in N.J. getting the six bit code installed so I don't have realcomparison photos at the moment. I will do mhy best to get a real life comparison to either prove or disprove my love dor the lux vs the cron.
brainiac wrote:
A suggestion has been made that my M8 resolution test was not correctly focussed. I hope I can respond to that without being called a pedant.
Okay, one time response only...
1) you used in-camera jpegs for your test and many pro-level bodies have minimal jpeg processing engines in them and 2) you uprezzed the M8 jpeg to match the 5D and uprezzing jpegs is known to ADD/ENHANCE artifacts.
So even assuming you did focus correctly to begin with -- and I mean perfect focus, not just "within the stated hyperfocal" -- which I feel is doubtful by the looks of it, the best claim *you* can make is:
When comparing an in-camera jpeg from a 5D to an uprezzed in-camera jpeg from an M8, it is my (Brainiac's) opinion the 5D file looks better.
And if you said that, I'd probably even agree with you
) Forum rule recommends that photos should be posted in the Presentation boards NOT in the Discussion boards, although some people here break the rule all the time. 
The EXIF interpretor is maybe a little wonky.
