carstenw wrote:
Glen, version IV starts with 2974251.
Thanks sorry my screen name is my home street name ...my name is Roger Dunham..I will put this in my profile
Carsten - haven't checked the thread for a while - hope i'm not too late to say: i'm ready to buy you a beer in central london if you have the time. my details including phone are here: http://braine.com
Richard, I was wondering if you would chime in, and I was ready to jump, but I am already back I'll contact you directly next time, which probably won't be that long from now. I am finally beginning to feel comfortable in London.
Have you checked out the Magnum exhibition on at the gallery in Gee Street, near the Barbican? I tried to hit it on my way out today, but it doesn't open until 11. I would love to see this. I did drop by the National Portrait Gallery, both for the competition and for the new acquisitions, as well as seeing the da Vinci drawings. Great stuff, but a bit pricey for half a dozen great drawings, and a slew of less impressive ones. Next time I will probably head to the Barbican directly.
Thanks Tom - that's really fascinating. It's a shame the M8 focussed a bit behind. The advantages of rangefinder focussing aren't showing in people's tests. The colour signatures of the cameras are pretty clear. The 5D's ability to capture credibly the colour of a red onion, a red pepper, and their reflections on the down-facing edge of the folded spout of the carton, is unsurpassed. The Nikon fails to catch the reflection on the carton spout completely which is odd and suggests that it is throwing away quite a lot of subtle colour information. The M8 has turned the red onion from a likely looking indigo to a blighted brown. The M8's tonal range, while picturesque, just seems less believable: it captures less of the yellow pepper's translucency and brightness than the D200 or 5D. Earlier in the thread negative comments were made about the 5D's reds. It's interesting that all of the cameras have struggled to draw a believable red pepper except the 5D. The DMR's red pepper looks like it's made of moulded plastic.
Please don't get upset, anyone: I am just describing what I see.
Pondria, do you still think, when you look at these images, that the camera has no effect on colour? I think this is a great illustration of how subtle but important our judgement of colour is, and how cameras do have clearly distinguished colour footprints.
I don't need to see a print of each of these files to make reasonable judgements about the camera's colour accuracy.
> ...and their reflections on the down-facing edge of the folded spout of the carton, is unsurpassed.
I see now that it is the reflection of the table.
The 5D shot seems to be taken with a standard Canon zoom. To my eyes the test shows how the 5D still offers the best overall result despite using what is probably the least good lens. It would have been interesting to see how the 5D performed when provided with the rich colours from a German lens.
I cannot help but comment on the detail and contrast advantage the M8 has, Richard i feel the canon smears too much detail even on screen and while not looking on a calibrated monitor at this time i find the M8 color the best and the DMR the worst (a surprise but the yellow is flat and deficient to me)
i think that ultimately they all produce acceptable images.
I followed you comments earlier re screen / print and i weigh in on the need to print.
fwiw i did a test with my SLR/c against my 5D and with the exception of portraiture the clients i shared the prints with all prefered the kodak. (side by sides same subjects).
the M8 has a similar signature to the Kodak but produces much better files to work from specifically in shadow chroma noise.
My M8 got back. Finally. Apparently, since I sent it with the 50 Lux Asph, the two got sent off to their respective departments, but then the lens folk sent the lens right back, separately, whereas the camera folk were looking for the lens. I can hardly imagine how all this happened, to be honest. Anyway, end result, it took much longer than it should, and only my (great) dealer calling them up and explaining that "they had received the lens and could they please send the camera" cleared things up.
That was the good news. The bad news is that it misfocuses as much as ever. I simply can't focus it right. I did a tripod/self-timer/focus bracketing test, and the shot which ended up being the sharpest one (I took about 18, minimally fiddling with the focus each time), was visibly far off the focusing in the viewfinder. I think it might even be out vertically, a little bit. I think what happened is that Leica adjusted the lens, and replaced the circuitboard and updated the firmware, but didn't adjust the camera's focus.
And that is not the only bad news. I also did the test shots with the 5D, and the M8 with 50 Lux Asph, supposedly the best 50 ever made, has worse purple fringing than the 5D/80 Lux on the edges of some of my shiny books (yes, another bookshelf test, since it is already dark here).
As a sidenote, from this very superficial test it looks like the same conclusion as we have already made: the M8 is minimally sharper, but the greater resolution of the 5D more than makes up for this. I am fine with this result. Anyway, I won't post any images until the M8 and 50 Lux are both dead-on.
I am just so incredibly discouraged. It took two months to fix something I could have lived with for a while, yet they didn't fix the thing I sent it in for in the first place: the focus problem. I just feel like going straight to bed and not waking up for a week. I think I will call up Leica and ask them if I can drop by with the camera in hand, and have it adjusted on the spot. I can't stand the thought of sending it away yet again, and having to wait forever one more time.
bill vann wrote:
fwiw i did a test with my SLR/c against my 5D and with the exception of portraiture the clients i shared the prints with all prefered the kodak. (side by sides same subjects).
bill
Any such test that is performed without double blind protocols is basically worthless. The clients were picking up on your body language and tonal inflections. If they also knew which image came from which camera, their own predisposed biases would have entered into the mix as well (Kodak the biggest name in amaging and an American company as well versus who?).
Ouch, Carsten. I feel for you. That's a lot of money for equipment that should be taken care of right the first time for you. Good luck. Keep us posted :0)
Well, I bought from a store, not Leica... I can try. I think I might. I will call them tomorrow.
On the other hand, I want to visit Solms anyway, so maybe I will try to combine it with a trip.
I have also been wondering about our fanaticism about sharpness recently. Of course I eventually want a camera which focuses where I want to, but I might hang on to it a bit and just use it, seeing what comes out of it. An experiment. I am no pro, so I can play a bit with it.
Sharpness is a trap, for web and smaller prints its ok, for larger prints you can forget it and it will still be sharper than what we had some 5 years ago. Though corner sharpness can be a bore, probably this is the wrong thread to complain about this.
carstenw wrote:
Well, I bought from a store, not Leica... I can try. I think I might. I will call them tomorrow.
On the other hand, I want to visit Solms anyway, so maybe I will try to combine it with a trip.
I have also been wondering about our fanaticism about sharpness recently. Of course I eventually want a camera which focuses where I want to, but I might hang on to it a bit and just use it, seeing what comes out of it. An experiment. I am no pro, so I can play a bit with it.
Carsten Waiting a month or two might be best ...hard to do ...Leica is simply overwhelmed at this point. Consider 1500 M8 s all coming back within a few months from customers that are just angry about it..add that to how many thousand lenses for 6 bit conversions. This is crisis management at its best? The CEO resigns , the majority stockholder makes a tender offer for the remaining shares ...the workforce was pushed to the limit just to make Photokina. This is not a good environment to get the care your deserve for your equipment. How different this is from the situation last year at this time? With that said of course try to take to Solms . Roger
carstenw wrote:
Well, I bought from a store, not Leica... I can try. I think I might. I will call them tomorrow.
On the other hand, I want to visit Solms anyway, so maybe I will try to combine it with a trip.
I have also been wondering about our fanaticism about sharpness recently. Of course I eventually want a camera which focuses where I want to, but I might hang on to it a bit and just use it, seeing what comes out of it. An experiment. I am no pro, so I can play a bit with it.
Carsten Waiting a month or two might be best ...hard to do ...Leica is simply overwhelmed at this point. Consider 1500 M8 s all coming back within a few months from customers that are just angry about it..add that to how many thousand lenses for 6 bit conversions. This is crisis management at its best? The CEO resigns , the majority stockholder makes a tender offer for the remaining shares ...the workforce was pushed to the limit just to make Photokina. This is not a good environment to get the care your deserve for your equipment. How different this is from the situation last year at this time? With that said of course try to take to Solms . Roger
I'll contact you directly next time, which probably won't be that long from now. I am finally beginning to feel comfortable in London.