Yes, the chateau shot looks a bit magenta to me. Actually it looks like someone scanned in Kodachrome 64 to me ON MY MONITORS. ON MY MONITORS, profiled with Eye-One and viewed under balanced ambient light, and out the window of my home office, the skies look blue, about like Rob's (exception made to the boat shots posted from Flexcolor--too blue, I think). I'm not sure what you mean by blue->cyan compression; the DMR (and the Canon) gamut is quite large ON MY MONITORS and I'm just not getting meaningful gamut compression except with scanned film....Safari, my browser, does support embedded profiles, but I don't know if Rob's posting in sRGB or something else.
ON MY MONITORS I get pretty much similar skies from my 1ds2 and my DMR. Actually, with most slide film I get pretty much the same thing. The one thing the DMR does that the 1ds2 can't is hold together the highlights in clouds better. The medium tone contrast curve of the Canon is flatter than nature in my current workflow, and I think needs help usually.
ON MY EYES, the color looks pretty similar to that which Robert is posting (the Flexcolor ones being exceptions). However, I freely admit that my windows, eyes, and air are uncalibrated and lacking 16-bit display hardware. Additionally, my eyes are limited to native gamma.
Don't forget, blue and yellow makes green....and there are greener skies out there; unfortunately, I've never had my camera with me when I've watched green sunsets, but they do happen.
I'm puzzled by this magenta-sky problem, because I don't see it in my own DMR shots, yet it comes up occasionally in Robert's posts. I notice he uses ACR/Lightroom while I use C1 for conversion, this might perhaps explain some of the difference.
FWIW, here's a Norwegian sky, DMR, 28 mm Elmarit, C1, no further manipulations.
Edited by photoArne on Jan 11, 2007 at 05:07 PM GMT
Even I had managed to work that out ;-) There is a giveaway black edge at top right of the first one, and it lacks the smoothness and crispness of digital. Also you said it was full-frame, and you would have to do a fair amount of 'distressing' in PS to get a Canon FF shot to look like that.
I have owned every Canon...and their colour never had the Kodachrome look of the DMR.
There is a Photoshop plug-in that simulates the Kodachrome look quite accurately. I can't remember what it is called. Someone better informed than me will know. You can also approximate Kodachrome from a well-balanced shot by hand, using curves and hue/sat adjustments, which I suppose you could save for quick application in the future. I guess that's what the plugin offers, except it can approximate a large selection of film colours at the press of a button. I believe it may introduce grain as well.
> ...I'm not sure what you mean by blue->cyan compression
I'm not very good at explaining what I mean, I am afraid. I meant that when I tried to adjust the hues of the turquoise sky from Rob's boat shot I found that the differentiation between horizon sky colour and higher sky colour had been lost. When the high sky colour looked right, the horizon was too blue/magenta, but when the horizon sky was right the high sky looked too turquoise. That suggests that in making the higher sky too turquoise for my eyes, LR or whatever did it, had reduced the difference between blues and cyans. That is what I meant by colour compression: some colours being squeezed together around the colour wheel. I resorted to applying gradually more shift to the high sky than to the near-horizon sky in order to restore what I see as a natural look:
Here's an image from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with the sky just for comparision sake. I have no idea if its accurate but to me it looks good. This was taken with the DMR and the 35-70 f/4 and converted in Flexcolor. I probably bumped the saturation by about 10 points.
I fully agree with AnselFan. Sky has all sorts of colors throughout the day and throughout the year. How can anyone say it looks natural to him when he is not there to see how the original sky looked like? I have stayed away because of the silliness of the discussion.
I agree wholeheartedly with all you said (and love your nickname... he's THE master...).
Indeed we followed the same path, minus the 5D switch as I kept the 1Ds which I'm selling right now, so I even don't "miss" clean high ISO...
I also bought the M8 and few Leica lenses (mostly used, as all my R-lenses), but I'm love with the DMR because I prefer SLR vision to rangefinder. The M8 kit is very portable though and excellent for handholding in low light. Great wides also.
The DMR chip seems to have both better dynamic range and better color range than the 5D and 1Ds both of which make the file more robust, plus the extra sharpness due to the lack of anti aliasing filter also helps.
I don't own a DMR, but I have followed this thread (and Guy's earlier one, with interest and excitement about a marvelous system that I would love to be able to use someday. So I hope nobody misinterprets this as trolling, but I wondered if anyone else had seen this email message topday from Stephen Gandy at Cameraquest. I got it on the Leica users listserve (which I subscribe to as an occasional M3 shooter). Other users have responded with extreme skepticism (which I share). Quite odd in any event.
Tom
(message follows)
From: Stephen Gandy
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2007 12:43:56 AM
Subject: [Luc] R8 / R9 Digital
there are serious rumors that all support for the digital R backs will
soon be stopped
not officially confirmed yet,
but from a usually very reliable source
Hmm, I recall when I raised a thread about the future of the R system on photo.net forum several months ago, a fellow poster pointed out a Leica executive had remarked to him that "the DMR project is finished". I am not sure if this was in regards to the future of developing more DMR accessories, a Mk2 version, or the whole DMR project altogether.
I hope these tidbits of information are incorrect and there will be at least continued firmware support for what is otherwise a very fine piece of imaging making technology.
I presume it means that there won't be another Digital-Modul-R, not that there won't be another DSLR. That lineup has a long and distinguished history, even if it isn't quite as long as the M.
I was at a leica shop today and my dealer said he thought we would see a R10 or something for the R system in the fall of 2008. He also said that he was hoping to find out some info at PMA which is only a month or so away. While I don't think he knows anything for certain he did say that people wanted a smaller lighter body so all of that leads to no replacement for the DMR but a whole new camera for the R system. For myself, I would rather a DMR replacement, but I understand that a full frame DMR is not mechanically possible with the current set up. I guess in the end whatever takes the R lenses that I have been collecting will work for me.
James/Carsten/Eric: Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I agree it seems much more likely that Leica would end production (rather than support) for the DMR, and move to an integrated DSLR. I hope that Stephen misunderstood what his sources were telling him.
I missed the discussion about firmware in the old DMR Bibble post. Can somebody fill me in on version 1.2? Should I use it or stay with 1.1?
Thanks,
Eric
When I posted about firmware above, I also meant to ask if any of you had seen this strange artifact that I am seeing with my DMR. It sometimes will change the color and size of objects that have fine lines such as telephone wires and things. See the example here that has some arrows pointing to the problem. I've not been able to exactly isolate when my camera does this but it certainly is not happening all the time. The sky in this image is foggy - when it is clear I don't get the problem. Anyone seen this before?
to me ON MY MONITORS. ON MY MONITORS, profiled with Eye-One and viewed under balanced ambient light, and out the window of my home office, the skies look blue, about like Rob's (exception made to the boat shots posted from Flexcolor--too blue, I think). I'm not sure what you mean by blue->cyan compression; the DMR (and the Canon) gamut is quite large ON MY MONITORS and I'm just not getting meaningful gamut compression except with scanned film....Safari, my browser, does support embedded profiles, but I don't know if Rob's posting in sRGB or something else.