Leica M/X/T/S/Q/CL/SL Picture Thread (Page 1122) - Leica & Alternative Gear

clmusic

Offline

Activity

Details

p.1122 #1Leica M/X/T/S/Q/CL/SL Picture Thread

rscheffler wrote:
Edward - great Distagon sets! I don't mind the quantity at all.
Great find Werner.
Cool cars, Charlie!
Joakim - congrats on the Canon 50/1.4! I agree, you can never have enough 50mm lenses in the collection.

I should get mine out in the rotation too.

Richard - remind me, you're shooting with the M9? I generally only had such severe banding with it when shooting sequences and/or reviewing images while the camera was still clearing the buffer to the card. Choice of card may also influence banding. My finding was that it was more common with 'high speed' cards with a UHS classification. I tried to stick with plain old SDHC Class 10 cards.

recordproduction - congrats! Is it the ASPH version? Looks like a 'quaint' photo shop. Love the store fixtures - at first I thought it was a cafe with an enlarger in the middle! Looks like they also have a nice selection of Canon EF lenses.

clmusic - welcome to the thread! The M9 DNG files will definitely feel foreign at first, but give it time. The files can be quite malleable and produce pleasing colors. Perhaps the M9's weakness is precisely what you experienced shooting at the aquarium - mixed artificial light, likely at a higher ISO. In these situations, particularly with lights that are not full spectrum, it can be challenging to get pleasing skin tones, with a tendency for yellow/magenta splotchiness. Something to also keep in mind, based on experimentation over the past couple years by many here and on other Leica forums, as well as quantifiable results by Jim Kasson, concluded that there is no image quality benefit to increasing the ISO setting in the camera beyond 640. You will get equal, if not better results by pushing ISO 640 or lower DNGs in post with Lightroom, Capture One, etc. Another benefit to doing so, is that you can push each file by exactly how much it needs after the fact, rather than possibly selecting too high an ISO while shooting. It will also help with highlight preservation in more difficult low light scenes because the intentional underexposure will keep them from blowing and you can protect them in post when boosting shadow values. But of course there is no free lunch here. Pushed images will still be noisier than if correctly exposed at a lower ISO. With it being a CCD sensor, it's not going to hold highlights well. If highlights are important, you'll want to keep them from clipping and if necessary, boost mid and shadow values later in post. M9 files tend to allow fairly aggressive shadow boosts, but again, within reason. Ideally, the M9 is happiest at ISO 160, but of course that isn't always possible. I generally tried to stick to 640 or lower, though also found 1250 to be OK with quality, fuller spectrum light sources.

Something else to keep in mind is that the M9 can be finicky about how it's treated. Experience indicates it doesn't like to be pushed aggressively. For example, it's not a good idea to review images while it's still writing them to the card. This can potentially result in lock-ups, though the lesser consequence tends to be random image banding, particularly those towards the end of a sequence. Choice of memory card can also apparently induce image banding. As I mentioned in my comment to Richard above, my experience was not good with some of the UHS rated SDHC cards I tried, and tended to favor plain old SDHC Class 10, which may be getting more difficult to find now. IIRC, some preferred using regular old SD cards, which I think were limited to 2GB and are probably impossible to find now.

As for uncompressed vs. compressed M9 DNGs... the compression is lossy, but I found for some situations where I needed faster buffer clearing, like when shooting weddings, that compressed DNG was fine. I can't say I could ever see any telltale degradation in the final image quality. I'm sure it may be quantifiable, but whether it's visually noticeable is another matter. FWIW, the M240's compressed DNGs are lossless.

I hope this helps somewhat... Just be sure to give yourself sufficient time with it.

...Show more →

Thank you so much for the information, Ron. It is very helpful.
I love this thread and the work posted here

Apr 01, 2015 at 10:31 PM

clmusic

Offline

Activity