Nice set Charles! The last one has a really strong composition so it is my favourite (and of course the "golden" girls ). And overall very good b&w conversions.
Beautiful shots Charles! My favorites are #2, #7 & #8
Got my M9 back, and picked up the Zeiss 18/4. Some quick tests with the 75 Cron show that it's spot on now. I've played a bit with the ZM18 and it seems like a blast. I have a weak spot for UWAs. I'll post some picts later
Nice shots Joakim - I especially like the last one.
Thanks Charles.
I've played around with the ZM18 today and I like it a lot. I managed to mess up the lens coding a couple of times but I've found that an 21 Elmarit (pre-ASPH) and 28 Elmarit III (less so) works OK.
Luka, congratulations on the ZM 18. Great shots!!!
Love the rendering of #1 and 2. #1 still have the magenta edge, but is easily fixed. You can use corner fix, but I just use in ACR RAW conversion, the graduated filter, set everything to 0, and use the colour 203, which is cyan and quickly corrects any magents cast. I found this technique on one of the Leica forums.
The fairly strong edges are because my manual coding of the lens with a marker failed mid shoot and it interpreted it as a 28 Elmarit rather than 21 Elmarit. The latter produces much better results when it comes to the red/cyan shift.
These two used the correct coding:
This one used 28/2.8 coding and the drift is much stronger:
Finally, a correctly focused 75 Cron shot, just pro forma
Luka, wow.... beautiful images The ZM 18 is a great lens. The details is amazing. My favourite is #4, and that even before I saw the lens used, just it seems to accentuate the mood more so
That's my favorite distance for the 75 Cron - around 10-20 meters and wide open. It is of course also nice as a neutral portrait lens:
But it is of course no where as good as the ZM 18 for portraits:
This last one was pretty fun to shoot. The ZM 18 has a minimum focus distance of 0.5 meters but at that distance you still get a very large FOV. So we rigged up two desk lamps pointing directly at his face, closed down the aperture to f/22 and put the lens at a distance < 0.1 meters and let the DOF take care of the rest.
Luka, #2 is a great portrait There is something special with the Leica lenses in the subtle rendering when you do B&W conversions. The Zeiss 100MP and 50MP have too much contrast, whereas the 85/1.4 and 50/1.4 are excellent in B&W conversions.
I think I'm seeing more "spatial" 3D quality from the 18/4 ZM than from what I have seen from a good amount of Zeiss lenses that already exhibit this. The clarity is amazing.
Very nice Charles, great introduction to that lens
Do you want to buy my SF24D Charles? I just ask because you're the only M user I know in Australia and I have 16 CR123 lithium batteries which should be enough for the next couple of years using the flash, and it's very difficult to send lithium batteries overseas. I have a FS thread at GetDPI and here too.
I remember why I liked the 35 lux asph so much, clinical in the plane of focus, and such nice out of focus rendering with great tonality across the board. There'll be a special aussie price if you take the flash, as it is more convenient for me. Because of the batteries I will have to post it by road, shouldn't take long though.
Daniel, are you able to see the photos I post here (meaning FM, such as the ZM/ZF/ZE thread)? I ask because you are in Australia, and Charles, also in Australia, cannot.
Charles, congrats on the 35 Lux APSH II! Excellent set of portraits!
bluetsunami wrote:
I think I'm seeing more "spatial" 3D quality from the 18/4 ZM than from what I have seen from a good amount of Zeiss lenses that already exhibit this. The clarity is amazing.
Yes, I'm very pleased with that aspect as well. It does have some issues with coma towards the edges at max aperture but apart from that I'm really impressed by its optical performance. It's actually sharper than the 25/2.8 ZM at comparable apertueres and reaches an optimum at f/5.6. The MTF chart shows that f/8 is actually weaker than f/4 so it should not be stopped down too much.
). And overall very good b&w conversions.
