denoir wrote:
I'm not sure what caused the look of the previous image. Possibly motion blur or an optical illusion following the resize, but I don't know. It is not something that I've seen in general. As field curvature can vary by focal plane I can't really rule it out without systematic testing but again, it's nothing that I've seen in general.
In your larger shot the "sharpness" is gone, so I guess it was just a constellation of pixels which fooled the resizing algorithm into producing fake sharpness. Weird, I have never seen anything like that before.
Joe, thank you! The 24 Elmarit was a typo or wishful thinking. It is still the 28 Elmarit
Adam, thanks for the kind words
Luka, thank you Great work in the comparisons! My favourite is still the Contax 35/1.4
Ron, Thank you! Excellent shots! Love the film like quality you add to your shots
With C1 Pro, the PP adjustments are simpler. There seems a lot more latitude in your adjustments compared to ACR/CS5. The RAW convertor in C1, seem to work better with the M9 files. Still in process of understanding the program better, but I as John Black suggested, the colours are richer and more alive. Again this is a very personal perspective, but it feels like C1 emulates the colours better in the way I perceive them to be. There are less adjustments needed in C1 than ACR/CS5. In process of understanding the M9, I am now only starting to appreciate just how much more can be obtained from the DNG files. I never felt this with the 5DII files.
Joakim, Thank You
Luka, excellent shots, particularly #2 and #3. Like the black border too.
Joe, very nice street shot! Hopefully the M9 is back for Christmas!
I agree with you on both the 35/1.4 (It's a Rollei! ) and C1 Pro. I have been playing with C1 myself and it does indeed seem to do a better job with M9 files. It's much better at removing aliasing for instance. My problem is that I can't really use it. Lightroom is my image manager. My whole image library is in lightroom and my workflow is based around it. As much as I'd like to, I can't fit C1 into that workflow.
denoir wrote:
Charles, great shots, but I think I preferred the B/W versions you posted earlier.
When the focus plane is further away the bokeh blobs become smaller while the edge doesn't shrink as much. So it becomes quite busy - especially after you sharpen the image. The 50 Sonnar is not like that nor is the 25/2.8 which has a very smooth bokeh. The 50 Sonnar bokeh suffers from heavy spherical aberrations wide open which produces fairly poor bokeh at MFD. At medium distances it is OK though.
Well I suppose it depends on what you shoot. I'm not crazy about it for close ups, but that in fact holds for all my current ZM/M glass. It's very sharp stopped down and at infinity. Medium distance wide open is a mixed bag. OK as far as sharpness goes and a nice sharpness-to-blur transition. Fairly harsh bokeh. Coma aberrations towards the edges. Zero distortion. ...Show more →
I'd probably use it for half body to full body portraits in horizontal mode. Think cinema style framing
I like the red house shot, the frost on the windows... awesome!
Good choice with the black border.
I just re-discovered an old thread on l-camera-forum where the 75 Lux and 50/1 Noctilux were compared, among other lenses. I borrowed a 50/1 for a brief time, and compared it to my 75 Lux, finding that they had very similar looks, just that the 75 is a little longer (duh) and sharper. I added a few direct comparison shots a few pages into the thread.
Charles, very nice stuff. I like all 4 shots very much. I really like the rendering to #1. It handled the skin tones perfectly. The shot really jumps too...not in a Zeiss type of way, a little different. I really like it. #2 is excellent, my favorite of the four. I would love to see this in B/W too...hint hint . #3.....man the rendering is awesome. #4 I like very much too....even in a tiny web sized version I can see little hairs standing up on the back side of her right shoulder/arm. Unbelievable. Excellent glass!
One thing I have figured out...took me a while....I need good glass for this system. It really isn't as enjoyable when I am stuck shooting at f/2.8 watching these f/1.4 shots come up.
Thanks Charles Nice set and like the pp on #2 & 4. Excellent catch on 2. Also like how the wider 35Lux gives you a feel for the environment for portraits on 4!
rsolti13 wrote:
One thing I have figured out...took me a while....I need good glass for this system. It really isn't as enjoyable when I am stuck shooting at f/2.8 watching these f/1.4 shots come up.
rsolti13 wrote:
One thing I have figured out...took me a while....I need good glass for this system. It really isn't as enjoyable when I am stuck shooting at f/2.8 watching these f/1.4 shots come up.
One of my favorite things about shooting with M/LTM lenses is that the f/2.8 or slower lenses is mostly as good (and sometimes better) than the faster lenses. The only lens that I still really want is a good 50/2.8 Elmar.
Though I know what you mean - sometimes there is no substitute for a big aperture.
kidtexas wrote:
One of my favorite things about shooting with M/LTM lenses is that the f/2.8 or slower lenses is mostly as good (and sometimes better) than the faster lenses. The only lens that I still really want is a good 50/2.8 Elmar.
Though I know what you mean - sometimes there is no substitute for a big aperture.
I agree. My two lenses so far are the ZM 25 2.8 and Nikon Millenium 50 1.4 (still waiting on adapter). The ZM 25 2.8 is one of the sharpest lenses I have ever used right from wide open. I am just missing the separation for portraits and such that I am used to when shooting with the Nikon. I want a Nikon 24 1.4 in M mount for Nikon 24 price .
If only I could convince my wife to let me get rid of my Nikon stuff and buy Leica lenses I would have what I want....
Luka, I like the motion shots, particularly the train and bus. I recall you did a train shot a while back that was a bit looser, and also liked that one.
Charles, looks great! You've got me seriously thinking about C1... I'm not heavily invested in LR, having used it only for a few weeks now. The LCC feature alone might be worth it since it means fixing the colour cast problem from within C1 instead of using cornerfix in a separate step...
On another note...
Is anyone using ISO 2500 much on the M9? Has anyone had banding issues at that ISO? I realize that compared to my 1D Mark IV the M9 pales somewhat at higher ISOs, but I've still gotten what I consider to be usable results from it at 2500. However, I've noticed a 'random' banding issue that appears every so often. I haven't looked into it seriously to determine if there is a specific trigger for it, but have noticed that I can shoot several images in a sequence of the same subject within a short period of time and chances are good at least one of the images will exhibit banding.
Here is an example:
full frame resized for web:
The banding is always the same, with this prominent set of lines running horizontally through the middle of the image:
This is from the top left:
I've used the camera a lot at ISO 1250 and tend to keep it there as the uppermost limit. I haven't noticed this banding (yet) at 1250...
I will probably be in the NYC area on Monday and am thinking of dropping off the M9 at Leica for the internal clock problem I asked about a number of pages back... I guess I'll get them to look at this as well. I just wonder though if it's a realistic to expect resolution of the banding problem as it might be the way the camera works at ISO 2500.
Any thoughts?
Ron
Edit: Just had a closer look through that evening's photos and found a couple other images with banding. The distinct set of lines is not always in the same spot. It can appear higher or lower in the frame, but the pattern is always the same. A possible additional observation: banding images probably belong to a sequence. I wonder if it could be a problem with the system getting stressed with processing a lot of information. Perhaps also with the buffer being full, which I have a tendency to do a lot, especially at higher ISOs...
A bit unrelated but last night I had a problem where the camera became unresponsive after filling the buffer. It wouldn't play back images and the red light kept flashing for over a minute (longer than the buffer should take to clear with the class 10 cards I use). I popped the battery to reset the camera and it was still finicky. A system info check showed that the 16GB card was completely full with only 58 images. I deleted one of them and that seemed to reset the info readout to the correct memory use. I've heard about digital M freezes... it seems to me that the M9 doesn't like to be pushed/rushed with a lot of images at once.
BTW, the banding problem reminds me of a similar issue with the original EOS-1D back in 2002.... so I stand by my earlier comment that the M9 reminds me a lot about cameras back from that era in the digital age...
Ron, I've seen banding on both my M8 @ ISO1250 and M9 @ ISO2500. This is common on the digital M, I am afraid, no way round about it. To minimize banding, you have to nail exposure and don't push to much in PP (sort of masking it, not making it go away). If its really bad, send it back to Leica but then you have to wait a few weeks for them to check. Leica NJ will be closed Dec 24 to New Year.
(Edit: I think sending it back won't solve the banding unless it was as bad as my banding problem a few pages back . I've found that the Leica Forum has lots to offer when you want to troubleshoot the M9, I've seen the clock problems on threads there from time to time. Worth checking out.).
I've had my M9 freeze once when I was out shooting street and switched it on and off rapidly.. finally had to remove battery to reset.
Joe, thanks for the suggestions. The clock issue is more annoying actually and I'll check out that other forum. I'm aware of Leica's closure between the 24th and new year, but Monday is when I'll be in the area and considering that the vendor is offering only a 90 day warranty for this used camera, and will cover any costs Leica might charge for this repair, I think it's best I have it looked after sooner than later.
I used the camera a bit more today around the house and it froze on me twice within minuts. I'm beginning to suspect it might be an issue with the memory card, which is the same one I used yesterday when it froze. It's suddenly happened a few times for the first time in a couple weeks - coincidence? I have four identical Transcend 16GB Class 10 cards, so it's possible one is a dud in the M9. If that's the case it's no big deal since these only cost around $35.
ZM 35 f/2.8 ISO 2500 @ 1/4 second. Could have use a lux here, or noctilux!
B&W because I can't get a decent colour balance... also added some grain to try to mask the banding a bit.
