KL, sorry, I missed your post. The image looks good to me. ISO 400 film will look grainier than ISO 400 digital, especially 35mm film. Unless you overexpose it, but I doubt it will still be as clean as digital.
I don't see much point to 35mm film vs. '35mm' digital unless it's just for the sake of using vintage gear. I guess there are still certain aspects where it might be better, such as very wide dynamic range control with carefully processed neg film. But on the whole, in this format, I much prefer digital. Now, medium format film.... that's a whole different ballgame. The Mamiya 6 and 7 systems have always intrigued me, but I'm very reluctant to return to film...
Tx Ron for the feedback. Yes, i am also not into direct comparison other than out of curiosity. Intent is mainly to have a 2nd camera to make use of all those wonderful lenses at the same scene. so a 50 strapped on permanently to the film cam may offer viiew point 1 whilst the M9 can be used for wides or teles. All in, both cameras and 3 lenses (2 on the camera bodies) is still very manageable in my billingham pro bag.
Ron, nice blue series. The second one in the first set is really beautiful. The lenses was 35 cron IV for the first and Voigtländer 21/4 for the second.
Joe, nice color set. The last one is my favourite.
Kl, nice film photo.
Luka & Ron, thanks for the info on CA and defringing handling in LR. Luka, great examples as well.
Ron - your last couple of series have been awesome! My favorite is the blue series shots #2 & #3 with the ZM 21. Wow...what composition on those!
Joe - Your B/W shot with the bench is great. I love the pp applied as well. Great color set....first one of the city is my favorite. I like those stars!
Morfeus - I like the portraits of the artist. The B/W shot is excellent
KL - Didn't know you had a film camera, too. I think about getting one as a backup and dumping my only DSLR and moving all RF....not sure yet. But I love the look that Malkovic has been putting out
Joakim - Nice couple of series from over here . I like Union Station and the bartendar. I have never been to Chicago....on my list though
Malkovic - I love the look you have been getting with the film. #2 of the trains is excellent
The ultimate one-lens walk around town kit: M9 & 35 Lux ASPH
Malkovic, nice shots! I really like the shot of the train
Ryan, excellent shots! Love the last shot of the chairs! Does count as multiple benches Beautiful rendering. I agree with the you, if I am going to take only one lens with the M9, then it will be 35 Lux, 90% of the time.
Thanks KL, Charles, Ron, Joakim, Malkovic, Ryan You guys are too kind with your words on those color pics! I think Times Square is probably one of the very few places in America that has traffic jams at 1am on a normal weeknight, luckily my friend was willing to drive me there.
KL, very nice film shot. Looks good for a iso 400 film stock. Nice rich saturated colors. Which scanner did you use? A M3 will go perfectly with your 50Lux ASPH or any other 50mm lenses - the framelines on the M3 are made for the 50mm frame of view
Joakim, nice B&W shots!
Malkovic, nice train shot!
Ryan, excellent set with the 35Lux ASPH. The bike and chairs shots are my favorites. Agree with you and Charles, this is a nice one lens kit to take along.
Joe, excellent night shots, my favorite is #1. And as usual a very nice street shot.
KL, nice film shot, although I must admit I prefer a more clean digital look. (Slightly ironic given of what I'm about to post)
Malkovic, cool tran yard shot!
Ryan, love the reflected bycicles shot!
--
So, after considering it for a while, I got an M6 today:
It's in excellent condition and I got the original box with all the accessories and paperwork. Kind of odd - the camera has clearly been used as there are minor marks on it but everything in the box was new and unused (strap, warranty papers etc).
Anyway, unfortunately I got a bad start with it. No, there is nothing wrong with the camera. It's great. It makes the M9 look and feel like some crude thing made by moderately talented cave people. The feel of the camera is really superb.
No, the problem was yours truly. I started with a TriX 400 film and started doing some street photography. I was very happy with the M6 and it's quiet shutter and I thought I got a bunch of good shots. So after my 36 were expended, I pressed the rewind switch and rewound the film using the crank. Or so I thought. When I opened the camera to remove the film, I saw the film.. exposed in the sunlight. Damn. It had only been rewound halfway. So my first roll of film has been at least partially ruined. I'm guessing about half of the shots are gone.
After that I shot a roll of Ilford panf plus 50 and one of velvia 50 but my heart wasn't really in it - I was still angry about that first roll.
Luka - I am anxiously awaiting your results. I too have been thinking of dumping my D7000 and picking up an M6. I tell my wife I want to get rid of the D7000 and her response is 'Well what are you going to use if the M9 breaks or has to get repaired'....easy, an M6 that takes all my glass . Anways, what a beautiful looking camera, congrats
Heinz, yes, that about sums up my feelings pretty well.
Thanks Ryan. The M6 feels better to use than the M9 due to the smaller size and lower weight. Mechanically it also feels a bit better. The shutter is much less noisy and there's no awful motor shutter recocking sound. So the M9 feels a bit crude in comparison. What is better with the M9 is the viewfinder. The M6 rangefinder window flares very easily making it difficult to focus. The shutter speed wheel is better on the M9 as it is larger and turns the 'right' way. Those two things have been fixed in the TTL version of the M6, so you might want to get that one if you can.
The really big advantage of the M9 is of course that it's digital. And I'm not really a film guy. It's fun to experiment with but that's abut it for me. I'd really like the M10 to have the M6 form factor and overall feel.
Anyway, I've got something else today. I have been thinking about my ZM 25, not knowing what to do with it. I should either sell it or buy an external viewfinder for it. As it is I'm not using it as I can't frame my images. As I've got the 28 Cron now - that doesn't require an external veiwfinder - so I wanted to see how it compared to the ZM25. The MTF charts were of some help, but not much. They indicated that the ZM 25 was a bit sharper and with less field curvature, but it's one thing to see the theoretical numbers and another to see the actual impact on images.
So I decided to do a comparison between the two. All the shots were taken from a tripod. The same aperture/shutter speed/ISO and focus point were used. The RAW files were developed in lightroom with identical settings. The white balance was equalized between the shots.
The 28 produces far more vignetting than the 24 so even with identical settings the 28 shots look underexposed in comparison. I decided however to go with identical camera settings, rather than trying to match the visual impression of the images.
=======================
TEST A:
The scenes:
We start with center/mid point 100% crops. The focus was on the bicycle.
Corner crops (upper right):
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Test B (Infinity focus)
Center:
Mid frame:
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Test C: Bokeh
========================
Test D: Colors
I did this one once the sky was clear. When you've got an overcast sky everything looks just flat and you don't really get a good chance to evaluate the colors.
The scene:
Open the images in separate tabs in your browser and flip between them:
Cron
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+ Fast (f/2)
+ Doesn't require an external viewfinder
+ More saturated
- Softer
-Heavy vignetting, even at f/8
Biogon
======
+ Outresolves the Cron at every aperutre
+ Virtually no vignetting at f/4 and smaller apertures
-Requires an external viewfinder
-Slower (f/2.8)
-Less saturated
I was surprised by the results and it looks like I'm in a similar situation as with the Leica and Zeiss 35's - both have their strong and weak points. This is more difficult though as unlike the 35's in this case I can't pick based on aperture. I might want the Cron colors for a landscape shot but I'm also likely to want the resolution of the Biogon. The vignetting of the Cron can be a blessing or a curse depending on the scene and so on. The drawing style of the lenses is quite different as well.
I think regardless of anything that I better get that viewfinder for the ZM 25. In terms of raw optical performance it's really one impressive lens. It's too good not to be used or to be sold.
Great job Luka! The numbers don't lie. The Biogon is a hell of a lens.
One more thing I don't know if you notice, but the Cron seems to have slightly more contrast than the Biogon. I don't have charts in front of me but the Cron looks to have more microcontrast than the Biogon.
Also, just noticed in your center crops the Biogon looks a little more corrected for CA
All this being said, I think the 28 Cron is a lot closer to the 25 Biogon in sharpness across the frame than the 35 Lux ASPH is to the ZM 35 Biogon. You are gaining some sharpness with the Biogon, but not much. I can understand carrying two 35's more than carrying the 25 Biogon and 28 Cron
Re: Viewfinders - get a Zeiss one....the 25/28 VF. VERY nice and bright.
Congrats on the M6. Better luck with your second roll next time. Also be careful to ensure that the bottom plate closes correctly after loading film, its rare but it can happen that you could forget to latch it properly and the bottom plate will fall out half way through the roll.
Edit: If the VF flare bothers you, you can upgrade it to a MP finder. Not sure about the cost over in Europe but its approx USD200 here.
The ZM25 is one of the best resolving lens for M mount and your results are consistent with what's been written and tested. Have fun with it and I can understand that the distortion could matter for the kind of shots you take. I think you may have a case of having too many good lenses to choose from .. not a bad situation in itself.
Thanks Luka, that's what I wanted to see. The next question for me is, what is the difference between the 25ZM and the Elmar 24. Since the Elmar MTF looks very promising for a landscape lens, I bought this lens today and will test it against my 25ZM during the next weeks.
I think my ideal travel/landscape kit would consist of 18mm, 24/25mm, 35mm and 50mm lenses. The 50mm will be the Lux but the other focal length could be either Leica or Zeiss. Since I have serious problems handcoding the Zeiss lenses at the moment, I will probably also try out the Leica lenses.
Joe, the second roll was fine. However, I just discovered that the third roll was not.
This is just so beyond stupid that I can't even bring myself to be angry about it. I tried to insert a new roll in the M6 and I could not get it to fit in. On closer inspection I discovered that my previous film, the velvia 50 was rolled up inside. Apparently I had rotated the rewind crank in the wrong direction and I had pulled the film strip from the cassette. It was still on the right side spool
So the Velvia shots are ruined as well. The only roll that fully survived was the Ilford panf 50 and that one contained the least interesting shots.
With the Velvia, I lost a bunch of shots of this guy (a tourist guide) and the group he was leading:
What is worse though, I lost a bunch of shots of a very dramatic sky:
I only took that one with the M9 - the rest were with the M6.
Well, anyway, that was exceptionally stupid on my part.
Luka, its part of the experience.. all of us do these things once a while ..don't take it too hard on yourself
But all is not lost, the last shot above with the M9 and 28Cron probably can't be matched by 35mm film. Excellent shot and framing.. and I see you are using the 28Cron for street shots? Nice..
Yeah, I know it's not the end of the world, it just seems silly ruining two out of three films. It would have been interesting to see the difference between the velvia and digital shots, but I can repeat that experiment later.
As for the 28 Cron for street shots.. well, I was sitting on a bench next to a statue, minding my own business, changing film in the M6 when that guy turned up with a group of tourists. I could just sit on the bench and snap away. That's my kind of street photography I actually did some proper though with the ZM 35 + TriX 400. It's on the first roll and I hope that at least a couple of shots survived.
Luka - a couple things. First, why do you say the ZM 25 has less distortion than the 28 Summicron? The charts show them to have more or less identical distortion. Am I missing something here?
Second, with respect to the ruined Velvia. I don't think you could have pulled the film out of its can by turning the rewind rank the wrong way. I can't picture how turning it the wrong way would push the film out of the can, rip the tape attaching it to the core, and push it to the other side of the camera. I'm guessing after your last frame, you cranked on the advancement lever and it ripped the film free. While I've never had that happen myself, I guess it's possible. Did you really crank on the advancement lever after the frame?
Joe - I have used the D7000 exactly ONCE in the past 3 plus months. And that 1 time I used it was side by side with the M9 for some kid pics and I far preferred what I got out of the M9. I really told my wife I'm putting it up for sale but she is a little hesitant. Not me, that is more Leica goodies that I will actually use
.. not a bad situation in itself.
