Charles, that Noctilux is great, love the portrait of the two girls, the bokeh is smoother than I expected! How was the food at the cafe?
The street shot shows the bokeh of the lens that i expected, but it seems to render differently closer up, would you agree? Your shot of the man smoking again shows the different bokeh of the 50 lux.
Gary , as I commented on the other forum, love the pano!
Ajay, I like the subway shot, it almost has a 70's feel to it, great processing! I'm liking the BMW and munich shots!
Andrew, thank you The 50 Nocti IV is a great lens. Wide open, it has the Leica glow unique to the pre asph's, yet when you stop it down to just f/1.4, it is on par with the 50 Lux. This was similar to Erwin's findings. I would imagine, stopped down to f/1.4, the 50 Nocti would behave very similar to the 50 Lux Pre Asph. Close up for portraits, at f/1.2 to f/1.4, the lens renders wonderfully. It is just me, wanting to test the f/1.0 under all conditions, probably because I can! The food in Tainan is wonderful, and is very traditional, as there are very few Westerners here. In fact in the hotel, I think I am only Westerner here! The food is a blend of traditional Chinese blended with southern Taiwan influence, with lots of fresh seafood.
Bruno, nice shots! Wow... to try out both the M-M and the 50 Cron After some reading now, I am starting to appreciate why some lenses are best suited for B&W, and others for colour. I always felt that the 28 Elmarit, colour depth was great, but not on the same but not on the same level as the 28 Cron. Yet for B&W conversions, the 28 Elmarit is probably one of the best lenses, as is the 35 Cron Asph.
Ajay, very nice set!
Andrew, great series of shots! Wonderful examples of how the 50 Lux Pre Asph renders. Those first 3 shots are amazing, how the subject and tones are separated, particularly #2!
Andrew, really nice set! Love the 50 Lux pre-ASPH, especially the seated man from behind and the close ups of the benches. If you love 70s era subways, next time you're in Munich you should just get a day pass and ride the subway lines (BTW Ajay's shot is of the S-Bahn - the train you take from the airport, but also cuts through a number of downtown stops). The older subway lines, 1, 2, 3 and 4/5 have a lot of 70s era design - some of the stations have been or are being renovated, though generally in keeping with the original character. But what may eventually disappear are the old trains. The new ones are definitely nicer, but nowhere near the character of the old cars (as seen below).
A few from the last couple times I was in Munich:
CV35 f/1.2 II:
21Lux (you can see a bit of the 21Lux's wavy distortion in the bottom of the first one):
A couple more, though shot with the GXR and CV15 while the M was in the shop:
OK, a bunch more...
M9 & CV35 f/1.2 II:
(too bad about Bayern München today after dominating the game to lose in a shootout)
Charles, thanks for the notes about the Nocti. I like its busy rendering in the B&Ws, probably in part because of how you're processing those, and the two of the young ladies is very nice. Tainan looks pretty typical Taiwanese, based on my experience primarily in Taichung and Taipei. Glad the food is living up to expectation!
Bruno - especially like the first and last! Did you get to shoot anything with the 50AA... any thoughts, opinions?
Ajay - very nice - I like the atmosphere in the Olympiapark one.
Gary - very dramatic sunset!
At base ISO at least, you can crank LR's sharpening to insane levels if you want, and it will still look reasonable, certainly in print.
The ISO 10,000 image is quite pliable. There is a lot of grain/noise, but it is fine. At the LR default sharpening setting when you first zoom in to 100% the image seems to explode with noise, but you just have to turn off the sharpening and the image will still be plenty sharp. Much, much different from a high ISO colour image.
A 100% crop unsharpened out of LR and without additional export sharpening:
As already mentioned in various reviews, you don't want to blow highlights. The one of the woman had a lot of blown highlights on the right side background. I found the image too bright for my tastes and wanted a lower key look, but pulling down the mid tones resulted in some not so nice transitions to the highlights, so I cropped them out instead.
While none of the samples were underexposed, I messed around with the fisherman image and cranked it up to +4 exposure, pulled the recovery over to 100, and messed around a bit in the curves to keep from totally blowing it out, but opening up the darkest areas considerably. What you see here, is that the file is very pliable with minimal noise in the darkest shadow areas.
Same idea as above. I was curious how far one could dig into a seemingly dark base ISO image:
Default settings:
In this one I pushed the shadow fill light slider until the black clipping warning went away and messed around a bit with the curves just from keeping it from getting too washed out:
And in this one +4 exposure, and even then the blacks were still clipping, so fill light at +26:
100% crops:
In the first crop above sharpening was set at 85/1/25 No NR.
The second crop has sharpening turned off.
Ron, I like to subway shots, total 70's, right down tot he wood panelling! You really captured the look. Thanks for posting the summary of the M9M, it is interesting to see how deep into those shadows you could dig!
Charles, more from the Noctilux, all great stuff! How is the weight, say compared to a chrome 50 'lux?
Gary, I am liking the 90'cron, do you have wide open shots?
Bruno, I thought it looked like Mayfair. I love walking around London, a superbly photogenic city! Lets see more
Guys, would you give a hand here? I have a chance to buy this Summilux 50/1.4 for a good price, but if you look at the first picture of the add, using the available "lupe" you can see what seems to be scratches on the coating...how much you think it would be important?
tks,
André
André, it's difficult to tell in that image and kind of looks like dust rather than scratches. If those are scratches, I don't feel it would make a huge impact in image quality in many applications, though strongly backlit images or anything with direct sun on the front element could result in further contrast degradation. It would likely be more of an issue of how you would feel spending that much money on a lens with scratches. I would be a bit more concerned about the seller's claim of signs of internal fungus growth.
Thanks Charles and Andrew.
Charles - great portraits!
Bruno - very nice set!
Gary - I like the first one a lot... it got me thinking about how easy it would be to get lost in there if one went wandering, and what one would run into in terms of wildlife... the last one partly answers that question.
Thanks, I think you nailed it...it´s that is so hard to find these lenses around here, and specially for this price that I got tempted...unhappily it´s to far to check it on my own...
Thanks!
Andrew, very nice 2nd and 3rd set from Hong Kong. #1 & 7 from the second set and #2 and 8 from the 3rd set are my favorites.
Ron, going cinematic with a 16:9 crop? Love the subway set! Excellent pp as always. 1,8,9,10, 11 are my favorites.
Charles, excellent sets from Tainan. I like the soft dreamy look to the 50Noct! Also like the toning on the street portraits. Those portraits are excellent.
Gary, nice shots with the 28 Elmarit and 90Cron. The pano is excellent!!
Ajay, already in a B&W mood? #3 from the first set and the Olympic roof shot are my favorites, I like the tonality on these as well.
Bruno, very nice street sets.
I've also played with some of the MM dng files courtesy of Jono Slack. Agree that they are very pliable, definitely much easier and faster to pp compared to the M9 DNGs. The high iso improvement is a plus although my concern is also on exposing for the highlights. It will probably require a different metering technique compared to the M9 and it might be somewhat confusing for me shooting the MM and M9 side by side as far as metering is concerned.
Here's my take on Jono's fisherman and the lovely girl using SEP2.
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Continuing on the MM theme. M9 35Lux ASPH v1
Ron and Joe, thank you guys
Joe, really like your interpretation of Jono's files. Very neat street capture!! Really like the multiple levels of composition
Charles, you are makiing it hard for me to resist the Noctilux, I think that I might have to go have a look at it! Super images, I especially like number two!
Joe, nice interpretation of the MM files. A bit more natural perhaps than mine. Highlights are definitely the main consideration with it, but I don't think exposure would be that much different from the M9. I already aim to avoid blowing out highlights whenever possible and at lower ISOs won't hesitate to open shadows if needed. But the MM files are way more pliable in this regard. I wouldn't hesitate to underexpose more than two stops and still expect to get something usable out of the shadows. My main concern would be banding. While none of the samples have any indication of banding issues, it's still something that frequently plagues my M9 images, especially when constantly filling the buffer and never really letting it fully clear out.
Nice street shot!
16:9 was to crop out something distracting.
Andrew, very cool set! I particularly like 2, 3, 5, 6. That colour 18mm image is great and I love the angular shapes in #5.
Charles, great stuff, good to see you made it to a temple. These faces to me are very Taiwanese. Reminds me very much of my experiences there.
Visited some friends yesterday to take advantage of the great weather, the Victoria Day long weekend and catch up with their young son.
The 28 Cron was practically glued to the camera.
All with the 28 Cron. I was particularly impressed with how well it handled the last couple images shot wide open against the fairly bright picture window and required very little in terms of contrast enhancement in post due to flare. I really like the last one a lot. Contrary to what one might think about such a peaceful scene, he held the 'pose' for about 5 seconds. Enough time to anticipate it and get one shot off.
Andrew, another nice set of HK. #5 is my favorite.
Charles, more nice street shots and portraits from Tainan. Are you traveling with only the 24 and 50mm lens this time?
Ron, very nice set! Nice capture of the young one, especially the last 3 shots.
After some reading now, I am starting to appreciate why some lenses are best suited for B&W, and others for colour. I always felt that the 28 Elmarit, colour depth was great, but not on the same but not on the same level as the 28 Cron. Yet for B&W conversions, the 28 Elmarit is probably one of the best lenses, as is the 35 Cron Asph.
