Thanks Gary. Yes that was a memorable day along the NE shore of Lake Geneva. To save finding the link, I'll repost:
IIRC, at the state fair, I did have the auxiliary viewfinder on the camera, but don't remember how much I used it. At some point between then and now I've generally stopped using aux. finders and just wing it. With 21mm at least, it's a field of view I've shot a lot over the last 10-20 years and am pretty comfortable with it, shooting without looking through the camera, etc.
I didn't apply any luminance NR on these images. What I do with B&W in LR is slide the saturation slider to -100 and then adjust the WB temp and tint until I get an overall tonality I like, then play with the other settings. I found though that adjusting the chroma NR will affect results. If it's off, the image will look grainer. If it's all the way to 100%, smoother, but somewhat different than luminance NR. I also found you can sharpen way more aggressively like this at high ISOs than you normally would in full colour.
"Sleeping"
It would seem the days at the fair are very long for the participants. It was also blazing sun and quite hot that day...
All with the ZM21.
I think it's a good lens. Little if any CA, very sharp centrally wide open. Corners suffer due to field curvature, so if your subject matter is planar, it's not ideal, and takes until around f/5.6 to sharpen up. The 21 Lux has a flatter plane, though fluctuates a bit in the mid zones until stopped down a bit. I'm still interested in giving the 21 SE a shot and at the moment am borrowing a ZM18, which is impressively sharp right from wide open, but the lack of coding is really bugging me (it's a copy with the old style mount without a groove for coding-by-Sharpie). It's a bit surprising how much the coding, or lack thereof is now a factor in my assessment, and indeed is a major convenience factor.
Going back through these older photos I find I have to modify my processing for the Zeiss lenses a bit compared to what I'm now used to with Leica glass. I dare say I find the Leica look a bit smoother, at least closer to wide open, and I generally feel I want to keep that, and therefore hold off with contrast and clarity to some extent. With images from Zeiss glass I kind of feel I want to push contrast and clarity even more. Not because the images lack contrast, but because of the contrast, if that makes sense?
Superb set of images of Longshan temple!!! Love the blog It would be interesting to see if your shots would be any different with the M9 now I always find it interesting to see how different photographers, shoot temples. Most of the grand statues within temples, are designed to be viewed from straight on, so sometimes angled perspectives I find hard to compose, without taking away the grandeur of the temple.
Great set of images from horse watching! Interesting take on B&W PP'ing too Love the humour in the set of shots Again beautiful set from Geneva!
Hilmar, very nice composition and capture! The 0.95 Nocti has that special magic
Thanks Charles - that's a good question about the temple and how I would shoot it now. I guess at some point in the next couple years I'll likely be back there again and will give it another shot. IIRC, I shot it primarily with the 16-35 and 70-200 until it got dark and switched to the 85L for telephoto. I think I would have a difficult time giving up the flexibility of a 70-200, so would probably use the M for 50 and wider and the Canon for telephoto... though I guess I could also go the alt lens on a GXR or NEX-7 route, with that camera being dedicated to telephoto use...
Some more from the state fair, this time in colour:
...beautiful pictures everyone...its been awhile since my last post
i happened to join some friends who organized a fun shoot with some models...here are a few of what i took, i was about an hour late and they were about to wrap up the shooting...
Thanks for the earlier comments Gary, Charles, Ron
Charles, very nice shots from the temple with the 24Lux!
Ron, excellent B&W and color sets from the Fair. The B&W tones are really nice.. hmm.. you probably posted as many B&W shots in these two sets as you have posted B&W in the entire thread? Really like the way you frame with these wider lenses, I can barely tell its a 21. Those earlier ZM21 color shots are great, worth re-posting again. I'll try give your B&W workflow a try as I like the tonality on the state fair shots. At times, I'm still playing (struggling?) around trying to get more consistent mid tones on my digital B&W shots.
Edwin, lovely beach and lovely models! Those 90Cron shots are excellent!
Seekuh, he's almost touching it! Nice shot!
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A few more from Topsfield Fair last year. M9 35Lux ASPH v1
And one from Emirates with the 90 AA @ IS0 1600 1/60s. I really wished I had a flash that night.
Will be traveling next two weeks and probably won't have much access to the internet. Will catch up with this thread when I'm back.
Thanks Joe. I think your b&w conversions look great. Not sure where the problem is. Safe travels!
Lovely set and models Edwin!
Very nice Charles - I find temples fascinating, especially some of the older and smaller ones.
Wrapping up the fair...
All ZM21 except ZM35C for girl resting hand on cow's head and man kneeling below horse.
Joe and Ron, thank you guys
Joe, really nice set of shots! I love the tonality and richness to your B&W shots.
Ron, another very nice set! I love the way you fill and compose with the 21mm!! I agree, the smaller and older temples off the beaten tourist path, are the best ones to visit.
Hilmar, Charles, Joe, Ron thanks for the kind comments
Very crisp colors Charles on those temple shots.
Very contrasty b&w everyone...it seems the M9's b&w shots are flooding in to show off that its very capable camera in this field, but still making those enthusiast crave for the new M9-M
Thanks Charles, Edwin and Hilmar - I like 21mm a lot for people situations like the state fair, where I can get pretty close and in among the action.
NIce portraits again Charles, particularly the first one.
Gave the loaner Nikkor 5cm f/1.4 more of a try...
The last one is the 50 Lux...
Some comparison images will come, but off hand, the Nikkor has very good contrast and colour. In many ways it's not far from the 50 Lux, though it's not close in terms of wide open sharpness, as can be seen in the last two images. I also love the hard edge rings effect of out of focus specular highlights.
Two quick shots from the past week or so. Been so busy with work, hopefully I'll get to develop some 4x5 soon which has been where the bulk of my free shooting time has gone.
21mm Super-Elmar
Composition is much better on the film version of this shot.
Charles,
Congratulations on the LFI masters selection!
Does anyone us the Leica Diopters or Magnifiers, I am far sighted and was wondering how well these work?
Thanks
Thanks Charles - very nice examples. I really like the first two.
Very sharp images Dan. Are you using your M kit to evaluate scenes for 4x5? I've seen a few of the portraits you've posted and it looks like you're getting great results.
Gary - those look great. The colour is fabulous. I really like the layer of diagonal lines against the background of the second image!
Doug - the discussions we've had about this here have been biased towards diopters over magnifiers. It really does help to find the suitable diopter for your eyesight, assuming you don't have strong astigmatism, or anything else that wouldn't be corrected with a basic diopter (if so, you'll probably need the Walter RX diopter http://walterrxeyepiece.com). I found the standard Leica diopter (-1 in my case for slight nearsightedness) helped a fair amount. I also bought the 1.4x magnifier and have to admit to rarely using it. It works, just it's a bit inconvenient to switch, especially if also using a diopter, because that must be unthreaded before the magnifier can be installed. I use the magnifier more for focus tests or when it's a tripod situation where focus is critical (which is rare). Perhaps the greatest improvement to my results was getting the most critical to focus lens in my kit, the 50 Lux, along with my other Leica lenses, matched to the camera by Leica. Though it took them a couple tries, I can now reliably focus it wide open at near and far distances.
What is the problem you're having?
Charles - I agree, I think the Nikkor is likely a good portrait lens, as evidenced by the photos I did of my friends' son last weekend.
I also brought along my 5cm Summarit to compare. Wide open the Summarit has a much greater amount of veiling flare that considerably reduces contrast. I don't have a step ring for its odd thread size yet, so haven't fitted it with a hood, which might be part of the issue. The Nikkor takes 43mm filters, and I have a hood that size on it. As a result in post, I find the Summarit needs the black point and contrast considerably tweaked. In the images below I've done those tweaks to see how close I can get the two so that one is more or less evaluating the rendering/bokeh qualities.
I've read that the Nikkor is optimized for closer focusing distances. All I can say is that this copy does not focus to infinity (pretty sure it clicked into the infinity focus lock. In fact, it's way off, to the point where reliably focusing on anything wide open at a distance greater than about 10m is difficult. I'll have to try it with the GXR a bit to see how that works. The Summarit also is poor at infinity wide open, but stopped down a bit it's quite good. Both lenses blur the edges of high contrast transitions, such as tree branches/leaves against a sky. I actually like this look as it takes a lot of edge off the image. With the Nikkor the bleed has a bit of a blue shift, with the Summarit it's white. With the 50 Lux ASPH, very high contrast situations result in some purple fringing. The Summarit also exhibits a greater tendency to 'cats eyes' in background oof specular points. And both will flare if sun hits the front element, though the Summarit seems to lose much more contrast.
The order in the following images is generally Nikkor then Summarit.
Summarit with front element shaded by my hand:
The last one above is the 50 Lux.
Last is 50 Lux. The focus in the Nikkor shot is a bit off compared to the other two..
Last is 50 Lux. The Nikkor seems to have a bit more close distance glow than the Summarit, looking at the edge of the white stone against the green.
These two are just Summarit and 50 Lux:
Again, I've adjusted each to get the tonality I wanted from a given scene, so you're not really seeing how flat the Summarit can look.... but one can tweak it to similar end results.
I Disappear for a few days and tons of great images!
Andrew - Really nice images (P519) from all three lenses, on the 5n, I assume.
Charles, your portraits on P519 are superb! I am really liking the one of the old lady. The image of the guy on the bicycle is great too, the Noct seems to have three different bokeh's built in - smooth close up, interesting at medium distances, good far away detail at infinity even wide open.
P520 The image of the old man shows the bokeh transition really well.
Joe, great shots on P519, good catch with the truck with the people on it.
Luka, love the cranes, and you PP is superb!
Joakim, congrats on the new lens, well worth the wait! #3 (P519) is my choice
Ron, the Nikkor is a cool lens, very different rendering. Nice to see the ZM 21mm being used as well. The last one of the horse is especially nice! I have to confess that I have not had the time to wander through every page of the thread, but you images from Lake Geneva are stunning, #3 is absolutely fantastic!
The fair is interesting to see from background perspective! Nice B&W's
P520 image #3 &4 show a beautiful transition, very nice! Thank you for posting the last comparisons,it is interesting to see them.
Himar, the statue/crane shot is an interesting capture, great eye!
Edwin, a super nice set with the models!
Dan, nice forest image, the 21mm Super Elmar looks to be a super lens!
Gary, the 90mm butterfly shot is very nice! Is your 90mm the last version before the AA?
To save finding the link, I'll repost:
Again beautiful set from Geneva!
