airfrogusmc: Great sets! Love the compositions and semi-abstract nature of many of these. Also brings back memories of a nice road trip with my GF to Key West a number of years ago.... The t-shirt shop shot is great... unfortunately my GF and I were fleeced by one of these places with their various up-sells. I saw it coming but my GF insisted on buying anyway...
Wow - what a great set Ron! I really like #1, 3, 4, and 5. You are so good at processing images - they seem to have the perfect balance to my eye. That sunstar with the 21SEM looks really neat too. Looks like that is one heck of a sharp lens.... How do you find it compares to your ZM21/2.8? PS - we have had snow here for three weeks or so. Must have over a foot by now....
Thanks Gary! I was going to say your PP is also looking good compared to the difficulty you had with the M8's files a while ago.
I have yet to do a side by side comparison of the two 21s, but from initial use so far (a few hundred images), I really like the 21 SEM a lot. It is super sharp, already from wide open, with a really nice balance of colour, contrast and saturation. Contrast though is higher than what I'm used to with the 21 Lux or 50 Lux and probably even a bit higher than the 28 Cron. For the first and last photos above, I pulled back considerably on the contrast slider (which I normally never touch) to open the shadows, along with an appropriate tone curve, combined with a fairly strong application of clarity to bring back overall contrast while still keeping the shadow tones from blocking up. Out of the camera both images felt a lot heavier - very dark in the shadow tones. But that's what I expect now from the M9 (in order to preserve highlight info).
A big difference between the SEM and the ZM is that the SEM seems to have a flatter plane of focus. The ZM is very sharp centrally, but focus falls off towards the edges quite considerably with relatively flat subjects and I've definitely seen a curved plane of focus in images from it. It takes a couple stops to bring the edges back and I typically shot it at f/8 or f/11 for these kinds of urban landscape type shots. I'm finding I don't really have to worry about this with the SEM. It just feels like a nearly perfect lens that is great for when you want highly technical performance. Perhaps an advantage for the ZM is I never noticed any CA from it. The SEM has a very slight amount that LR seems to completely correct. Even though it's very slight, at 100%, it can result in a slightly odd and nervous sharpness in highly detailed areas.
Despite the greatness of the SEM, I'm not planning to get rid of the 21 Lux just yet. The SEM is definitely sharper and calmer across the frame in the f/4-5.6 range, but can't hold a candle to the Lux when it comes to subject/background separation, and of course, low light use. Then there is the dual personality of the Lux where it's got that characteristic soft sharpness wide open and sharp across the frame past f/8. The SEM is always full on crazy sharp. And for a Leica lens, at $3000 US, it's quite the bargain for the level of performance it offers.
I'm also toying with the idea of picking up the new CV 21/1.8 to compare to the Lux, SEM and ZM... just can't get enough 21mm goodness.
Here's another 21 SEM image I'm quite happy with:
One thing I forgot to add above, that is slightly visible in this image, is that edge colour shift correction for the SEM seems to be slightly more aggressive than I would like, at least in that it seems to eliminate a bit more vignetting than I would prefer and isn't quite perfect at removing colour shift along the left edge. The SEM seems to vignette (with coding on) less than the 28 Cron, which even stopped down always has some degree of noticeable vignetting.
Ron, really enjoy your sets. All very good and I also like 1,3,4,5 in this pg. The color, and pattern make the images. Yes, those color and detail are very impressive. So temping with 21 SEM. I also interesting in comparison of biogon and SEM. Biogon is a extreme good lens once stop down. I can't complain it much but as I mention earlier, it need to stop down to f5.6 to have corner sharp and build not as good as Leica. I don't have fund to change though.
Gary, Nice set. That is cold.
airfrogusmc: Very nice set. I especially like the swimming pool with guy at left bottom corner one. very nice perspective.
Ron, the lighting is fantastic, great shots again, love the second last one of the building! The way the shadows are falling in your photos just makes them look so life like!
And in the second set again, you really seem to know how to get your 28cron working for you. The 21mm is new? Seems like the crosswalk photo was subtly unsharpmasked, is this the lenses character, or you getting use to how to process with the lens? It's really quite a (I hate to say it) 3D lens! (OK just read your explanation on the other page, wow seems like a fantastic lens, to bad I've decided to simplify my collection).
Gary, looks like a lot of snow for Nov. although I guess it depends on where you live. I miss Canadian maple syrup, my last jug ran out a half year ago, and I'm stuck eating American maple syrup
Michael - I agree with Adam - really like the 35 Cron.
Thanks Adam! The 21/3.4 is new to me, so getting a feel for it, both in shooting and processing. The crosswalk photo is fairly heavily processed because it was exposed for the sky, so a bit of work was needed to bring out the bottom half of the image. The reason it looks a bit USM'd or pseudo-HDR is in order to open up the shadows, I pulled down the contrast a lot, both with the slider and with the tone curve, which resulted in a pretty flat image. To get some snap back, I dialed in a high amount of clarity, which gives it that somewhat HDR kind of look. There's also a fair amount of localized brush adjustments in the foreground to bring up the brightness. At the moment I'm OK with the way this looks, but might change my mind... Yeah, I guess it has a bit of a 3D quality. I've felt this in some other images with the lens I haven't posted here.
Here's a before and after to give a feel for what was involved:
Very nice shots from all. This thread is alive and kicking!
Ron, great photography in Germany. I love the rendering of the 21 SEM, and congratulations for the new toy!
Zhangyue, Very nice. I much prefer the city shots, they're all great. I really like that taxi and the motorcycle shots for some reason
Gary, nice colorful shots.
Airfrogusms, you got some really good moments there. The compositions and color juxtaposition in the color set are amazing. Keep them coming.
Adam, love the wedding shots, and the subjects
Andrew, Great series. I love the documentary style that tells you something, and the colorfulness of Chinese markets.
Ron, I'm really enjoying the photos you took during your stay in Munich. Seeing these familiar places and your photos is very interesting.
As far as post processing is concerned, I took quite a similar approach recently to develop the M9 dng files. I had taken some photos in Hamburg in August 2012. When editing them recently, I increased the shadows a lot and also increased clarity by a large margin (in LR 4.2). Normally, I almost didn't touch clarity. Lifting the shadows and clarity hugely resulted in a very crisp and sharp image. And I also did some tone curve adjustments finally.
I'm however wondering if I overdid processing these files. I would love to hear what you guys think. Please post your honest opinion, I can take it.
seekuh - Processing wise I like all the photos. I just don't like the vignetting as I don't think it adds to the photos, in fact I think it takes away from these types of shots. Otherwise fine to me.
