has anyone of you first hand experience with the Zeiss Distagon 2.8/15 ZM? I subscribed to diglloyd's Leica reviews, but is there perhaps another source for this lens along with Leica M bodies?
Dose anyone know if it is still not possible with the M240 to get a exposure time from 15-30 seconds with ISO values from 1000-3200?
Thank you very much for your comments Zhangyue, Charles, riakuma and thank you all for the likes.
Zhangyue, very nice blacksmith set.
Charles, indeed the color is great. I really like the 2nd shot in the gumtree set. The beach set is simply outstanding.
Allen, well captured.
Jabber, fantastic portrait!
Riakuma, amazing sky and clouds.
Mitch, nice Hua Hin set.
Ryan, I really like the 1st shot. Interesting rendering.
By the way, what are you guys using to clean your sensors? Normally I'm against cleaning except with a blower bulb, but my sensor is getting annoyingly dirty in the corners. I'm considering the Pentax sticky pad. Did anyone try it?
I've been using a combination of blower, sensor pen and the Dust-Aid Platinum device, which is a silicone sticky pad type thing. This combo works pretty well but won't really do anything if you have oil spots. With the Dust-Aid device it's important to resist the temptation to touch the pad with your fingers because it will then transfer finger oil onto the sensor. I used Lensrental's tutorial as guidance: http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2010/04/how-to-clean-a-camera-sensor
Very nice images everyone! I've been following along, just haven't had anything really inspiring to post...
Love the moodiness of the last one Edward!
Charles, congrats on the M240 and your images certainly do look great, and familiar, with it too. Glad to read you're also finding an improvement with RF focusing consistency/precision.
Ryan, funny, but the CV50/1.5 II looks almost Lux ASPH-like in comparison.
Allen, love the one of the two carnies!
Mitch, I agree with Adam, the color in your sets is right on for the mood. The last set in particular feels a bit more edgy/gritty, which I like.
Peter, I can't say I've come across any decent technical reviews of the ZM15. Luminous-Landscape comments on it, but only based on experience with it on the M8: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/zeiss-m-mount.shtml I imagine it will have decent Zeiss characteristics. Looking at its MTF values, it appears to be really sharp, but I'm unsure how the large divergence of the sagittal and tangential lines towards the image edges will affect the end results. Areas of high contrast transition might have some blur in one direction compared to the other? Looking at the 21 Lux and 21 SEM graphs as a comparison, the Lux seems to have similar characteristics at f/5.6 whereas the SEM has much closer sagittal and tangential graph lines. Another question about the ZM is how significant color shift is with it.. There's a fair number of images in this Flickr set, though they're all relatively low rez: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feihongliuying/sets/72157629553272511
edwardkaraa wrote:
By the way, what are you guys using to clean your sensors? Normally I'm against cleaning except with a blower bulb, but my sensor is getting annoyingly dirty in the corners. I'm considering the Pentax sticky pad. Did anyone try it?
Blowing everything possible out is best. Brush (like Arctic) is probably second best.. stickies no clue (sounds dangerous). Wet clean.. rather avoid if not 100% needed (make that 101%).
Thank you very much for your comments Mitch, Ryan, Adam, Edward and Ron, and thank you for all the likes
Mitch, really like this series! This I feel is stronger in terms of color and composition.
Ryan, love the bokeh!!
Peter, have not tested a ZM15, but would be great to try. I have yet to experiment with longer exposures on the M240.
Edward, fascinating architecture! What an interesting place
Ron, I love how you can make a seemingly mundane family get together a really interesting shot!
Edward, I have been very cautious in cleaning sensors, and I have only used blowing with the M body upside down. I have not ventured with wet cleaning, and I have left to local camera stores, that have a microscopes cleaning other camera makes too. The advantage of local places is they clean quickly, quite often while you wait, and can see with the microscope for any dust that may be left.
A shot last night with M240 75 Lux at f/1.4, at 3200 ISO with no NR. More testing is needed with the M240 at 3200 ISO, but if it does work it will be great combined with Leica fast lenses. I have the RX1R and it is brilliant, but at f2, you still quite often need 6400 ISO and a shutter of 1/80s, to make sure this is no camera movement. With the M240, with the very quite shutter, there is no movement and 1/30s with 75 Lux is very possible.
Ron, I agree with Charles. It's great how you combine looseness with careful technique and transform the ordinary.
Charles, after seeing your last picture, anyone who has an M240 has to get a cat like that — he was bred for the M240 color rendition. Great picture.
Edward, I like your p.767 #12 the best of all your pictures. Excellent.
Continuing with the Hua Hin/Pak Nam Pran series…all with the Summicron-28 except the last one, which is with the Elmarit-21 ASPH.
Mescalamba wrote:
Blowing everything possible out is best. Brush (like Arctic) is probably second best.. stickies no clue (sounds dangerous). Wet clean.. rather avoid if not 100% needed (make that 101%).
The 'sticky' pad thing actually isn't sticky. It doesn't adhere to the glass, rather, dust sticks to it. I guess the concern would be undue pressure down on the cover glass and how much would be needed to crack it. So far it hasn't happened to me.
Maybe Arctic Butterfly works, but I can't help but feel I'm getting ripped off for what is mentally a $5-10 item.
Whenever I've been to camera clinics hosted by Canon or Nikon, the techs all use Kimwipes, wrapped around tweezers dipped in methyl hydrate (methanol). Actually, a Nikon tech explained the tissues they use are specially imported by them from Japan and are different from Kimwipes or Pec Pads... Anyway, I've not yet tried this approach for sensor cleaning... Try at your own risk.
Thanks for the likes and comments. The gathering was a friend's birthday. Not a significant milestone year, but of course fun to get together.
28 Cron, 50 Lux ASPH, 2x 21 Lux. Sorry if the last two look a bit too crunchy. I added some grain to the high rez versions and in the downsizing and sharpening it doesn't look quite right.
The background rendering of the 50 Lux is kind of odd here in the mid zone area, but I think it's a consequence of relatively far subject distance with a background not that much farther away, resulting in minimal separation. A pretty challenging situation for any 50mm lens.
BTW, all of the above were some variation on 'ISO-less' shooting. With the first two it was to preserve highlight info in the sky and sunlight areas, with the shaded areas needing around 2 stops push to pull out the details as seen here. The last two had extreme contrast range, due to the candles on the cake. In color they looked kind of murky. As B&Ws they seemed to tolerate a bit more abuse.
Charles, looks really good, in terms of noise. No signs of banding?
Mitch, thanks. Great set here again.
Allen, I believe that link popped up about a month ago. Certainly very cool! Digital has in some ways breathed new life into some analog processes, which is great to see them adapt and thrive.
Thank you Mitch and Ron
Mitch, very nice PP'ing and feel to the series again! I have found it very easy with WA's in Asia to have an overload of colors that don't work, but these shots are great.
Ron, excellent casual set again! Love the last B&W image
Ron, no signs of banding so far. From what I have read some people seem to have this issue more than others. Could be batch related to M240's, technique in exposure or PP'ing. I have just purchased the Extreme Pro 95 Mb/s, 32 Gb cards. From what I have read these cards particularly 32 and 64 Gb seem to work well in start up time and viewing. The start up times have been reduced to by a 1.5 sec, and reviewing is almost instantaneous compared to Extreme Pro 30/45 Mb/s 8 and 16 Gb cards. Maybe this will assist reducing the possibility of banding. The other issue of marginal banding, I suspect is being made worse with Lr/PS and how they integrate with DNG files, when pushed in PP'ing. I have yet to try C1 Pro, as I have found C1 Pro always very robust in PP'ing, but can be cumbersome.
charles.K wrote:
Mitch, very nice PP'ing and feel to the series again! I have found it very easy with WA's in Asia to have an overload of colors that don't work, but these shots are great...
Thanks, Charles. My feeling is that I tend to be driven by the colors I see and, when I don't see them, I (should) switch to the M-Monochrom; but it's the color rendition of the M9 that makes it seem so easy to get the colors I want. I am watching your progress with the M240 in this respect, but hope not to get convinced. So absolutely verboten to photograph that M240 cat again, as I love the colors you got.
charles.K wrote:
Thank you Mitch and Ron
Mitch, very nice PP'ing and feel to the series again! I have found it very easy with WA's in Asia to have an overload of colors that don't work, but these shots are great.
Ron, excellent casual set again! Love the last B&W image
Ron, no signs of banding so far. From what I have read some people seem to have this issue more than others. Could be batch related to M240's, technique in exposure or PP'ing. I have just purchased the Extreme Pro 95 Mb/s, 32 Gb cards. From what I have read these cards particularly 32 and 64 Gb seem to work well in start up time and viewing. The start up times have been reduced to by a 1.5 sec, and reviewing is almost instantaneous compared to Extreme Pro 30/45 Mb/s 8 and 16 Gb cards. Maybe this will assist reducing the possibility of banding. The other issue of marginal banding, I suspect is being made worse with Lr/PS and how they integrate with DNG files, when pushed in PP'ing. I have yet to try C1 Pro, as I have found C1 Pro always very robust in PP'ing, but can be cumbersome....Show more →
No banding, but damn I can't get my times down to 1.5seconds. I just bought a bunch of different cards, and as mentioned the extreme pro 95mbps seems to be the best (32gb variant), but still not 1.5 seconds fast.. And this really bothers me because often I put the camera up to my eye, it's in sleep mode, I click the shutter to get the lines to pop up (downfall of LED frame lines) and then I click the shutter a second time to shoot, and I'm waiting slightly to long!
Gary Clennan - Love the shot.. So tempted by the 21SEM, but now everything is a bit hard to justify to the wife after the 50APO purchase.
Gary, very nice shot, like the excellent contrast and it's very natural colors!
Ron, it was said many times before, but your pictures have such a awesome clarity and colors, once again very impressive. Thanks you also very much on your input to the Distagon 2.8/15ZM! As I understood from what is available in the net, you need cornerfix for every single picture!?
Thank you very much for your comments Ron, Charles and Mitch!
Ron, excellent last 2 sets. As mentioned above, the colors and clarity are amazing.
Charles, Beautiful shot. I love Siamese cats!
Mitch, very nice street work.
Gary, great colors in that shot.
As for sensor cleaning, I am still undecided between the Arctic Butterfly and some kind of sticky pad like the Pentax or Dust Aid. I had a bad experience once with the arctic butterfly as it came contaminated and smeared the sensor. I have cleaned my sensors for years using the wet method, but the drying marks are a PITA. The Lenspen also didn't work well for me (all on Canon sensors, never cleaned the Sony A900 and the M9).
Mitch Alland wrote:
Edward, instead of messing with it yourself, why not let AV Camera in Charoen Krung do it? He's a Leica dealer and charges only 300 baht (US$10).
Thanks for your advice Mitch. I visit AV Camera regularly as this is where I bought my M9 and other photography gear. He calibrated my Sonnar 85 perfectly. Did you ever do a sensor cleaning there?
Great picture.
