Charles, those are some great captures. Wonderful.
Luka, wonderful night shots. I agree with Makten that the shots with the 25 on the previous page have a very strong sense of 3D and 'being there'. I also seem to like the colors from the M9 better, but as I understand it, you do tweak them a bit to look like your 5D2 (you're crazy... ). Anyways, great stuff.
The shots with the 25 on this page have only been white balance adjusted. The 25 shots (duck shots) on the previous page are fairly heavily processed - global contrast was increased and saturation dropped significantly. For the last duck/25 image I applied a lightroom cross processing preset.
Anyway, a few randomly picked shots from yesterday:
Luka, wow! You are making Leica very happy . These shots are excellent! I'm not going to go through and say which I like best, just that you are making my desire for this camera go even higher
Adam: No, I have only been using the M9 for the past week. Last time I used the 5DII was to take a picture of the M9. I'll continue using the M9 exclusively until the novelty wears of - then I'll try to strike a balance between the systems.
denoir wrote:
Sebboh: Here's one with the 50/1.5, probably at f/5.6 (the M9's guesstimate of the aperture is completely unreliable when it comes to longer exposures)
another lovely one, but i like the 25mm one better - positioning the house at an angle gives the shot more depth and the view from that direction shows the tree hanging over the water, which isn't clear at all in the second shot.
that sonnar is a lens i've always been tempted by to use as my portrait lens on the NEX (sorry for the blasphemy on the leica thread), i would get it in a heartbeat if its mfd was .5m or lower instead of .9m.
out of curiousity how does the m9 decide what aperture to put in the exif?
Sebboh, the M9 calculates or interpolates the f stop from the meter readings as there is no electronic contact, so it can vary about 1 stop according to Leica.
charles.K wrote:
Sebboh, the M9 calculates or interpolates the f stop from the meter readings as there is no electronic contact, so it can vary about 1 stop according to Leica.
thanks, it can do that from just the meter readings of the light reflected off the shutter? or is there a second ambiant light sensor?
note: no need to answer my idle curiosity at this point i should probably just look it up.
Adam: No, I have only been using the M9 for the past week. Last time I used the 5DII was to take a picture of the M9. I'll continue using the M9 exclusively until the novelty wears of - then I'll try to strike a balance between the systems.
HAHA, I'm the same way, I was at a Halloween party last night, and knew it would be really dark, brought the M9 anyway.
charles.K wrote:
Excellent shots Luka! Great composition #1 and 3.
Sebboh, the M9 calculates or interpolates the f stop from the meter readings as there is no electronic contact, so it can vary about 1 stop according to Leica.
Yeah, the M9's a bit crazy with the guesstimation sometimes..
charles.K wrote:
Sebboh, the M9 calculates or interpolates the f stop from the meter readings as there is no electronic contact, so it can vary about 1 stop according to Leica.
It varies about 1 stop when the light is reasonable. In very light or dark conditions the aperture guess is wildly wrong. Any long exposure of several seconds or more will typically always read as f/4 regardless if you are at f/1.4 or f/8.
denoir wrote:
The bottom line is (IMO) that the M9 can give slightly higher IQ especially if you use the lenses at smaller apertures (the largest difference between ZE and ZM glass is at larger apertures) but the price is pretty steep in terms of usability.
I suppose once you get more accustomed to shooting landscape with the camera you may feel differently.
Grad ND's are easy, the filter holder is very close to the lens, and if you know the AOV it's not hard to determine where to place the transition. There are also markers on the holder to help with this.
Polarisers are easy, my polariser is marked with the position of most polarisation to a plane 90 degrees down for the direction the camera is facing, I can also tweak it as I have it positionable in the filter holder I use for GND's. I just look through it before I clip it onto the lens.
Symmetrical wide angles I don't have to explain.
The smaller camera and lenses are easier to use with a panoramic head. I will have quite a few shots from my previous expedition to share soon, 90% of which are mosaics/panos.
The LCD is useful for showing framing/exposure, and does so very adequately. I know that things are where I focused them because my rangefinder is calibrated and I saw the convergence in the finder. For trying to shoot street at large apertures I can appreciate there may be a difficulty, but I haven't really encountered it.
Colour is also superior, wouldn't you agree?
I wouldn't mind a superior screen, I really like seeing a nice high-res review of the image, but it doesn't affect my keeper rate much if any.
I do find the buffer insufficient for bracketed panoramas, and the bracketing feature is stupid in that it won't bracket at the specified setting around a chosen shutterspeed, only on Auto around the automatically determined exposure for that particular frame. I end up just manually changing it but can affect sharpness by doing that.
My 1541T is perfectly stable with the M9, even in blizzard weather at the top of a mountain with the centre column partially extended and a pano-head in use, perhaps try using the timer or hanging your camera bag from underneath.
From Saturday night at the 40's, with higher iso shots, I found using Noise Ninja did not work well with M9 16 bit tiff files. It works really well with 5DII files. May be the algortithm? I instead used Imagenomice Noiseware Pro, and it seemed to work a lot better. Just interested if some else has some thoughts and experiences
Here are some shots, pushed in exp, but PP with Noiseware Pro.
A couple of quick images I've thrown together. The first 6 vertical frames, each with 18mm distagon, I haven't taken the time to calculate the effective FOV yet. Despite the warm light, that water was COLD.
This second shot I'm amazed turned out, shot haphazardly from a ballhead, about 12 frames total. Shot with the 25mm Biogon.
It looks so calm, but the river was in flood, you get an idea of the force of the waterfall by the size of the spray being jettisoned out to the side. Long exposures make the most violent waters look serene
Dan, both shots are beyond spectacular! Great use of light in number 1 and the clarity in #2 is unbelievable. Any filters used? Does the ZM 18 have a problem with color on the M9 or am I thinking about the 21 4.5?
). Anyways, great stuff. 
