Thrice, that second image is awesome! OThers very nice as well, but I am in awe of 2.
I'd be glad to share the info on my setup:
My RRS plate is stamped 36. It has a slide screw on it, so I expect it was my universal I purchased, it has a slight lip that fits the X1 perfectly. My head was part of this dual flash contraption I bought from a guy once, that had been custom fabricated to mount a DSLR on it with dual flashes on arms. I found the whole thing to unweildy to use, so I stripped it and took the ballhead and clamp for this setup.
Ballhead is Manfrotton 484RC2, a very small ballhead, as you can see by size of clamp relative to it. The clamp is a Kirk screw clamp. The monopod is an older Gitzo CF pod, number 1568 Mk2. Perfect size for my X1 rig. :-) I can look up the RRS plate if you need me to.
Ryan, the ZM25 and 28 Elmarit are two very different lenses. For landscapes I love the ZM 25, but I am starting to understand the 28 Elmarit better now
Joe, really nice shot with 50/1.5 Nokton. It is an excellent lens. I have not tried the 28 Summicron, but what I understand it is one of the better picks of the Leica lineup.
Carsten, very nice set of pics from your trip to Egypt. I had problems accessing the link for a couple of days
Luka, great shots of the ducks #1 is excellent. Your luck should change now!
Really nice shots of the horses. I find horses sometime can be very difficult to photograph, in that the texture and colour of the coat, can play havoc with certain lenses and cameras. Must be the fine texture, and frequency of the hair that can look very unnatural with certain lenses. I really like the shots Luka, and I'm split with the 50 Sonnar and 75 Cron. I will try the Leica lenses, this weekend with a new born foal.
Love the last set of shots with the 75 Cron, particularly of reeds across the river. There is a quite elegance about the shot I really like.
Doug, nice shot with the X1
Dan, great series of shots! Great work with the CV 12 Heliar.
thrice wrote:
Weird, initially I was 'wowed' by the focus/defocus separation and '3D' of my Zeiss lenses but now I miss the painterly quality and colour of my Leica 19mm. Maybe if I were a documentary photographer or an architecture photographer but I'm a painter who can't paint. I suppose the grass is always greener.
You explained very well the reason I sold my Zeiss 21mm and kept the Leica 19mm instead. You could guess that I prefer LP and tube in audio systems too :-)
Thrice: some amazing shots you've been posting in this thread!
Luka: I like that motion blurred duck shot
It's just personal taste, but I don't really like the rendering of that 75mm leica (somewhat flat, reminds me of my canon lenses in a way).
Your shots with zeiss glass have more pop to them.
Those shots were not very good for evaluating a lens for photographing horses. High ISO and camera shake.. The difference in over all rendering style is interesting as the two lenses are completely different in style - especially with the Sonnar being so distinctive wide open.
Jochenb wrote:
Luka: I like that motion blurred duck shot
It's just personal taste, but I don't really like the rendering of that 75mm leica (somewhat flat, reminds me of my canon lenses in a way).
Your shots with zeiss glass have more pop to them.
Thanks Jochen I agree with you and I don't like it too much either. I am however interested in it as a long term project to see if I can find some good use for it.
Luka, really nice shots. I feel #1, maybe oversharpned. I use much less sharpening for the M9, than the 5DII, in my scipts, and for particular lenses too, such as the ZM 25, ZM 50/2 Planar and 35 Cron. I love the rendering of shots #2,3 and 4.
Thanks Charles I added some extra sharpening to the first shot in a desperate attempt to make it 'pop' more.
I talked to the shop that I bought the 75 cron from and they are getting a Zeiss 85/2 any day now. I asked if it would by any chance be possible to exchange the Cron for the 85/2 + cash and they said that it would be no problem.
So that's a decision I'll have to make. I'm not crazy about the size of the Zeiss and I would really like to get to know the Cron - it may just be a question of getting to know in what situations it shines. At the same time I'm consistently underwhelmed by the images I'm getting from it. So I just don't know. I'd love to have the two side by side for a week or two and then make a decision.
I guess I'll have to try to use the Cron as much as I can for the next few days although the weather seems to be conspiring against me:
(My ink coding marks have worn off, but the above was shot with the 25 Biogon)
I have a question for you: how much, if any, printing have you done of your M9 files, and can you make any comparisons to other prints from other systems you've made?
Here's an interesting thing I found. I was comparing the 85 f/1.4 Planar ZE and the 75 Cron (the Cron shot has been cropped to 85mm size):
No surprises there, the Zeiss has far higher local contrast. Works well on some parts of the image while the Cron has a definitive advantage on the rendering of the snow. The difference in green is interesting but that's just a difference in RAW development.
However, before I took the shot above, I had the M9 incorrectly configured as having a 24/2.8 lens (left since I played with the 25 biogon) and got this shot:
It's somewhere between the first and the second shot and actually the one I think looks best. The difference is in-camera processing and not related to the optics.
Luka, I agree with you with the difference in coding. I actually like the look of the 75 better than the 85 and would prefer (personally) the look to be closer to the 75 coding than the 25. Being that this is done in-camera, you can easily write a script in LR3 to emulate the look you are looking for
#1 is excellent. Your luck should change now! 
