Nice shots Luka. Thanks for sharing them with us. I like the first landscape shot and the first portrait the best.
All famous sites have been shot a bizillion times by everyone but it is a challenge to find a new angle or composition that is unique and your own. I don't understand your comment about the rangefinder allowing you to find different compositions than a DSLR.
I prefer the environmental portraits like the first one where you are closer to the subject which fills the frame more and I can see more interesting details in the person and their expression and still get enough of the environment around them like with a 28 or 35mm lens.
Look forward to seeing more of your shots from the great trip you had.
Thanks Edward, ken.vs.ryu, KL, Akul, Peter & Wayne!
trdonja wrote:
I don't have any experience with Leica Mx, but are you saying that same shots that you made, can not be made with Canon 5D? If that is true, what is the technical explanation of that?
No, the other way around. There shots that I could have made with a DSLR that I couldn't with an M9. I was for instance limited to 75mm. The longest Leica M lens available is 135mm.
ken.vs.ryu wrote:
What bag did you use to carry your gear?
A Domke F-803.
wayne seltzer wrote:
I don't understand your comment about the rangefinder allowing you to find different compositions than a DSLR.
Think of it as equivalent to a zoom vs prime thing. Using a prime forces you to move around and you will subsequently find new angles - something that you would not have bothered with a zoom. Same thing here. The focal lenght limitations, the focusing style, the approximate framing with framelines etc all force you to use the camera in a different way than you would a DSLR. So the nature of the camera leads you to take somewhat different photos. On a different level, when you are photographing people you also get very different responses if you point a huge camera at them or a small one.
singletrack wrote:
As you are pushing more in post processing, what restrictions/limits have u encountered? How much can you stretch things?
High ISO (above 800) when there are larger dark regions is no good. But in daylight with deep shadows at base ISO, I can push it perhaps 3-4 stops in the shadows without getting problems with noise.
Denoir, great images and comments.
Is there anything you would like to elaborate regarding shadow recovery technique?
I suppose you did some in the first picture too. Did you use focus stacking for that one? I do understand that UWA lenses have great DOF and this is a small scaled image but nevertheless.
Did you shoot some film there too?
Regarding shadow recovery, there's not much to say - I just use the fill slider in Lightroom. I usually also increase the black levels. In the first image I increased Fill Light to 49 and Blacks to 22 and cropped the image somewhat. I did not use focus stacking. The Zeiss 18/4 Distagon has a huge DOF and you basically don't need to focus it.
I didn't shoot film but I did toy with the idea of bringing along a small film SLR. I decided against it though as I wanted to keep the kit light and I'm actually not much of a film guy. I shoot film on occasion just for fun but for all my photos where I expect some form of usable result I trust only digital.
Excellent shots. This thing about the M9 sensor must really be very annoying. In the ideal world, one would take two M9s and put a 35 in one and a 90 in the other, so very little changing would be necessary,besides you would have always the two(for me) useful lenghts ready to shoot. But that would be...expensive!
Thank you very much for showing, although the pictures make me feel to rob a bank and get myself a M9 with lenses.
Thomas
Even if you robbed a bank, where you gonna find the lenses?!
Denoir - Some really neat shots.. I'm glad the M9 worked out well for you, and I really like the second shot you took of the rock, very ZE style, makes me want a 35 asph now
Wow, great travel shots Luka!
I really like how you avoided to get the usual tourist photos of those places.
Interesting to read your point of view of the places you visited.
And amazing how much information you could squeeze out of the shadows without making them look strange.
I gotta say the amount of detail, or maybe it's the perception of detail, in these Egypt photos is astonishing, even at websize. They don't have that oversharpened look at all, just loads of detail. It really adds to the feeling of looking at the real thing. Esp. the ZM 18 and Leica 35 1.4 shots are totally awesome in that regard. I'd say from a technical point of view, these are as good as I could ever wish for. Colors as well. I'm afraid though I would have serious issues getting focus right with it.
Swappo, the stuff in Egypt is typically on a massive scale so a workaround is to simply shoot above the heads of the crowd. You still get most of the monument but without people. If that was not possible then I tried to wait to get in a shot when some spot happend to be tourist free for a second. I have to admit that I was frustrated a number of times when I thought I had a clean shot but then somebody walked into the frame just at the last second.
Morten, the ZM18 is really a superb lens when it comes to producing a clean and detailed image. It's about as good as the 21 ZE/ZF Distagon. As for focusing the 35/1.4 Lux, one of the benefits of a rangefinder is that focusing wide angles accurately is really easy. It's much easier than with a DSLR. Tele lenses are notoriously difficult to focus accurately but wide angles are a piece of cake. I missed focus a bunch of times with the 75/2 but as far as I remember not a single time with the 35/1.4.
Sorry, I still think you could have "composed" these shots the same with a DSLR.
The only impact I see of using a rangefinder is the leaving of space/margin at the edges of the frame to make sure you don't cut something out of the shot that you wanted since the framelines are approximate. And of course the small camera advantage when taking portraits which is one of the main advantages of rangefinders IMO.
Yes, with a rangefinder you are constrained to 135mm or less lenses, but it is not like with a DSLR that you are going to take only tele shots and no wide angle or normal lens shots, right?
denoir wrote:
Thanks Edward, ken.vs.ryu, KL, Akul, Peter & Wayne!
No, the other way around. There shots that I could have made with a DSLR that I couldn't with an M9. I was for instance limited to 75mm. The longest Leica M lens available is 135mm.
A Domke F-803.
Think of it as equivalent to a zoom vs prime thing. Using a prime forces you to move around and you will subsequently find new angles - something that you would not have bothered with a zoom. Same thing here. The focal lenght limitations, the focusing style, the approximate framing with framelines etc all force you to use the camera in a different way than you would a DSLR. So the nature of the camera leads you to take somewhat different photos. On a different level, when you are photographing people you also get very different responses if you point a huge camera at them or a small one.
High ISO (above 800) when there are larger dark regions is no good. But in daylight with deep shadows at base ISO, I can push it perhaps 3-4 stops in the shadows without getting problems with noise. ...Show more →
Beautiful images. I may actually start buying lottery tickets so I can buy an M9 and your three most oft used lenses (plus get myself and family to Egypt).
The clarity of your images is stunning. My daughter (a budding Egyptologist) and I sat and studied each photo.
Thank you for sharing your images and your experiences regarding the trip and the equipment you used.
Swappo, the stuff in Egypt is typically on a massive scale so a workaround is to simply shoot above the heads of the crowd. You still get most of the monument but without people. If that was not possible then I tried to wait to get in a shot when some spot happend to be tourist free for a second. I have to admit that I was frustrated a number of times when I thought I had a clean shot but then somebody walked into the frame just at the last second.
Morten, the ZM18 is really a superb lens when it comes to producing a clean and detailed image. It's about as good as the 21 ZE/ZF Distagon. As for focusing the 35/1.4 Lux, one of the benefits of a rangefinder is that focusing wide angles accurately is really easy. It's much easier than with a DSLR. Tele lenses are notoriously difficult to focus accurately but wide angles are a piece of cake. I missed focus a bunch of times with the 75/2 but as far as I remember not a single time with the 35/1.4. ...Show more →
People ask me that a lot... there are benefits to being taller than most
Luka, I still think you should share your specific sharpening work flow.. pretty please? I took your last tips and have found some improvement but am still miles away from perfecting it as you have.
The x1 shots, I missed those earlier - very nice. I no longer have sharpness envy - my first shot in the other thread was a sharpness test (corners of the buildings)
