M9 high iso

[Alnitak]

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Based on the raves about some of the R-glass, like the 50 and 80, Leica would do well to create a new R-camera.

 

A more logical and profitable approach would be to follow Zeiss' lead and simply retool the R lenses into the EF and F mounts.

 

Jeff

[Jamie Roberts]

A more logical and profitable approach would be to follow Zeiss' lead and simply retool the R lenses into the EF and F mounts.

 

Jeff

 

Perhaps not...some of us still think the DMR kicks the **** out of the Nikons and Canons for colour. I'd rather have a "mini S2" that was R compatible.

 

YMMV

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[wparsonsgisnet]

A more logical and profitable approach would be to follow Zeiss' lead and simply retool the R lenses into the EF and F mounts.

 

Jeff

 

It might be profitable but seems neither logical nor likely to me.

 

'Course, anyone can take one of these lenses and have them adapted for another camera; it's not necessary to involve the Gnomes of Solms in this effort.

[Alnitak]

From an economic perspective, trying to compete with Canon and Nikon would be extremely tough. The M's fit a niche no one can touch, allowing Leica to charge such premium prices. The same logic applies to the new S2 system; its the creation of a new niche in the MF space. The R line never reached much success compared to other SLR competitors, and I think it would be even tougher to compete today. Leica obviously came to a similar conclusion when the killed the R10 project. Meanwhile, simply changing the mount lets Leica make a premium off of existing lens designs; letting others do it with older lenses yields no financial benefit to Leica. They can derive a very large profit margin as they would not be investing any capital in the design of the lenses, so this could be very profitable. They are a business, after all. I think its pretty easy to assume that the market for Leica glass in native EF and F mounts would be significant. Look at the tremendous success Zeiss has had with their EF, K and F mount manual focus lenses, and the large number of Canon and Nikon users that hack together adapters for R glass, just to get access to such optical goodness.

 

Jeff

[zlatkob]

Hey Jeff, that makes sense to me (but I don't really know what's logical or profitable in the camera business ). Cosina Voigtlander makes lenses for the Canon, Nikon and Pentax mounts too, like this one:

The Online Photographer: Just Right: The Voigtlander Ultron 40mm f/2 SL II Aspherical in Canon EF Mount

Seems like a market for Leica too.

[KevinA]

It's a tough call because certainly the 50 Lux ASPH will not vignette as much as almost any other 50 at 1.4, and it will be sharper to boot.

 

But if I can make a suggestion, you should consider maybe a D3s and adapt some Leica R glass to it with the Leitax adapters. You can't really go wrong with a 50 1.4 R Lux, and since you're manually focusing, that would be a stellar choice. It's my favourite 50mm lens of all time, and I'm sure it would be spectacular on a D3s

 

For wides, there's the 35 cron (I don't know if the Lux can be adapted) and, I believe, the 19mm Elmarit, which, while an f2.8 lens, would still give you fabulous shots while taking advantage of the D3s's high ISOs.

 

And Nikon has just released what looks like a very, very nice 24 1.4... So I think you'd be covered all round, to tell you the truth.

 

There's more Leica goodness on the telephoto end too; the 90 cron would be really good as well!

A Nikon would be the smart approach as it stands, but in the end it's just another DSLR. Chances are I will stick with what I have and know until the next round of Canon camera upgrades. I was kind of hoping the "M" form might be the difference. I'm still a bit tempted by that triple wide angle thingy'm bob on a 9, I do shoot mostly in daylight.

Thanks everyone for your views.

 

Kevin.

[Stealth3kpl]

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This doesn't really address the OP's question and the samples are small but here it is for what it's worth.

Leica M9 and London in the rain – Telegraph Blogs

Pete

[sjt1]

The Leica shows streaking very early in underexposed areas, which become very obvious as early, as pushing half a stop in shadows.

 

I totally agree with this - to my mind the streaking is the most objectionable form of noise mainly because I have not seen any form of noise reduction that can combat it. I think I read somewhere it is called "pattern noise" - something to do with the sensor array??

 

I think that the streaking is a rather suble kind of noise over a wide area (not at pixel level) - the eye is very sensitive to even tiny changes in continuous tones (paraphrased from an Ansel Adams book I think) and when there are regular patterns like these streaks I think they can easily distract the eye.

 

I have experimented with using gaussian distributed noise in PS and messing with the channels in LR (both with not much success) to mask this streaking. New programs like LR3 (currently beta) can tackle the pixel level noise quite well by the looks of things, but the streaking has been untouched in my tests. If anyone knows of a fix for this streaking noise, please post it!! I would be most grateful.

 

 

Btw - the issue is clearly seen in Jamie's shot on page one. It might be not obvious enough, so it could be hidden in print. It grabbed my eye though without peeping quickly.

 

I also noticed the streaking immediately on my calibrated monitor. I don't know if my eyes are extra sensitive to this as I have sort of trained myself to hate it!

 

@ Menos: the M9 is not the M8 by any stretch--believe me. There is no banding in shadows on the shot I posted, nor on many others I've shot up to ISO 2000 and beyond.

 

Please check the 100% crops and adjust your blackpoint for something appropriate to print.

 

As I mentioned, there is some slight colour banding visible as reflections from the overexposed lamp; that's easily taken care of with something like Define. But even at ISO 2500 this is not the brick wall that the M8 is at ISO 1250.

Sorry to appear contrary - I can see vertical streaks all across the frame in the night sky. Are these the reflections you refer to? The biggest ones I can see are two vertical lines about the middle of the frame. There also looks like a horizontal line about the same hight as the left hand steeple top (this could be the middle of the sensor).

 

When you say "brick wall" are you referring to the underexposure latitude of the M9 vs the M8, and that the M9 is more "forgiving" at the higher ISOs? This would be good to know.

 

Again, apologies for going on about this - I have seen many threads on noise, but I think the streaking aspect of it is not that widely debated. I know the absolute solution is to expose properly, but sometimes (at night) you get underexposure and it would be nice to understand the streaking problem better. Thanks for any input.

[wparsonsgisnet]

... simply changing the mount lets Leica make a premium off of existing lens designs; letting others do it with older lenses yields no financial benefit to Leica. They can derive a very large profit margin as they would not be investing any capital in the design of the lenses, so this could be very profitable. They are a business, after all. I think its pretty easy to assume that the market for Leica glass in native EF and F mounts would be significant...

 

It's pretty clear that Leica doesn't have any excess human capital. Making lenses for someone else's camera might yield some short-term profits, but it would detract from important projects -- not to mention, demean the brand.

 

The price of a Leica lens is cost driven, of course. Hand-made and hand-adjusted objects are very different than assembly line products.

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

Sorry to appear contrary - I can see vertical streaks all across the frame in the night sky. Are these the reflections you refer to? The biggest ones I can see are two vertical lines about the middle of the frame. There also looks like a horizontal line about the same hight as the left hand steeple top (this could be the middle of the sensor).

 

Steve, are saying you see banding (that's what I call it) in the 100% crops I posted? Because if you do, your black point and illumination are higher on your calibrated monitor than mine. The JPEG has be re-compressed for some reason and has some weirdness the 100% image doesn't.

 

I see no shadow banding whatsoever at 100% on the EIZO at 100/cdm2 illumination level. That's a very good match for the printing methods I use.

 

There's certainly noise, and there are some color band artifacts from, as I said, the overexposure of the lamp. But both of those are pretty easily fixed (a trip to the LAB colourspace can fix any slight colour reflections. FWIW, I think I still had the UV/IR filter on my 35 Lux when I took that shot ) .

 

BTW--shadow banding--or uneven luminance bands in the lower quartertone--as is typical on the M8 at ISO 2500, is nasty indeed. If I were you and wanted to remove it, I'd be working either in LAB in the luminance channel or in CMYK in the black channel (if you don't lose too much colour).

 

When you say "brick wall" are you referring to the underexposure latitude of the M9 vs the M8, and that the M9 is more "forgiving" at the higher ISOs? This would be good to know.

Yes, the M9 is much more forgiving than the M8 between 1250 and 2500. In the shot we're discussing, for instance, the blue sky is "underexposed" and pushed a bit in post. You just couldn't shoot an M8 like that; it would be much too noisy and the banding would be excessive.

 

Again, apologies for going on about this - I have seen many threads on noise, but I think the streaking aspect of it is not that widely debated. I know the absolute solution is to expose properly, but sometimes (at night) you get underexposure and it would be nice to understand the streaking problem better. Thanks for any input.

Not at all, I think one of the things I like most about the M9 is that it has enough latitude to do shots like this--where you purposely underexpose to maintain the "feeling" of the scene.

 

BTW--remember too this is f5.6 at ISO 2500. I could have easily shot the same scene with the 35 Lux at ISO 1000 and 3.2 with not much difference in focus.

[zlatkob]

Making lenses for someone else's camera might yield some short-term profits, but it would detract from important projects -- not to mention, demean the brand.

Or long-term profits. They could potentially sell more lenses to Nikon, Canon and Pentax owners than they would to owners of a hypothetical R10. And that's with no development costs for a new camera. I don't know. But making lenses for someone else's camera doesn't demean the brand, IMO. Look at the new line of Leica cinema lenses; they'll likely be terribly expensive and they're not for any Leica camera. Rebranding Panasonic point & shoots demeans the brand more than making high quality full-frame DSLR lenses.

[Alnitak]

Yes, that's pattern noise, and it is a function of the sensor architecture. It's incredibly hard to deal with both on a design basis and on a post-processing basis. If you do a little research on how CCD's work, you will understand how something like this is created on chip, generally as a part of the read process.

 

You can see it on most sensors, even those from Canon and Nikon, at higher ISO settings, where the noise patterns are amplified. In the 5D II, this manifests as a fine grid pattern at really high ISO settings, but its fine enough to not be visible in a lot of images.

 

Jeff

[Jamie Roberts]

Or long-term profits. They could potentially sell more lenses to Nikon, Canon and Pentax owners than they would to owners of a hypothetical R10. And that's with no development costs for a new camera. I don't know.{snipped}

 

Yes, and I would have loved Leica glass on my Canons (and Nikon), to be sure... and now that there is no R system there is theoretically no impediment to Leica making lenses for Canon or Nikon.

 

Except that they're Leica, and they don't do that

 

Personally I'd ditch the D3 for an R10 that was a cut-down S2, and there are lots of people who would do the same. There was an entire R community waiting for the R10...

 

Anyway, only Leica knows for sure what the market really is. This is all armchair CEO stuff and way off topic.

 

I just thought the OP should consider a Nikon (or Canon, sure) body with Leica R glass for his work, since he's manually focusing anyway.

 

But it sounds like he "wants" an M.... and that's a powerful thing too

[Alnitak]

It's pretty clear that Leica doesn't have any excess human capital. Making lenses for someone else's camera might yield some short-term profits, but it would detract from important projects -- not to mention, demean the brand.

 

The price of a Leica lens is cost driven, of course. Hand-made and hand-adjusted objects are very different than assembly line products.

 

Yes, but you and others were implying that an R10 be made, which would have all of the same problems, but incur substantially more costs as you would have to design and make the camera bodies, and still have to make all the lenses. Look, I don't think they should do either, but if you are going to say they should make an R10, then at least you have to admit that making just lenses is more profitable than trying to design and build a camera body on top of that--and it plays to one of Leica's greatest strengths, which is optics.

 

Jeff

[Jamie Roberts]

Yes, but you and others were implying that an R10 be made, which would have all of the same problems, but incur substantially more costs as you would have to design and make the camera bodies, and still have to make all the lenses. Look, I don't think they should do either, but if you are going to say they should make an R10, then at least you have to admit that making just lenses is more profitable than trying to design and build a camera body on top of that--and it plays to one of Leica's greatest strengths, which is optics.

 

Jeff

 

Except they've done all the heavy lifting with design, processing and lens work in the S2 already.

 

Why sell lenses to a market like Canon or Nikon where a $2k 24 1.4 is considered pricey? How is it more profitable to split your workforce making commodity lenses for two markets (and it's not like Canon or Nikon will help--they may actually try to hinder the effort) than to make a premium SLR with top-of-the-line optics? How is that playing to Leica's strengths? I think it's watering down the brand to the level of Zeiss

 

And now we're totally off-topic

[Alnitak]

Steve, are saying you see banding (that's what I call it) in the 100% crops I posted? Because if you do, your black point and illumination are higher on your calibrated monitor than mine. The JPEG has be re-compressed for some reason and has some weirdness the 100% image doesn't.

 

I see no shadow banding whatsoever at 100% on the EIZO at 100/cdm2 illumination level. That's a very good match for the printing methods I use.

 

There's certainly noise, and there are some color band artifacts from, as I said, the overexposure of the lamp. But both of those are pretty easily fixed (a trip to the LAB colourspace can fix any slight colour reflections. FWIW, I think I still had the UV/IR filter on my 35 Lux when I took that shot ) .

 

BTW--shadow banding--or uneven luminance bands in the lower quartertone--as is typical on the M8 at ISO 2500, is nasty indeed. If I were you and wanted to remove it, I'd be working either in LAB in the luminance channel or in CMYK in the black channel (if you don't lose too much colour).

 

Yes, the M9 is much more forgiving than the M8 between 1250 and 2500. In the shot we're discussing, for instance, the blue sky is "underexposed" and pushed a bit in post. You just couldn't shoot an M8 like that; it would be much too noisy and the banding would be excessive.

 

Not at all, I think one of the things I like most about the M9 is that it has enough latitude to do shots like this--where you purposely underexpose to maintain the "feeling" of the scene.

 

BTW--remember too this is f5.6 at ISO 2500. I could have easily shot the same scene with the 35 Lux at ISO 1000 and 3.2 with not much difference in focus.

 

It's more forgiving because Leica is now performing a lot more in-camera noise suppression--something many here bash Canon and Nikon for--starting as low as ISO 640. This has been well-documented by Sean Reid. That said, I don't mind it and think Leica has done a good job with it.

[Alnitak]

Except they've done all the heavy lifting with design, processing and lens work in the S2 already.

 

Why sell lenses to a market like Canon or Nikon where a $2k 24 1.4 is considered pricey? How is it more profitable to split your workforce making commodity lenses for two markets (and it's not like Canon or Nikon will help--they may actually try to hinder the effort) than to make a premium SLR with top-of-the-line optics? How is that playing to Leica's strengths? I think it's watering down the brand to the level of Zeiss

 

And now we're totally off-topic

 

Are you reading what I wrote? First off, I said I think Leica should do neither--no R10 and no SLR lenses. It was others, including you, that suggested an R10 was a good idea because of the R glass. I simply countered that it would it would be a more logical and profitable choice to just make the R glass in EF and F mount. I never argued they *should* do it. You can't suggest that an R10 is a good idea and then also suggest that making the same lenses with the simple change of a lens mount for a massive installed base is a bad idea. It's not "armchair CEO" stuff, its basic economics.

 

As for the S2, you can't seriously believe that the intellectual and real monetary capital of making an S2 all just transfers to making an R10? And you seriously underestimate what the Canon and Nikon folks will spend, and DO spend. What's the price of a D3x? A 1DsIII? The last I checked, the same or more than an M9. What about the long lenses, where people are spending more than $10,000 for Canon and Nikon telephotos? Or the fact that people have been paying many thousands of dollars for old lenses that they then manually adapt to their cameras--lenses with no warranty or support?

 

But again, I'm not arguing Leica should do any of this. Really, I don't even care. I just want my M9 to be supported well and to have access to good glass, and right now I have that.

 

Jeff

[Jamie Roberts]

{snipped}

 

But again, I'm not arguing Leica should do any of this. Really, I don't even care. I just want my M9 to be supported well and to have access to good glass, and right now I have that.

 

Jeff

 

We agree on support for the M9 at least.

 

I still disagree with what you said about Leica's economics and a new SLR system (because, among other assumptions on your part, evidently what you think of as an R10 and what I think of as an R10 are two different things). But that's Leica's business, and we'll see where that goes.

 

And, yes, I read every word you write.

[menos I M6]

@ sjt1 and Jamie regarding streaking/ banding:

 

I guess, we all agree, that with our 3 calibrated computer screens we see different things.

Jamie doesn't see the banding (in the downsized full frame btw), as its levels are hidden in his monitor profile.

 

But this is all good and fine, as the color calibration of a system (from PP to PRINT) does not neccessarily have to be based on a common standard, but has to be refined, that the photographer sees in print exactly, what he sees in PP on his monitor.

 

Jamie does that (I suppose), sjt1 does it and I am satisfied, that my prints show, what my monitor shows me as well ;-)

 

This again shows how awkward (and meaningless) noise level discussions on the internet are without exchanging prints before - hehe.

 

Oh and an interesting discussion going on here about R or not R.

 

To the original poster and his question - I too think, a M is not the ideal tool for the job.

Sure the glass is fine, the camera full manual and comfortable to shoot.

 

The files for low light shooting though are much, much less forgiving than raw files from Nikon DSLRs (can't comment on Canon here).

Whenever Kevin should come over a frame, where a dark black hole in some persons backyard needs an exposure lift, he better flies back with a D3 and re shoots that backyard.

 

I am not sure, whether Kevin has issues with the Canon glass about CA, soft edges, vignetting and alike, where Leica M glass clearly has an edge.

The down sides of shooting his work with an M will overwhelm the nice edge to edge sharp, brilliant frames I suppose.

 

If Nikon continues to shell out nice new fast primes like the latest 24mm, Kevin might want to rent a D3x for a drive and test out this combo for high res shots with downsizing for noise reduction if needed (some reviewers of the D3x were amazed, how well it is capable in low light this way, when needed).

 

I completely agree though, that wanting a M9 to fit is a very powerful way of emptying the bank account. It should be considered ad hoc though and not exchanging a good DSLR system.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[adan]

As it happens - I shot some Roller Derby practice tonight. Took along both my Canon 5D MkI and the M9.

 

Here is a sample of what I got. Indoor arena lighting - something very yellow (halogen or vapor). WB was something like 3000K with tint +5 pink

 

5D at "Hi" ISO - 3200. M9 at ISO 2500. Canon with 250 Telyt @ f/4 & 1/200. M9 with 135 Tele-Elmar @ f/4 and 1/180.

 

M9 is skater stretching - 5D is action on the track. I tried to find crops that covered similar range of tones. Sharpened with USM at 250% and .3 pixels radius and levels threshold 3.

 

Overall sharpness can be ignored, of course - different pixel counts, different lenses, different situations re movement and focusing challenge.

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