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Leica Training in London

delander †

By delander †
in Leica M8 / Leica M8.2

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  • 2 weeks later...
Phillip_Meyer

Phillip_Meyer

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I went to this course yesterday in London and would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has recently moved to the M8. It was a really fun and informative afternoon.

 

The day started with a discussion of our photography experience, on to the M8 and a discussion of Brett's (the photographer) experience and a review of many of his pictures taken on his M8.

 

A few things I picked up that I found interesting was that he never used a camera strap and never left any covers on either end of his lenses.

 

This (coupled with a purchase of a hand grip) definitely gave me the confidence to ditch my camera strap. I never have it round my neck (usually my wrist) and always found it gets in the way.

 

I'm not sure I'm confident that my bag is clean enough at all times to leave all the covers off both ends of my lenses, even if I can 'only' damage the £70 UV/IR filter on the front end. However, I have been leaving the back caps off when my other lenses are in the bag and I'm likely to use them, it really makes switching them easy.

 

He was also a major proponent of only shooting jpegs but I'm not convinced about that. However what I did take away was that I now have a user setting setup for RAW+jpeg (fine) which is set to black and white. If I want to shoot something as black and white, I'm using that setting and using the B&W jpeg. He recommended setting contrast to high and it definitely does render nice 'colour' and an overall nice soft effect. However, I still have the RAW image if I want to work on it or use the colour version.

 

Here are some of the pictures I took:

 

.Mac Web Gallery

 

I particularly like the 5 images before the colour pictures and I quite like the colour ones too. For reference, Brett is the guy behind the M8 in the first picture.

 

Phillip

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andybarton

andybarton

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Advertisement (gone after registration)

Ooops..

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

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Phillip_Meyer

Phillip_Meyer

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Ooops..

 

Hmm, odd, seems to work for me. It's very strange though because I can't just paste the url, it always converts it to a link and changes the description to '.Mac Web Gallery'. Strange.

 

Here's a link to the same images in a different format:

Leica Academy web - Page 1

 

Or you can link through from the gallery home page but please excuse all the baby photos, it's really only aimed at family!

http://

gallery.mac.com/pantster

 

Phillip

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Phillip_Meyer

Phillip_Meyer

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Yes, it's a really useful thing to have but I have found it to be pretty unreliable. It becomes especially difficult if you want to delete something from there or if for some reason you have to restart half way through an upload, it seems to duplicate galleries really easily.

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chris_livsey

chris_livsey

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. He recommended setting contrast to high and it definitely does render nice 'colour' and an overall nice soft effect.

Phillip

 

Curious:- What sharpening setting ? I have been using low and tweaking later . I really started to use the jpeg option for chimping, or if I was in posh mode, visulisation :rolleyes:

I do find the extended save time a bit of a bind though.

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tollie

tollie

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Beyond boosting the contrast are there other setting changes that were recommended? I tohave found that increasing contrast seems to make the image harsher.

 

I have experimented with bw jpgs as well and have had very good luck.

 

To acheve a "grainier" look I also boost ISO to either 1250 or 2500,

I take the IR/UV lens off as I think in bw you get a deeper look so I change the lens detection to just "on".

I also turn sharpening off.

 

I'll use -1/3 ev so that in PP you can get a bit more grain.

 

let me know

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marknorton

marknorton

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Yes, I was surprised by that as well. Doesn't sound like he's looked closely at the nasty artifacts in the JPEGs. I'd like lower compression JPEGs with better image quality but I wonder if the processing power and memory in the M8 are up to it. I shoot RAW + JPEG, always. It amazes me that anyone in Leica seriously though anyone would shoot at anything other than 10MP and lowest compression.

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Phillip_Meyer

Phillip_Meyer

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??????

 

proponent

noun

a person who advocates a theory, proposal, or project

 

Can I point out that these were his suggestions, not mine, also he's a professional photographer and I am not. I did challenge him on the recommendation of using jpeg as I have several very good friends who are extremely successful professional photographers (e.g. Jim Marks Photography) and none of them shoot jpeg. His answer was that for a large corporate shoot they will often specify RAW but for most of the shoots, including weddings and photographing children etc he preferred to minimise his post production and spend time shooting. While he seemed fairly competent with the computer, he did not appear to be a real advanced user and perhaps that is why? However, the main focus of the day was trying to take shots so that you got everything right in camera and didn't need to make any/many adjustments later.

 

I would add that I have been trying shooting RAW+jpeg when I see a shot that I would like to be black and white, I'm also shooting them at 320 or 640 (my choice) to give them a more grainy feel. The extended save time is definitely frustrating.

 

His recommendations were as follows:

ISO 320/640

EV -1/3

White Balance Cloudy (This I was also unsure about)

Colour Saturation Black & White

Contrast High

Everything else: Standard

 

The main reason I liked this was because I was struggling to get good black and white results, easily in Aperture. However, I have done a little research and found a few presets online which seem to yield good results and I'll probably go back to that once I am more confident with Aperture.

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wstotler

wstotler

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The main reason I liked this was because I was struggling to get good black and white results, easily in Aperture. However, I have done a little research and found a few presets online which seem to yield good results and I'll probably go back to that once I am more confident with Aperture.

 

lilyblossom--black and white is your main issue?

 

Try the TrueGrain software application?

 

More on the software here: TrueGrain Overview

 

Some sample shots I've taken with the M8 and used TrueGrain on can be found here:

TrueGrain - a set on Flickr

 

Cheers,

Will

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Phillip_Meyer

Phillip_Meyer

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lilyblossom--black and white is your main issue?

 

Try the TrueGrain software application?

 

More on the software here: TrueGrain Overview

 

Some sample shots I've taken with the M8 and used TrueGrain on can be found here:

TrueGrain - a set on Flickr

 

Cheers,

Will

 

Thanks for this suggestion, I had a quick look at it but I have to say that $300 (£150) seems a little expensive. Is it really worth that much?

 

Phillip

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