Jump to content

my S2


markowich

Recommended Posts

vienna leica shop. excellent dealer btw. i shall run prelim tests tomorrow, will be in touch.

peter

 

Excellent - and if you find a way to get it to do continuous file numbering even after a card format, rather than resetting to XXX-0001, I'd be grateful to hear about it!

 

Also I'd be curious to know what serial number yours is: mine is, rather worryingly, showing the same serial number as the unit that I tested on the shoot day in mid-november!

Link to post
Share on other sites

Guest guy_mancuso

Tim that is a firmware update Leica needs to do immediately and they do know that. That is really dangerous as hell right now so be very careful you don't drop stuff in the same folder it WILL over right them. I do know that is being worked on and was warned when we did our review. I completely forgot to mention that in our review , my apologies on that.

Link to post
Share on other sites

vienna leica shop. excellent dealer btw. i shall run prelim tests tomorrow, will be in touch.

peter

 

Peter,

 

That's a long way from Cambridge to your local dealer! Or could it be just a short stop with a ripple in the space-time continuum!?! I only read yesterday how tempted you were after seeing Seal's and Tim's comments. Did the Leica shop in Vienna really have one ex stock or did you really order it some time ago?

 

Best wishes,

Link to post
Share on other sites

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Tim that is a firmware update Leica needs to do immediately and they do know that. That is really dangerous as hell right now so be very careful you don't drop stuff in the same folder it WILL over right them. I do know that is being worked on and was warned when we did our review. I completely forgot to mention that in our review , my apologies on that.

 

Thanks Guy - that's close to really very daft indeed isn't it? 'Dangerous as hell' just about covers it. That one really should not have made it out the door...

Link to post
Share on other sites

That's a long way from Cambridge to your local dealer!

 

Charlie, Peter is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the DAMTP at Cambridge and also a Professor at the University of Vienna, so that might explain the dealer location.

 

Memo to self, I must not even see, much less handle this camera as resistance is clearly futile.

 

Good to hear Leica are making 5 of the things a day...

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have Peter's book, "A visual approach to Applied Partial Differential Equations" which explains the subject rather better than my maths tutor at Cambridge ever could to this engineer in the 1970s.

 

Back OT, which lenses are you guys going for, 70 and 180 I assume. Are the 35 and macro available yet? Originally, there was also an ultra-wide, a zoom, a T/S and a long telephoto lens. What's the position with them?

 

Question for Doug. Is the 350mm lens long enough for your wildlife work on this format?

Link to post
Share on other sites

Charlie, Peter is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the DAMTP at Cambridge and also a Professor at the University of Vienna, so that might explain the dealer location.

 

Memo to self, I must not even see, much less handle this camera as resistance is clearly futile.

 

Good to hear Leica are making 5 of the things a day...

 

You're right, as with an Arca Cube, anyone who handles one will eventually become assimilated...

 

As for lenses, the 70 and 180 non leaf shutter versions are available now. In Q1 the 35mm and the 120 macro will appear as will leaf versions of all. Sometime soon but not specified, the 24mm will appear. I am bound to secrecy on other things but were I not, you would find them veeeery interesting... I asked about many things and got some extremely succulent hints.

 

As someone observed, there's no reason why Novoflex or someone similar (and why should that not be Leica?) shouldn't do adaptors to allow Mamiya 645 and other MF lenses to be used in manual mode... which would mean some other really interesting things such as the Hartblei Super Rotator (if you can find a good one) would work. Hmmm...

Link to post
Share on other sites

Peter,

 

That's a long way from Cambridge to your local dealer! Or could it be just a short stop with a ripple in the space-time continuum!?! I only read yesterday how tempted you were after seeing Seal's and Tim's comments. Did the Leica shop in Vienna really have one ex stock or did you really order it some time ago?

 

Best wishes,

 

charlie,

no worries, all smooth in space-time---))) i am on very good terms with the leica dealer in vienna (my home town) and decided to buy after a first touch experience. but i had warned him a while ago that i might want to get an S2. anyway, i was the one and only on the list....

peter

Link to post
Share on other sites

I have Peter's book, "A visual approach to Applied Partial Differential Equations" which explains the subject rather better than my maths tutor at Cambridge ever could to this engineer in the 1970s.

 

Back OT, which lenses are you guys going for, 70 and 180 I assume. Are the 35 and macro available yet? Originally, there was also an ultra-wide, a zoom, a T/S and a long telephoto lens. What's the position with them?

 

Question for Doug. Is the 350mm lens long enough for your wildlife work on this format?

 

mark,

thanks for the flowers---))))

peter

Link to post
Share on other sites

it is after midnight in vienna and i just got home. the battery is charged and i cannot help but try the S2 for the first time.

feeling: great! beats my nikon gear. solid but not too heavy. a photographer's camera.

i want this to replace all my gear....hmmm...want to keep the M stuff after all...

1250 iso (as i said it is night time here and i do not use flash) : horrible, reminds me of the Kodak 14N many years ago. iso 640: better, but still bad. and here i am comparing to the M9. but for fairness' sake, i have never used my hasselbald above iso 320....nevertheless pixel binning on the P65+ seems much better.

two weeks ago we have tested the nikon D3s.......ohhh what a different high iso world. there is no setting on the D3s (not even iso 108000.....) that resembles the S2 output at 1250 iso.

anyway, tomorrow i am looking forward to base iso tests..and i want this camera to shine.

peter

Link to post
Share on other sites

Question for Doug. Is the 350mm lens long enough for your wildlife work on this format?

 

The 350 on the S2 has about the same angle of view as my beloved 280 on a 35mm film camera. It's about the widest lens I can reasonably put to good use for wildlife photos. With the 280 I'm willing to make the extra effort to get close enough to use this lens, because the results are so fantastic.

 

Assuming the 350mm S lens performs up to the body's capabilities (I have no reason to doubt it), the remaining questions include how my subjects respond to the larger lens. An extension tube and a 1.4x APO-Extender-S would be a big help too. After checking my inventory, a few spare kidneys would help too.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Congratulations on your purchase Peter. It will be interesting to see how the S2 compares to the competition with your critical eye. Just don't forget that there are no S2 specific profiles available for the raw converters at this time so things should get a little better when profiles come out. As far as ISO performance goes, I think the S2 is similar to my M8 where I only use 640 in a pinch and 1250 only in B&W. I don't have an S2 yet, but I have shot about 400 frames with it in various conditions. The S2 handling and viewfinder are a joy to use. Leica just needs to iron out some kinks in the firmware and I am confident that Leica will do that.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Congratulations on your purchase Peter. It will be interesting to see how the S2 compares to the competition with your critical eye. Just don't forget that there are no S2 specific profiles available for the raw converters at this time so things should get a little better when profiles come out. As far as ISO performance goes, I think the S2 is similar to my M8 where I only use 640 in a pinch and 1250 only in B&W. I don't have an S2 yet, but I have shot about 400 frames with it in various conditions. The S2 handling and viewfinder are a joy to use. Leica just needs to iron out some kinks in the firmware and I am confident that Leica will do that.

 

mark,

i do agree with you. S2 high isos are similar to M8 high isos. on small prints it might be sufficient but......

so far i have found two main issues:

1)my 70mm lens is very weak in the corners when shot below f5.6. i do not see any justification of leica's and leica fanboys' raving statement about the S lens quality here. my HD 100mm f2.2 blows the S 70mm f2.5 out of the water, in sharpness and in character. i am afraid that this is an indication of the wide angle S lens quality. of course the 180mm S lens is very good, but my Nikon 200mm f2 is still better.

all in all it seems that hasselblad made the right decision to digitally correct lens performance.

2)i see quite some shadow noise at base iso. this might improve with color profiling though.

peter

Link to post
Share on other sites

I've seen 70mm samples that matched the MTFs (50% MTF @ 40lp/mm even in the corners - on par with Rodenstock HR) - "poor" corner performance might be caused by missfocus (only use real-infinitiy samples) or misscalibration of the lens -which would be a shame. But when you're not even happy with a diffraction-limited (superior performance at this aperture is impossible) f3.5 (180mm) lens and see noise everywhere you propably have to give the system back.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...