wasatch007 Posted January 4, 2010 Share #1 Posted January 4, 2010 Advertisement (gone after registration) Let me first say that I have loved my M8. I have taken it from Washington, DC to Vietnam. I have collected the following lens: 35mm f1.4 Summilux-M, 75mm f2 APO Summicron-M and Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 (also with a 21mm viewfinder). I love the experience with a rangefinder. I am not a native, but a rangefinder migrant. It has been a wonderful experience. I seem to see things better, I don't know . . . deeper, more depth. I don't know if my pictures are any better - yet. However, in my professional life I find myself needing to take high-end photos of documents in various repositories. The size of the M8 has proven helpful, as many of these libraries are hesitant to allow a lot of equipment. The quality of the photos of these documents is critical. They are used side-by-side with photos using a roomful of equipment (done with documents that we actually own). My question is . . . will I see better quality with this application with the M9, with a full sensor and all? Also, my one complaint with the M8 is that at times I have to have it too far away from the documents that I am shooting. I figure the M9 willo help there too, right? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted January 4, 2010 Posted January 4, 2010 Hi wasatch007, Take a look here M9 for documents???. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
scc Posted January 4, 2010 Share #2 Posted January 4, 2010 The pixel density of the M8 and M9 are identical. You will get a wider FOV for a given lens with the M9. As far as being too far away, the 0.7m close focusing limit of most M lenses is probably working against you here. I'd say you'd be better off with a wider lens for your M8 rather than laying out the funds for an M9, if photographing documents was your priority. Personally, I'd go for a consumer DSLR for this purpose, as the quality would still be excellent, and most DSLR lenses will allow a much closer focussing distance (eg my canon goes to 0.13m). Additionally most of the consumer DSLRS are very compact. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
michali Posted January 4, 2010 Share #3 Posted January 4, 2010 I had to copy some documents the other day, scanner was dead. Used my wife's D-LUX4 to photograph them instead. I was amazed at the detail it captured! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
michali Posted January 4, 2010 Share #4 Posted January 4, 2010 I had to copy some documents the other day, scanner was dead. I used my wife's D-LUX4, I was amazed at the detail it captured! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted January 4, 2010 Share #5 Posted January 4, 2010 If you are already finding that you can't get close enough with the M8, the M9 will offer no improvement. You'll end up with the same image quality, only with more dead space around the document. It depends quite a bit on the specific lens you use, since some lenses focus and frame more tightly than others, but generally the M9's extra pixels will only give an advantage as document size increases to the point that it will fill the M9 frame and use them all. The 90 macro is the tightest framing M lens, with or without the close-focus adapter. Without the adapter it will fill the M9 frame with a document 161mm x 241mm (6" x 9"). So any document smaller than 75% of that - 4.5" x 7" or so - you won't gain anything over the M8 except extra space around the edges. Your 75 APO comes just behind the 90 (without adapter) in close-framing ability, so the same figures would apply to it, roughly. Only documents larger than about 5" x 7.5" will start to show benefits from the M9, and by the time you get up to 6" x 9" or bigger you can use all the M9's extra pixels. Incidentally, I notice Leica has rewritten all their lens spec sheets to remove the parenthetical references to minimum object field with the M8 - they now only give the full-frame value. I've been using digital cameras for reproducing documents at publication quality from my very first Digilux 2. At the paper (when there was a paper!) it was much faster to just shoot a copy image and read it off the SD card than to go to the workstation that had a scanner attached, make a scan, and then have to copy it to the server and run back to my computer to retrieve it. Did a lot of that with the M8 and a 50 'cron, too. I don't scan at all now except for ultra-hi-res needs like film. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
biglouis Posted January 4, 2010 Share #6 Posted January 4, 2010 I had to copy some documents the other day, scanner was dead. Used my wife's D-LUX4 to photograph them instead. I was amazed at the detail it captured! Likewise. I was doing some original research in our local archives and I was staggered at the results obtained using my LX3. The archive had a proper document copying table so I was able to light the documents properly but I only handheld the LX3, rather than using the inbuilt camera clamp of the copying table and the results were still pin sharp. Even smaller (and a lot cheaper) than a M9 and you have macro mode. LouisB Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
giordano Posted January 4, 2010 Share #7 Posted January 4, 2010 Advertisement (gone after registration) M9 should work very nicely with the old BOOWU-M copying stand and the lens head of a rigid 50mm Summicron (or a collapsible 50mm other than the recent Elmar f/2.8). Preset framing and focus for A6-A5-A4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted January 4, 2010 Share #8 Posted January 4, 2010 I have been using an M9 recently to try and copy old 19th century family documents and B&W prints for a Scottish industrial museum. The prints and documents are stuck into a very large photo album type book (about A2 size). Although the book can have its spine disassembled and leaves can be taken out, I don't have an A2 sized scanner to scan these. I was a bit disappointed in the results but it was down to me and not the camera, which I was using with a 75mm Summarit. Getting even lighting was the problem. I think that you really need 4 virtually identical lights to get it right and I just did not have that. I had two very similar 50W Halogen reading lights but that was just insufficiently even. I tried in natural north light but got too many reflections. I think I will have to buy 4 cheap identical reading lights and put tissue paper in front of them as a diffusor. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
UliWer Posted January 4, 2010 Share #9 Posted January 4, 2010 Giordano was quicker when I was still searching for a link to the BOOWU. There is nothing better and more convenient for documents. 1.*description You can use the screw-mount version with an adapter to M-mount or the BOOWU-M. The best lens to use is an old 5cm Elmar. Here is an example (screw-mount) which is not very good because of the M8-crop factor: http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-forum/leica-sammler-historica/100504-leica-wissenschaft-leitz-literaturthread-4.html#post1064350 The M9 solves this. The only issue you might have is the leg's shadow on your pictures, though you can avoid this by keeping an eye on the light's direction. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scc Posted January 4, 2010 Share #10 Posted January 4, 2010 An M9 + 50mm lens + BOOWU sure is an expensive solution to help wasatch007 shoot documents... Does anyone else not see the craziness here? I'm not really convinced that 'the rangefinder experience' is really going to kick in for such a task either. Either a new cheap DSLR /compact, or a wider lens for your M8 which you can enjoy for other reasons, would be a better solution. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted January 4, 2010 Share #11 Posted January 4, 2010 An M9 + 50mm lens + BOOWU sure is an expensive solution to help wasatch007 shoot documents... Does anyone else not see the craziness here? I'm not really convinced that 'the rangefinder experience' is really going to kick in for such a task either. Either a new cheap DSLR /compact, or a wider lens for your M8 which you can enjoy for other reasons, would be a better solution. A longer lens is better than a wide one as the ratio difference in distances from the edges of the document to the lens from the centre of the document to the lens is less, the longer the focus distance. This means that the edges will be more nearly equally in focus as the centre, even allowing for the smaller DOF of the longer lens. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wparsonsgisnet Posted January 4, 2010 Share #12 Posted January 4, 2010 Your M8 should be fine. What I would suggest is a Digilux 2. It has a leica-designed lens, and a macro mode. I have done quite a bit of small object photography (acupuncture needles and other paraphernalia) and the quality is outstanding. I paid $2k for this camera and you can have one for about $700 now, with a warranty. Plus, Leica will replace the sensor for free if it fails (mine did). It's light, takes superb images, and is the ONLY totally silent digicam of this quality. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted January 4, 2010 Share #13 Posted January 4, 2010 Your M8 should be fine. What I would suggest is a Digilux 2. It has a leica-designed lens, and a macro mode. I have done quite a bit of small object photography (acupuncture needles and other paraphernalia) and the quality is outstanding. I paid $2k for this camera and you can have one for about $700 now, with a warranty. Plus, Leica will replace the sensor for free if it fails (mine did). It's light, takes superb images, and is the ONLY totally silent digicam of this quality. The Digilux 2 also has a nice tethered program. Now I don't know if this works with modern versions of either Mac OSX or Windows Vista/7 - perhaps others can advise. If you only want to print to A4 and are prepared to live with its very noisy higher ISO performance, the D2 is a nice package. In a way, I wish the X1 had been more like an updated D2 and I could well have been interested to get one for my wife, who hates her Sony TG3 combined video/still camera - the turn on to photo taking can be measured in eons. I sold "my" Digilux 2 when the factory finally replaced it with a new/refurbished one, so I could sell it as a new camera but with no warranty. I knew the M8 was on the horizon and during the months of toing and froing with the D2, I had bought a Sony R1, another excellent camera, with its APS C CMOS sensor and Zeiss 24 - 120 equivalent lens but it's quite a lot bigger than the D2. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scc Posted January 5, 2010 Share #14 Posted January 5, 2010 A longer lens is better than a wide one as the ratio difference in distances from the edges of the document to the lens from the centre of the document to the lens is less, the longer the focus distance. This means that the edges will be more nearly equally in focus as the centre, even allowing for the smaller DOF of the longer lens. Wilson A longer lens is going to be worse if the original poster's "one complaint with the M8 is that at times I have to have it too far away from the documents that I am shooting". Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted January 5, 2010 Share #15 Posted January 5, 2010 A longer lens is going to be worse if the original poster's "one complaint with the M8 is that at times I have to have it too far away from the documents that I am shooting". I had forgotten he had said that. I have to admit that I had to go and borrow a larger tripod, when I was doing my copying, as my huge Manfrotto is down in France and I only have my travel Giotto with me, which even with its column right up, only goes to about 1.8M. The borrowed tripod also had a centre column that went sideways, which makes life much easier to avoid leg shadows. I have a old lead grandfather clock weight that I bought at a junk sale, that makes an excellent stabilising weight for the tripod. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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