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Color and contrast issues with the M9


geoffwin

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Depends on the focal length. From 35 mm upwards there is no visible effect. It is really a question of the wrong camera profile, Note, however, that the OP never returned to the thread.

 

If I am right about who this is (one of my old Rice U. professors of photography), Geoff likes wideangle lenses, with 28mm being his favorite focal length. I should e-mail him directly.

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I can't fathom this.....

 

but there again there are quite a few variables here .... and are we talking here about 'images that truly reflect the subject' .... or 'what you prefer'......

 

My raw M9 images on an iMac with Apertures default DNG settings are well nigh perfect and if correctly exposed more life-like than my D700 images ....which in comparison can look a bit insipid and flat unless they are of very contrasty subjects. Prints I have done are also excellent and closely reflect what I see on the screen.

 

I suppose if you don't like the look of Leica DNG files go back to lugging about kilograms of Canon stuff.....

 

As for low light ....... I hardly ever shift off 160 and in extremis never above 800...... with the sort of wideangle lenses I would use indoors where most of the low light situations occur I can easily use shutter speeds down to 1/6 sec handheld which more than compensates for having lack of extreme ISO performance.

 

No one ever advertised Leica cameras as an 'easy' option ..... there are multiple trade-offs to be weighed up and each of us has to make their own choice.....

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I'm wondering if different lenses has any effect on color balance of the M9 DNG:s? I read in Putz old compendium from 2002 that lenses renders color a little differently but this was on film and perhaps it has changed for the M9?

 

For clear daylight shots I usually just desaturate the blue channel -10 in Lightroom for my M9/current Elmarit 28 but it's just my preference.

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FWIW, I've always preferred M9 colour over Canon colour. Using C1, the M9 has excellent colour.

 

FWIW2, I've never liked ACR/ Lightroom's rendition of colour from any Leica camera, including the S2. I want to like it, but I'm either deficient in my ability to tweak the converter or it's just not capable of extracting the best from the files. I don't know which is true, but I don't have time to mess with it much either. So I stick with what gives me the results I want.

 

FWIW3, from the few files I've seen from Canon's very latest 1dx, I expect "Canon colour" to undergo major changes (and that's a very good thing, IMO). The initial shots I saw had totally different skin tones from what I'd expect from a Canon dSLR... so much so that I can't wait to put Leica lenses on it and see what it does :)

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Thanks Jamie, I’ll give Capture One a try. While I seem to get decent color out of ACR, I am having trouble with moire in some images, and C1 is supposed to allow good control of aliasing. Ken Rockwell recommends Aperture 3 for good color (though I don’t trust his opinions all that much). It’s a pity these programs are so pricey, and that Photoshop doesn’t do it all for all images.

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The color rendering of the M9 is certainly different to that of the M8 and it took the raw converters' software developers a short time to create new profiles when the camera came out. Might it be you are using very old versions of postprocessing software that have not been updated?.

 

I think there is somthing in this- initially the M9 seemed to be a lot worse than the M8- side by side. Especially in dark interiors with electric lighting. But it seems to me this issue melted away over time- and lately the colours have seemed very good in many situations just on auto. I thought it may be the new camera but I suspect it is firmware and software changes over time.

 

I also find that my main concern is protecting highlights a lot of the time- and this helps a lot.... Don't be fooled by dark looking exposures on the LCD.

 

It is true the X-100 beats the heck on the ISO - until you zoom in and see that weird mush...

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  • 5 years later...

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