Filter issues, E. Puts

[glenerrolrd]

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purple fringing on highlights is not an effect of IR contamination. you get this with other digital cameras and even when shooting film.

I shoot at the beach every other day..the UV/IR filters create a magenta/redish cast in the highlghts..that is not there with my DMR shots.. Easy to see just shoot the highlights in the water .

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[stunsworth]

Roger, it's not the filters. I've had the same effect on my M8 both with and without filters.

[charlesphoto99]

I like how he'd prefer to go straight from RAW to printing "in order to emulate the classic darkroom tradition" (or whatever).

 

In just about every print I've ever made, and just about every master print I've ever seen, digital or traditonal, includes enormous amounts of manipulation - usually in the form of dodging and burning, sometimes bleaching, toning, etc. Why wouldn't we expect the same from digital? No camera, film or digital, is going to exactly reproduce our vision of the world without some help after the fact. That's what seperates "photographers" from those who are merely after a facile face value representation of the subject. I don't understand his reasoning.

[lars_bergquist]

Kodak Color Control Patches do look OK without the filter. So obviously the colour response of the M8 is quite good – in the visual part of the spectrum. The colours of the patches do not seem to reflect much IR. But many natural objects, and not only unnatural ones like synthetics, reflect lots of it, including foliage. Have you seen the 'snow effect' in black and white infrared pictures?

 

I do not think that the amount of IR is enough to throw us off focus, with the focal lengths that we can use. So when doing b&w we may well leave the filter off, except when we photograph people at short distances. Here the situation is similar to than in the 1930's when many pan films, including the original Panatomic, were oversensitive to red.

 

The old man from the Age of Kodak Panatomic

[35mmSummicron]

I shoot at the beach every other day..the UV/IR filters create a magenta/redish cast in the highlghts..that is not there with my DMR shots.. Easy to see just shoot the highlights in the water .

 

 

well i said that you get it with other digital cameras, not ALL digital cameras. fringing is usually due to extreme high contrast situations and the effects are dependent on the lens and sensor used. i constantly have to clean up fringing from my fullframe canon dSLR using L lenses, and find that the razor sharp, contrasty leica lenses do produce this as well from time to time. even the older phase backs like the P25 have this problem. it seems to be a fact of life for shooting digital.....for now (C1 Pro actually does a fairly decent job of controlling it). but the point is, these artifacts you are seeing are NOT the result of IR contamination.

 

hope this helps.

 

andy

[glenerrolrd]

Roger, it's not the filters. I've had the same effect on my M8 both with and without filters.

You maybe right and its easy to test ... I was comparing similar shoots to those from my DMR which does not exhibit the reddish highlights . I will try this with and without the filter.

[jonoslack]

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IR contamination is in every image you shoot PERIOD under all lighting condtions. Some are worse than others tungsten being the worst. It also affects ALL colors of the visable light spectrum. The only way to get rid of the IR contamination is to use a IR cut filter, no profile on the planet will do that , it can come close but will affect other colors. Forget the magenta black and the only reason it gets mentioned is because it is obviously visually by the naked eye, it affects other colors just as well. The M8 is sensitive to IR light the built in IR filter is not strong enough to cut the IR light hitting the sensor and the reason for the IR threaded filter is to cut the IR light out to a optimum level.PERIOD.

 

Hi Guy.

Of course you're right that IR affects everything, and for portraits, and especially for tungsten light, it's a no brainer - but not for foliage - especially with the new firmware Leica have tweaked the colour response so that greens are better than they were without the filter, with the result that they often come out too blue with the filter. Yellowish greens are easy to fix with a 10-20pt increase in the yellow hue, but blue greens are almost impossible to deal with.

 

I've been doing lots of comparisons recently, and there are a number of situations where foliage really is much better without a filter - but not always - holly leaves for instance seem to emit huge amounts of IR - and come out almost purple.

 

I'm a sad character, but I mind about greens! I've been taking shots of the grass outside my office with filter on and off, printing the results and putting them back on the same patch of grass - life size.

 

I'm not sure that I'm convinced by Erwin, but I'm sure that in trying to make the camera better without a filter, Leica have made it work worse with one (sometimes).

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Well I am being overly cautious too , and sure you can shoot without and some will do that . My comment is more of the warning than do this or i will stick your head in the mud stuff. LOL

 

You know someone will complain why did you not tell me this stuff.

 

What erks me is people listen to Erwin because he is Erwin. That alone makes nervous because he is not always on the correct path when it comes to digital. Lenses and such i will follow him also but digital I don't. What he just jumps into digital it in the last year or two and we are supposed to believe the almighty word. There is were i get off his bus and go what the___ are you talking about most times.

[eronald]

Well I am being overly cautious too , and sure you can shoot without and some will do that . My comment is more of the warning than do this or i will stick your head in the mud stuff. LOL

 

You know someone will complain why did you not tell me this stuff.

 

What erks me is people listen to Erwin because he is Erwin. That alone makes nervous because he is not always on the correct path when it comes to digital. Lenses and such i will follow him also but digital I don't. What he just jumps into digital it in the last year or two and we are supposed to believe the almighty word. There is were i get off his bus and go what the___ are you talking about most times.

 

I agree, Guy, Erwin doesn't quite get digital, yet.

 

Edmund

[lct]

...Leica have tweaked the colour response so that greens are better than they were without the filter, with the result that they often come out too blue with the filter...

You mean the Leica UV-IR filter?

Doesn't seem to add blue per se at first glance.

Here with R-D1 & Elmar 50/2.8.

 

[Artichoke]

and Jono and I disagree

I think using the generic M8 C1 profile with the filter seems to produce excellent greens without the blue that he gets

I find the foliage problem much greater than the magenta/black one as it is so difficult to correct in post

the ir/cut, using the generic M8 C1 profile seems to give me the best results, though saturation needs minor adjustment

when I have had to shoot foliage without the filter, I find the Chrome profile from JRoberts gets me close to what I see, without unduly distressing the other colors, but this always needs some desaturation & still is not quite spot on

with the filters, in almost all circumstances, I have been pleased with the colors my M8 delivers

I have not seen any downside to using the filters, though for nocturnals, with specular highlights, I need to test them out to see how much they cause CA problems

[ustein]

>Erwin's right, but how do I know in advance whether the subject emits IR? Answer, in most cases I don't.

 

I probably live without filters and stay with firmware I have 1.09 (I think). For most nature images it is no problem and in case I photograph people (rare in my case) with plastic black clothes these pictures will be B&W anyway.

 

Problem is solved for me :-), For now :-)

 

Uwe

[Peter Branch]

I apologise in advance – but I’m getting irritated.

 

Every time one of those who had access to the M8 months in advance of its release to the public in order to facilitate their “professional” feedback to Leica on its merits and demerits tries to justify the fact that they completely failed to either notice or report on the IR sensitivity problem my blood pressure rises. These people are not independent observers, they have an agenda.

 

IR is everywhere; the proportion of IR - which is critical - cannot easily be accessed without access to expensive specialist equipment. Also critical is the subject matter and exactly what “defects” the IR will generate. In E. Puts pictures the “Top” picture of the model’s face is more magenta on my screen – but – the “Bottom” picture exhibits the surface penetration effects associated with IR, i.e. blood vessels start to show up.

 

IR affects flesh tones, it affects foliage colours, it affects some fabrics, it affects water and sandy beaches, it affects many other things and not all lenses transmit the same amount of IR. And just to make it more complicated some lenses focus the IR closer to the visible spectrum than others.

 

So we are encouraged to believe that Leica has spent untold amounts of money on giving away expensive filters and on setting up a whole new product line and writing major software upgrades because on very rare occasions, if some black synthetic fabric is in an image, the colour rendering of the fabric is too magenta.

 

This is all nonsense.

 

Yes filters are a compromise, yes in an ideal world they would not be necessary but they are necessary and a very high proportion of pictures taken with an M8 are “better” – whether the photographer realises and values it or not – if the IR filter is in place.

[stunsworth]

Peter, you are correct it is a real issue. I know there are people who claim never to have seen the effect, I can only think they have never photographed people with black clothing :-). The filter is mandetory in my experience. The idea that you should take a shot, look for IR issues, then retake the shot with a filter on is nonsense if you take anything other than landscapes and macro, there simply isn't time to do this without losing the shot.

 

I'm guessing that the original beta testers were told that there were issues with the colour - the IR problem - and that these would be solved before the camera was released, hence the lack of comment. If that was the case we now know that didn't happen and the problem was unresolved by the time of the launch. Leica came up wih the use of filters as a solution very quickly, I can only guess that they already knew that was the only practical solution to the problem.

[hankg]

Erwin may know something about optics but some of his testing methods and writings on the subject of digital have been hilarious they are so clueless. As to his article on IR and the suggestion that you should take a test shot to see if IR is a problem -sure I always cart along a laptop and tripod so I can make a few test shots and determine the optimum setup for my Leica M before proceeding with a grab shot on the street

 

Even Erwin's lens reviews I found less then informative -as opposed to say Sean's lens reviews that always contain extensive real world examples which provide some useful information about whether a lens is likely to be to your taste or not.

[Jager]

My guess is that Leica is actively working on optimizing spectral response both with and without IR filters - and there will be a user-selectable option (IR Filter On / IR Filter Off) in firmware 1.10.

 

Jeff

[jaapv]

Peter, you are correct it is a real issue. I know there are people who claim never to have seen the effect, I can only think they have never photographed people with black clothing :-). The filter is mandetory in my experience. The idea that you should take a shot, look for IR issues, then retake the shot with a filter on is nonsense if you take anything other than landscapes and macro, there simply isn't time to do this without losing the shot.

 

I'm guessing that the original beta testers were told that there were issues with the colour - the IR problem - and that these would be solved before the camera was released, hence the lack of comment. If that was the case we now know that didn't happen and the problem was unresolved by the time of the launch. Leica came up wih the use of filters as a solution very quickly, I can only guess that they already knew that was the only practical solution to the problem.

LFI explained it. Two factors were involved:

 

1.Nobody expected it to be such an issue. After all, D70 type sensors exhibit much the same type of spectral response, as do some others, but there was scarcely negative feedback on those.

2. Leica was tweaking WB right up to the time of release (hoping to get it down to an acceptable level?), so testers were told to disregard colour balance issues.

 

In retrospect not very smart, but understandable and certainly no hidden agenda.

[hankg]

LFI explained it. Two factors were involved:

 

1.Nobody expected it to be such an issue. After all, D70 type sensors exhibit much the same type of spectral response, as do some others, but there was scarcely negative feedback on those.

2. Leica was tweaking WB right up to the time of release (hoping to get it down to an acceptable level?), so testers were told to disregard colour balance issues.

 

In retrospect not very smart, but understandable and certainly no hidden agenda.

 

If I could have a nickel for everytime I completely missed something on a job that in hindsight was blindingly obvious I'd be lounging under a palm tree right now. Under pressure and with looming deadlines, you often can miss something right under your nose. No excuse, but not an evil corporate conspiracy either.

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[Peter Branch]

My guess is that Leica is actively working on optimizing spectral response both with and without IR filters - and there will be a user-selectable option (IR Filter On / IR Filter Off) in firmware 1.10.

 

Jeff

 

In the literature that comes with the IR filters it states that they should only be used with an M8 and that it should have 1.10 installed. It then clearly states that the optional “Filter ON / Filter OFF” option will need to be set.

[chetccox]

What it actually says is 'higher than 1.10'.