New Leica M 240 page on overgaard.dk (light metering, white balance and more)

[Overgaard]

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The second of my new articles on the Leica M 240 is now out for view as of June 8, 2013:

 

leica.overgaard.dk - Thorsten Overgaard's Leica Pages - Page 31 - Leica M Type 240 Digital Rangefinder Camera - Review - Sample Photos - Light Metering - Colors - White Balance - Simplicity

 

Feel free to comment, suggest and ask questions...

 

Enjoy!

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[dwbell]

Can you send it to my email please?

[Jeff S]

Thorsten, I migrated from your new page via link to your video on using the color checker passport. It's interesting that your approach differs somewhat from other brief tutorials,

, which advocate cropping the picture of the color patches in LR to fill the screen before processing. I wonder if that produces a better result. [i notice that you took the trouble to rotate your image (quicker, btw, to just use the "flip to vertical" choice), which would not apply to the alternate suggested approach.]

 

Jeff

[Overgaard]

Well, that is for the X-Rite, Jeff. I swear to the White Balancing using a WhiBal or white paper or other neutral grey/white material.

 

I did a test withX-Rite for the Leica M9 and found it was not critical.

 

The short version is; I don't use X-Rite (except the Pantone screen calibrator now bought by X-Rite why I use their software).

 

 

The long version is; that I don't use X-Rite but would consider it if I had a color-critical shoot of cars, dresses, painting or other where the colors had to be true to reality.

 

When something is not logical and easy to get results with, it simply does not work. How would it?

 

X-Rite's business model is simply to own the color market and make money. Their business model is not to make color solutions that work. Their website is an absolutely horror, not explaining what tool is for what, how to use it, or if older versions can be used.

 

I also think they took a good six months to supply a 64-bit version of screen calibration for Mac. So that is how important they consider color matching when it gets down to reality and not the weekly or daily warning that the screen needs calibration

 

On the video page he crops it "to make it easier for the software". I don't know if the software needs that as it recognizes the X-Rite frame even in very small (and also if it is upside-down).

 

On the video page you link to there is a question I get repeatedly: "You do this every time lenses or lights changes?"

 

The answer is a short "yes," when the light changes.

 

But here the answer is expanded to include a few solar systems: "The important thing is certainly to calibrate for each camera (I calibrate separately for both my Canon 5D2s) as the sensor is going to be the "reader" of the colour. But I also have calibrated for my main zoom and prime lenses: I have to say that I find little variation when calibrating from lenses from the same manufacturer: you can use the profile from one lens with another with almost identical results,suggesting as above that it is the camera sensor that is really important to calibrate."

 

Now, a proper tool we could actually use for something would be a White Balance tool on one side (which represents the major departure from true colors) and then a sensor adjustment/calibration which would make the sensor behave like some agreed-upon standard.

 

Problem with X-Rite is that nobody has any (bloody) idea how to use it, what it is good for, or why.

 

One can find a method/workflow and it will work in a studio ... if one has an actual reason for trying to get the colors to match not a film/artistic standard, but a laboratory standard.

 

But outside the studio it is an absolutely useless tool. Not the idea, but because the tool itself is useless.

 

It's a bit like the Sekonic lightmeter you can calibrate to match each lens and each sensor. It sounds really good on paper, but in reality, who has time to set the lightmeter to the appropiate lens and sensor before doing a photo. And from you measure the light till you shoot, the light have changed slightly or a lot!

 

Sorry to be come that hard down on it. It does sound sweet and great, but it's not for practical use. It's one of those things you can get from photo stores

 

One can check and see how one's colors are compared to a standard, and then one can sit and think about if that is a good or bad thing. In the case of the M9 it didn't make much difference.

 

The few tests I've seen for the M240 the users realized they had it wrong. It didn't work, they would do another test/calibration later ...

 

As they say in Brooklyn, "Theze things nevah wurK!"

[Jeff S]

Thanks, Thorsten for the long reply. I guess I misunderstood, since I saw your video of the X-Rite on this page, and assumed that it was part of your workflow, in addition to using the Whi-Bal card as needed. I didn't realize that you rejected it.

 

BTW, I also use and like the Whi-Bal card. I thought of adding the Color Checker Passport, but must consider your remarks. I think there were some positive comments about using its dual illuminance profile feature in other forum threads discussing early issues with M240 color rendering.

 

I do have a friend who uses X-Rite's i1 Profiler software and spectrophotometer to successfully develop profiles for his paper and printers, but maybe he just knows what he's doing and how to use it to advantage.

 

Jeff

[thighslapper]

Interesting article Thorsten, as always you have some interesting insights that are food for thought....

 

I'm still not convinced the M240 colour profile is out by much... various profiles generated with XRite or Adobe make fairly subtle changes that are only noticeable on the rendering of skin and grass.....

 

Most of the perceived issues are generated by the inaccurate auto WB and the fact the other manual settings (for daylight etc) are all about 500K adrift.

 

Normal sunny daylight needs a setting of 5100K and about 5800K for dull overcast conditions.

 

Until Leica get it sorted I either use these as defaults or an ExpoDisk to set 18% Grey as in the menu. I did spend days taking shots of a colour checker passport at various manual temp settings under different lighting conditions to work out the manual settings for cloudy, shadow, dawn, dusk etc. etc but it all became too much of a chore...... and an Expodisk can be carried in a pocket and takes 10 seconds to set the WB.

 

With this and a dual illuminant profile in LR most images don't need any tweaking.....

 

One thing I have noticed (and Thorstens pics show this as well) is that on the M240 in particular the Noctlux 0.95 produces very saturated images that have a very distinctive look ..... which I personally find very interesting and attractive....

[erudolph]

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+1 on the Expodisk

[Overgaard]

Until Leica get it sorted I either use these as defaults or an ExpoDisk to set 18% Grey as in the menu.

 

You use the ExpoDisk for exposure as well?

 

(the 18% reflective is referring to middle grey that you use for metering to get correct exposure, the WhiBal grey is not 18% reflective but only 11% .. so ExpoDisk is a great tool for white balance and exposure, but the two should not be related).

[dwbell]

Another good read Thorsten. Thank you.

[tobey bilek]

Expo Disk or incident meter will give perfect exposures provided you can place it in the same light as the subject and that is not always possible. I have done thousands of pics with Sekinic Studio deluxe incident with perfect results.

 

A reflective meter is a convenience for camera manufactures and basically they fool the public with its value. It does work sometimes or usually if you meter middle tones or understand enough to compensate for light or dark subjects.

 

The Why Bal is not a good exposure card because it is not middle grey. Set it to 205 in ACR and it works well. Or use it in place of the grey card and over expose it by 1/2 stop like you do with bright objects.

 

Then there is there is the trusty Pentax Digital Spot meter. I can see the reading inside the meter which can not be done with other spots. Very handy. Meter the brightest spot and darkest spots in which you want detail and if they are within range of film or sensor, that is the exposure. Or if you want, measure one spot and expose for that. Note that like all reflective meters, bright or dark subjects fool it as do COLORS. Measure a yellow tree in the fall and you need to compensate or you lose the yellow to dull gold.

 

Intelligent metering is unintelligent, at least on all my Nikons. It works very well in sun. Under overcast, it will overexpose and blow the sky every time. Happens with 5 cameras including pro cameras, so it is not a camera problem. Switch to built in spot meter and measure the bright spot in the sky, then compensate 1.66 stops. Works every time. Or just average a sky and foreground. That works every time also under cloudy conditions.

 

My take on it all, learn how the camera works, then compensate as required.

[dante]

Thorsten -

 

Your photography is beautiful; top rate. In fact, they may be some of the best pictures ever taken with a Noctilux (and certainly a welcome relief from the cats, ultra-contrast monochrome pictures, and vibro-bokeh usually displayed from that lens).

 

The text could use improvement in two places:

 

One, your commentary is (perhaps unintentionally) ironic in the passage ("the need for simplicity") that talks about "simplifying" from what sounds like a €30K outfit for travel to one that is a mere €12K (housed in a €1K leather satchel). This is like being a Buddhist monk who brags about being a Buddhist monk. "I have just this one bowl - by the way, it is made of solid gold."*

 

The second part is the number of generalizations and misstatements that appear in "the wheel on Leica M240." The generalizations include statements about DSLR design and users and suggestions that Leica cameras (and by extension, their users) are more thoughtful. And possibly the most glaring of the misstatements is that "On the Leica M9, if the thumbs wheel got damaged, you couldn't use the camera. If you damage one of the two ways to use the menus on the Leica M240, you still got the other." The M8's and M9's principal exposure controls are on the outside, and most critical functions can be accessed via the arrow keys, Menu and Set buttons. The control wheel just seems to be there to give calloused thumbs when checking focus.

 

That's not to say that your writing is not witty or interesting. Your articles are a fun read, but sometimes they might benefit from a second set of eyes.

 

Regards,

Dante

 

*Be careful about the brand-name dropping (Marc Jacobs, Goyard, Louis Vuitton); some people with more extravagant taste than you will think the bowl is 10K gold.

[Overgaard]

One, your commentary is (perhaps unintentionally) ironic in the passage ("the need for simplicity") that talks about "simplifying" from what sounds like a €30K outfit for travel to one that is a mere €12K (housed in a €1K leather satchel). This is like being a Buddhist monk who brags about being a Buddhist monk. "I have just this one bowl - by the way, it is made of solid gold."*

 

Thanks for the feedback, dante.

 

On the simplicity, what I find when I meet people who like and use Leica, is that they have gone through some work to find the right stuff to simplify life. This is a generality of course; but those people I take a note of are those who either asked Leica if they could make a titanium body just for them, but paint is to look like any other camera, or those who after careful search found a $3 black bag that fit their needs perfectly, even they could afford anything else basically.

In both extremes, having the just right thing (and just that) is what matters, not necessarily the price.

 

(But life is never that simple, of course. We tend to want more of the good things).

 

I got a few extra eyes reading, and then a lot of e-mails with comments. I try to go through things when I have time and review them, but often I will also leave it as it. I think one of the good things about by articles is that you can find things again when you need them (contrary to dybamic websites as for example cnn where you can't find the video you saw an hour ago because the whole page changed meanwhile).

 

Feel free also to e-mail me for any questions and comments. Always.