M-Colour: Article in LFI July

[wlaidlaw]

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There is an interesting article in July's edition of LFI. The final paragraph says "The ball is in Leica's court to improve white balance in firmware and in the court of the RAW software makers to improve their profiles but only once Leica has sorted the WB."

 

I think this sums it up very nicely.

 

So Leica - why is the FW update to improve our WB (and Italian flag on wide angle lenses) taking soooooo long? Sure I can go through each and every shot I take and correct the WB with an eye dropper and apply a correction mask/profile to the wide angle shots but life is too short. The WB updates for the M8 and 9 came thick and fast in the first few months of their life.

 

I have been using my new Olympus EP-5 for the last two days. I have not as yet felt the need to correct a white balance. The in camera lens correction for the wide end of 12-50 lens is a lot better than it was in the EP-2.

 

Wilson

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[k-hawinkler]

Wilson,

 

I have to agree with you there.

The AWB on my OM-D E-M5 is remarkable.

Absolutely spot on, most of the time.

 

Also, now that I have been using the VF-4 on the OM-D E-M5,

what a great improvement over the built in VF-2. A joy to use.

2,360k-Pixel LCD Resolution, 1.48x Magnification & 100% Field of View does it for me.

With that performance I don't miss an OVF at all, but I do miss an RF.

 

In combination with the In-Body-Image-Stabilization IBIS

it's extremely easy to get a handheld 600 mm 135 film equivalent shot.

WOW!

 

Leica needs to hurry a bit with getting their M in shape it seems.

[thighslapper]

Yes, Wilson, it's nice to have someone agree on paper and in print with what a few of us have been saying from initial use of the M240 months ago.

 

I got rather fed up with people saying there 'wasn't a problem' or that it would all be solved by 'new raw camera profiles' and 'I ignore WB anyway' blah blah blah......

 

The M240 WB settings are just plain wrong, and the auto WB so innaccurate in most situations that it is not worth using.

 

Any Leica engineer with half an hour to spare and a Minolta Colour meter could have sorted out the fixed settings.

 

God knows what algorithm they are using for auto WB, but it clearly doesn't work very well.....

 

Perhaps Michael will shame them into doing something a bit sooner......

[pos]

I came to leica from a Nikon D800 and soon found the M9's automatic WB and exposure too strange for my liking and it kind of forced me to go all manual (inc. WB).

 

Now, with the M typ 240 - am totally loving the rich colours it captures, and keeping it on daylight WB during daylight hours i have no probs at all, really loving the deep colours actually, here one from earlier today http://paavosiljamaki.tumblr.com/post/54619089085/urban-delivery-ballet

For skin tones, ok, not perhaps the most 'true' but still compared to ones from the M9 the look is different, but i kind of prefer it, at least now that i'm still new to the new M.

 

The few times i tried the automatic WB outdoors during the day, i found myself rather quickly going all manual as i'm used to. Strange that Leica would have thought their auto WB is good to release as is!

[Jeff S]

Yes, Wilson, it's nice to have someone agree on paper and in print with what a few of us have been saying from initial use of the M240 months ago.

 

To be fair, Michael Hußmann (mjh), who often writes for LFI, has acknowledged the WB and profile issues in various forum posts. I no longer subscribe to LFI, so I don't know the author in this case.

 

Jeff

[jaapv]

It is Michael

[Jeff S]

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Thanks, and he told us about the forthcoming LFI article in this forum post.

 

Jeff

[Rick]

I agree with all of this. But, some of us have been saying from the start that none of this has any bearing on the eventual images... while agreeing with the obvious that Auto WB is wrong. Just because the Auto WB is wrong doesn't mean the color is bad on the new M, as I got rather fed up with reading all the experts trying to say it was.

[Thomas Chen]

There is an interesting article in July's edition of LFI. The final paragraph says "The ball is in Leica's court to improve white balance in firmware and in the court of the RAW software makers to improve their profiles but only once Leica has sorted the WB."

Wilson

 

Is this Leica's official announcement that M240 is merely a RAW shooting camera, while JPEG conversion is none of Leica's business?

 

Thomas Chen

[StephenPatterson]

Just because the Auto WB is wrong doesn't mean the color is bad on the new M, as I got rather fed up with reading all the experts trying to say it was.

 

I think most of the "experts" were just regular folks who could see there was/is a problem with colors in the M240. I don't think the majority of these people were saying "bad" as much as they were saying "inaccurate". I believe you and I both agree that the M240 files are wonderful, but sometimes they do need a bit of work.

[wlaidlaw]

Is this Leica's official announcement that M240 is merely a RAW shooting camera, while JPEG conversion is none of Leica's business?

 

Thomas Chen

 

Thomas,

 

To be fair, this could be said to apply to the Digilux 1, M8 and M9 as well, all of whose JPEG's are less than wonderful. Once the profiles and AWB get sorted out for the 240, using a RAW converter is so easy, you might as well just forget JPEG's. The only time I use them on my M8/9/240 is when I want to make a quick image post on a website.

 

However having been using my Olympus EP-5 for the last few days, does show just how good out of camera JPEG's can be. It is not yet supported in Capture One 7.1.3, hence my using JPEG's. Phase One tell me support for its .ORF files is coming soon.

 

Wilson

[Thomas Chen]

Thomas,

 

To be fair, this could be said to apply to the Digilux 1, M8 and M9 as well, all of whose JPEG's are less than wonderful. Once the profiles and AWB get sorted out for the 240, using a RAW converter is so easy, you might as well just forget JPEG's. The only time I use them on my M8/9/240 is when I want to make a quick image post on a website.

 

However having been using my Olympus EP-5 for the last few days, does show just how good out of camera JPEG's can be. It is not yet supported in Capture One 7.1.3, hence my using JPEG's. Phase One tell me support for its .ORF files is coming soon.

 

Wilson

 

Wilson,

 

Thanks for your information.

 

I have no problem in using RAW editing software. In fact, the COO JPEG of M240 is much better than the M8's, a remarkable improvement. Just be curious that a " RAW only-desinated camera" deserves such a premium price tag, missing the most important intellectual property of an imaging company - the RAW to JPEG convertor and man-machine interface.

 

If it is a Leica's policy let it be the policy forever.

 

During the waiting period for M240 I acquired a Pentax K5-IIs body 10 days ago, weighing 680 gram the same with that of M240, and take a lot of pictures in difficult light conditions: creek in the jungle, water fall in a gorge, sunrise from a rocky seashore. All with polarizer and ND filters. No extra handgrip and EVF are needed. The COO JPEG IQ is more than than satisfying.

 

This use experience allows me to realize the electronics technology gap among camera manufacturers.

 

Hopefully I can afford to love Leica for good.

 

Thomas Chen

[mjh]

Just be curious that a " RAW only-desinated camera" deserves such a premium price tag, missing the most important intellectual property of an imaging company - the RAW to JPEG convertor and man-machine interface.

Some very affordable compact digicams produce really pleasing JPEGs whereas many professional medium format cameras don’t even support JPEG, so what would this have to do with the price tag? The M8, M9, M Monochrom, and M have all been intended to be used with a raw workflow; that’s what Leica thinks any discerning photographer would use anyway. But they had to accept that some photographers prefer JPEG and as you’ve said, JPEG quality has seen some improvement since the days of the M8. Still there are some remaining issues to be resolved as I did point out in my article for LFI.

[Rick]

I think most of the "experts" were just regular folks who could see there was/is a problem with colors in the M240. I don't think the majority of these people were saying "bad" as much as they were saying "inaccurate". I believe you and I both agree that the M240 files are wonderful, but sometimes they do need a bit of work.

 

Well, that isn't what I recollect. I seem to remember the camera couldn't produce good skin tones and asian skin tone was embarrassing. The regular folks and those that claimed to know professionals and that claimed they edited massive amounts of photos in PP claimed expertise.

 

That's why I started the Color Survey and asked those that had the M if, the color was acceptable after PP. I just wanted to know if the color was inherently bad, unfixable, the experts were right - something was wrong. But, everyone that had the camera said that with varying amounts of PP effort, the color seemed to be ok. That of course is when the bashers claimed the survey was meaningless. That whole episode was hilarious.

 

So, I'm not commenting further on any of this. Everyone can draw their own conclusion and I know they will. I hope you get your new M soon because it is such a wonderful little camera and I'm sure with firmware updates you are going to love it. And, for those experiencing problems I feel your frustration and I hope you get them worked out.

[Rick]

Michael - Great little article. I liked reading about the quantum efficiency of the Max sensor and how it pertained to differentiating different colors and how you related it to the human eye. How do you know this stuff?

 

I thought you were very unbiased and didn't pull any punches when it came to Leica needing to come out with a fix to the WB first and then hopefully we can get profiles for the camera redone by the raw converter companies. When Leica comes out with a WB update, do you think we will be able to shoot our own dual illuminance profiles that will be as good or better than the vendors while we wait for the vendors to produce new profiles? Early on I tried and couldn't come up with a dual illuminance profile of my own that worked better in all situations from what I got in ARC.

 

I also enjoyed Holger Sparr's article on video in the previous LFI. Really explained where the sate of the quality of the video is at on the M and why. Also, it was nice to hear that Leica has several fixes for the video in the works. Makes me hopeful that their will be a pretty large firmware update coming out soon. I'm looking forward to that.

 

Is it just me or is the iPad LFI reader working much better?

 

Rick

[nggalai]

For what it’s worth …

 

over at dslr-forum.de some nice people provided DNG for non-Typ-240 users to try their hands at.

 

Leica M: DNG-Entwicklung - DSLR-Forum

 

The first skin tone example was tricky as there was loads of reflected green light, and lead to much discussion (zombie-look vs/ icterus). The two later skin examples also provided much wrangling of hands and dishevelled hair.

 

Sort-of consensus after a couple of days was “you’ll have to get used to the Typ 240“, and “RAW developers may need to tweak profiles”. White point is corrected easily, but colour balance could be better, IMO. Personally, as an M9 user I found the Typ 240 DNG quite hard to develop at first, but the second batch went much smoother already. ISO 800 impressed me mightily, concerning dynamic range and noise (I first thought the example to be ISO 400 or something). Colour-wise I figured I could live with the Typ 240; there’s much to tweak and thanks to presets you’ll only have to do it, iteratively, for a couple of pictures until you find “your” default settings.

 

Cheers,

-Sascha

[jaapv]

:confused:What possible interest could anybody have in the quality of a JPG engine ? Users that need it, like a PJ on assignment, only need newspaper print quality and all others are just tying their own hands in post processing. It may be close with the best in-camera conversions with simple to no corrections, but a raw workflow will yield better results and far more flexibility as soon as one gets into high-quality image processing.

[k-hawinkler]

Why not?

They offer it, so it should be competitive.

I shoot RAW + JPG Fine quite a bit.

On other cameras the JPG is often good enough for what I want.

That saves a lot of time in processing, so I have more time for taking pictures.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[jaapv]

It saves about 10 sec. per image...And in LR and C1 no time saving at all. Identical workflows. The main advantage of JPG is the smaller size which is practical for transmitting.

[jdlaing]

:confused:What possible interest could anybody have in the quality of a JPG engine ? Users that need it, like a PJ on assignment, only need newspaper print quality and all others are just tying their own hands in post processing. It may be close with the best in-camera conversions with simple to no corrections, but a raw workflow will yield better results and far more flexibility as soon as one gets into high-quality image processing.

Not that this has anything to do with the quoted article, which is about sensor design and does not even mention the words raw or jpg.

Your quote is from an article in LFI, discussed elsewhere.

 

You make blanket statements based on YOUR preference.

There are a lot of photos taken that do not require post processing with a RAW image.

Thousands and thousands of images taken in the quality of an out of the camera JPEG are used all the time for other than printing, art photos and the like. The bulk of the photos I take for work are fine in JPEG quality and are distributed to many viewers in out of camera full size and some are reduced to computer screen size.

 

Journalists, documentation, forensics and the like.

It's not fair to all photographers to try and force them to use a certain file type just because that is what you prefer. State the differences, qualities and advantages and let the user make up their own mind.