Minor bugs or philosophy

[bencoyote]

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In the new Leica T review posted above Leica T Mirrorless Camera Review | Sans Mirror — mirrorless, interchangeable lens cameras | Thom Hogan in the reviews sticky thread. He notes:

 

However, there’s a tendency towards highlight blowout in the exposures the Leica T is calculating, so I’d be very tempted to set exposure compensation down a notch or two as my default. Generally, you can recover shadows well with this sensor, so I’d err slightly on the underexposure side.

 

I've found the same thing. Is this a minor calibration issue with how Leica automatically picks exposure, is it an element of their Leica Look, or is it a minor mismatch in my sensibility and the way that the camera sees the world?

 

Also even though the DNG files include digital lens corrections, is it sufficient? In particular, I also have noticed the large amount chromatic abberation in high contrast areas in the DNG files but not in the JPGs. Of course with Lightroom this is easy to fix. I also have an Olympus E-M1 and the Lightroom lens correction is much more aggressive in automatically fixing CA to the point where in some twigs have gaps. I can imagine that Leica figures that if you are using the DNGs you are doing your own developing and hand the job of doing the right amount of CA correction off to you rather than building it automatically into the lens profile included in the DNG files. On the other hand, it _IS_ pretty bad should Leica be doing more in the DNG files?

[tom0511]

I use the T/M and also S and it seems that often I dial in -0,3 or -0,7 depending on the light situation, so I assume its kind of Leicas philosophy.

No problem, as long as it is consistent.

[Le Comte Y]

I use the T/M and also S and it seems that often I dial in -0,3 or -0,7 depending on the light situation, so I assume its kind of Leicas philosophy.

No problem, as long as it is consistent.

 

+1 here, same with both T and M !

[Carbon111]

I use the T/M and also S and it seems that often I dial in -0,3 or -0,7 depending on the light situation, so I assume its kind of Leicas philosophy.

No problem, as long as it is consistent.

 

Me too regarding the M240 and the T.

...Though this also applies to my Ricoh GXR and my Sony A7. :/

 

FWIW, The M240 has been the easiest of the above cameras to recover highlights on. (If they're not too far blown.)

[thighslapper]

Ditto ..... and it is handy to have uniform behaviour throughout the Leica range for those of us lucky people who have several models .....

 

True CA should be lens dependent and pretty minimal on the better Leica lenses ...... I think what you are referring to is purple fringing due to the sensor and this afflicts almost all digital cameras to some extent when overexposed and dark areas are immediately adjacent. It is a product of the microlenses and overactivation of adjacent photosites *

 

The CA adjustment in LR works by accident because it deals with the same magenta range ..... desaturating is just as effective as the adjacent colours are usually close to monochrome because of the high contrast.

 

* no doubt michael will correct this explanation

[bencoyote]

Ditto ..... and it is handy to have uniform behaviour throughout the Leica range for those of us lucky people who have several models .....

I do find it less when I use center weighted or spot metering. I'm glad to know it is just expected behavior.

 

True CA should be lens dependent and pretty minimal on the better Leica lenses ...... I think what you are referring to is purple fringing due to the sensor and this afflicts almost all digital cameras to some extent when overexposed and dark areas are immediately adjacent. It is a product of the microlenses and overactivation of adjacent photosites *

 

The CA adjustment in LR works by accident because it deals with the same magenta range ..... desaturating is just as effective as the adjacent colours are usually close to monochrome because of the high contrast.

 

* no doubt michael will correct this explanation

 

Thank you for schooling me on the difference. I'll have to go back and look at the shots that I'm thinking of carefully. They were with the 23mm and probably nearly wide open on a bright overcast day in Muir Woods and looking up. So there were areas of high contrast dark branches and overcast sky. When I got the shots home I was surprised/disappointed at the amount of what I thought was CA in this leica lens. The past few days we have had rain and so I didn't want to take the Leica out. (Lack of weather sealing is one of my biggest complaints with the T) So I took out my E-M1 and had some similar shots and instead of CA or purple fringing, the branches had that weird uneven look and even missing pixels. I had seen that effect before when I tried to turn up the CA repair in LR too much and so I figured by default Panasonic's lens profile was tuned to be hyper aggressive in cleaning up CA

 

(Leica - please give me a macro lens and make a weather sealed version of the T and lenses and I'll ditch all my other cameras.)