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Color quality: SL vs. DMR


wildlightphoto

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Sean Reid reviewed the DMR in 2006, using an impressive arsenal of lenses., including even the Elmarit-R 15.  Unfortunately, that means that the article is next to last in his list and it takes about five minutes to scroll down there.  There should be a way to link to it from the login page.  The colors are nice.

 

scott

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I'd be very interested to see examples of the DMR color. Never have that I know of. 

 

Here are some pictures so that you're able to get some idea of the DMR's color.

- Apo Summicron 180mm 

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2. Vario Elmarit 28-90mm 

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3. Summicron 50mm

4. Apo Elmarit 180mm 

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Wasn't the DMR's 10 MPx CCD a Kodak chip rather similar to the chip used in the M8?  So we could also be comparing to M8 color (on subjects where IR contamination was not an issue).

 

scott

 

I'm interested in SL and DMR comparisons.  All photos on my website from March 2006 through June of this year were made with the DMR.

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I'm interested in SL and DMR comparisons.  All photos on my website from March 2006 through June of this year were made with the DMR.

Yes, me too. We just hope that the color from this SL is at least as good as the DMR or even better.

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Yes, me too. We just hope that the color from this SL is at least as good as the DMR or even better.

 

I'd be very interested to see examples of the DMR color. Never have that I know of. 

 

I'm interested in SL and DMR comparisons.  All photos on my website from March 2006 through June of this year were made with the DMR.

 

Yes, me too. We just hope that the color from this SL is at least as good as the DMR or even better.

 

Thanks for posting some photos, van_hal. They look nice but whether they're "better" or "worse" than what I see coming out of the SL is somewhat difficult to evaluate. 

 

And thanks also for the pointers as to which of your photos were made with the DMR, Doug. 

 

In order to evaluate what you're looking for, do you mean colors of the DMR coming straight out of the camera via the in-camera JPEG engine? or do you mean colors as in capturing raw format and the defaults produced by Camera Raw or whatever raw conversion software you use? In either case, I suspect it will take someone who has both a DMR and an SL to provide a direct comparison of either ... I wonder how many DMR owners have an SL so far? 

 

I'm seeing very nice colors out of the SL, both in JPEGs and from Lightroom 6.3 default conversion of the DNG files with no adjustments, using R lenses. But I have no good way to compare them to what the DMR might produce. 

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I'm most interested in photos processed from RAW files, particularly in challenging conditions.  I'm finding that with the Sony a7II I normally increase clarity and/or saturation to approach the color richness of the DMR files, and I cannot pull as much detail out of shadow areas with the Sony files without ugly artifacts.

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I'm most interested in photos processed from RAW files, particularly in challenging conditions.  I'm finding that with the Sony a7II I normally increase clarity and/or saturation to approach the color richness of the DMR files, and I cannot pull as much detail out of shadow areas with the Sony files without ugly artifacts.

 

Ah, maybe with that information I can make some exposures that you can look at for comparison. I'll see what I can do. :-)

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I find the colour saturation of the SL on DNGs very high and I am usually reducing it a bit to look right on my Retina MBP. I admit it is about 2 months since I calibrated the screen but it probably is not that far off. It is the sharpness of the SL I find excellent and it at least as crisp with the 24-90 lens as say a 35 ASPH Summicron on my M240. I will not insult folks by posting an image on here at 1024 px max image size. My initial thought was it will be OK with the zoom but not as good as the M240 with a top prime but it seems every bit as good. The colours of the DMR images above look very subtle with excellent gradation. I think the SL will get there but for colour balance it is not quite there yet. The light today was odd with snow in the offing and probably not terribly representative. 

 

Wilson

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I remember when I got the M8, I immediately thought the color was not as rich and natural as my DMR's.  The DMR's WB was a bit hit or miss, but when it nailed it, the results were at least as good if not better than the best of what is available today.  I've alway wondered if this wasn't because it had a 16-bit color depth (still rare today; the SL is 14-bit I think) and was not tuned for aggressive noise reduction.

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Thanks for posting some photos, van_hal. They look nice but whether they're "better" or "worse" than what I see coming out of the SL is somewhat difficult to evaluate. 

 

And thanks also for the pointers as to which of your photos were made with the DMR, Doug. 

 

In order to evaluate what you're looking for, do you mean colors of the DMR coming straight out of the camera via the in-camera JPEG engine? or do you mean colors as in capturing raw format and the defaults produced by Camera Raw or whatever raw conversion software you use? In either case, I suspect it will take someone who has both a DMR and an SL to provide a direct comparison of either ... I wonder how many DMR owners have an SL so far? 

 

I'm seeing very nice colors out of the SL, both in JPEGs and from Lightroom 6.3 default conversion of the DNG files with no adjustments, using R lenses. But I have no good way to compare them to what the DMR might produce. 

I meant starting from raw, processed to the best of one's ability.

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The DMR had very nice colors, kind of very "Leica feel" in the sense of being soft, yet very detailed. That's how I recall them. 

 

Here is my original DMR page with photos. 

 

http://www.overgaard.dk/leica_digital_back_R.html

 

I don't know if I would care to compare the two, but if I did it would be in January when back where my DMR is. It's kind of irrelevant as the DMR is slow and hard to get batteries and service for. Though they are still around to buy second-hand. 

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I don't think a comparison is a shopping decision, but a very high bar for reference.  Reading Thorsten's article, and looking at the lovely skin tones in several of the still web-accessable DMR samples, it seem like the long-lost Imacon software was an important part of the recipe.  Bright colors are not the hardest challenge.  I would say the question in this thread is "can an SL get skin tones as nice and over as large a range as the DMR did?"

 

scott 

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I find the colour saturation of the SL on DNGs very high and I am usually reducing it a bit to look right on my Retina MBP. I admit it is about 2 months since I calibrated the screen but it probably is not that far off. It is the sharpness of the SL I find excellent and it at least as crisp with the 24-90 lens as say a 35 ASPH Summicron on my M240. I will not insult folks by posting an image on here at 1024 px max image size. My initial thought was it will be OK with the zoom but not as good as the M240 with a top prime but it seems every bit as good. The colours of the DMR images above look very subtle with excellent gradation. I think the SL will get there but for colour balance it is not quite there yet. The light today was odd with snow in the offing and probably not terribly representative. 

 

The default calibration profile in the DNGs produces cartoonishly over-saturated colors in LR6.1.1 and likely other raw processors. With LR6.3, the Adobe Standard profile is provided for the SL and the over-saturation is gone, or at least greatly reduced. 

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