Lightroom Noise Reduction and M10

[Martin Fagerås]

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I tested out a M10 in my local Leica store today. 

 

I did a very unscientific comparison with my M240, popped my spare SD card in the M10, set the lens the same aperture (mine=summilux50 asph - demo=Apo50) and shot the same scene in the store with the cameras next to eachother from ISO 200 and full stops all the way to 50k (on the m10, 6400 on my 240).

 

When i came home and dumped the files i was wowed, the M10 looked about 2 stops better in terms of ISO noise, until..... i noticed the NR that was automatically applied. 

I nulled it out, and guess what, the M240 and M10 is about equal in noise at ISO 3200, the M10 perhaps ⅓ stop better. The m10 in much cleaner in terms of banding though, but not in grain. 

 

There my biggest draw to the M10 died. haha.  

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[ramarren]

Sandy knows more about this than I do, but at least some of the corrections that Leica has developed to improve images at the edges after the RGB data is developed can be expressed in standard forms, available to all parties.  Instead, this seems to be done as calls to software specific to Adobe's products.  That's what I am concerned about. The SL does its lens profiles in an open fashion, using the facilities in the DNG files.  It seems the M10 does not.  Maybe they can do a better job, but I doubt that we will ever get the full story.  It may also eventually be the case that Capture One can do a better job than Adobe, as their tools are more flexible, but it will cost them some time and effort to get there independently.

 

scott

 

 

 The lens profiles that the M10 DNG refer to are in LCP format, which is documented, so if Phase One wanted to us them, they could.

 

Probably however, Phase One will prefer to do their own thing.

 

Sandy

 

 

Thanks, Sandy. 

[chris_tribble]

I've posted some high ISO images here. http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/268528-m10-the-image-thread/?p=3195786

As these are all at 6400 they're beyond anything that the M 240 can give.

Re LR noise reduction, the key thing with any new camera is to set the defaults to what you want. LR ALWAYS defaults to 20 luminance NR. I always set this to zero for M files. My other defaults include black point at 15, clarity at 10 and vibrance at 17. Just the way that works for me. We're all different

[adan]

I tested out a M10 in my local Leica store today...... etc

 

Thanks for that... It's about what I estimated from the dpreview samples I've processed.

 

Having started out when even ISO 3200 meant leaving Tri-X in ultra-strong paper developer for 10 minutes, and then digging out the grade 5 (ultra-high contrast) printing paper, I can live with evenly-granular noise. But the party stops the moment digital banding shows up. M8 2500, M9 almost never. M240 3200.

[Ario Arioldi]

I've posted some high ISO images here. http://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/268528-m10-the-image-thread/?p=3195786

As these are all at 6400 they're beyond anything that the M 240 can give.

Re LR noise reduction, the key thing with any new camera is to set the defaults to what you want. LR ALWAYS defaults to 20 luminance NR. I always set this to zero for M files. My other defaults include black point at 15, clarity at 10 and vibrance at 17. Just the way that works for me. We're all different

Chris,

as far as I can see LR usually defaults luminance noise reduction to zero and color noise reduction to 25. Leica M10 is in my experience the first camera to receive a different treatment. Of course you are free to change the default presets as you like.

[scott kirkpatrick]

 The lens profiles that the M10 DNG refer to are in LCP format, which is documented, so if Phase One wanted to us them, they could.

 

Probably however, Phase One will prefer to do their own thing.

 

Sandy

They would have to.  The files containing lens profiles, while expressed in an open format, are part of the licensed software that resides only on a machine running LightRoom.   The SL put at least some of that data, lens profiles which are part of the lens design technical data, into opcodes which are a readable part of every raw file. 

 

scott