TL lenses on SL

[scott kirkpatrick]

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Let's finish the series.  Using the 11-23 to capture some 1870-vintage houses retored in the Davis Square area of Cambridge MA

 

R1000764 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

R1000757 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

R1000754 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

R1000752 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

scott (EXIF details visible on Flickr)

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[scott kirkpatrick]

Now some using the 11-23 with people in them.  Davis Square, Somerville MA, late summer:

 

R1000786 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

I liked the cornet and tuba playing.  The crowd was only mildly interested in their "moldy fig" Dixieland material.

 

Bowling, pizza and many excellent local beers:

 

R1000806 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

R1000823 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

scott

[rafael_macia]

The color rendition is really nice.

Now for the 18-56.  Here's a video clip.  The sound track is what you get when you combine a bar (20 local beers on tap), a bowling alley, and a pizzeria, all under one rather low roof:  https://flic.kr/p/XgvyvZ   I'm pretty sure that I shot at 18 mm.

 

Here's a little more of the setting:

 

R1000741 by scott kirkpatrick, on Flickr

 

scott

[John Robinson]

I came across this thread whilst testing video modes on an SL.  As commented elsewhere, Leica does not provide much in the way of documentation about how its video modes work.  I have discovered some idiosyncrasies in the way the camera works in the video modes.  Some observations.

- In the 4K (4096x2160) and UHD (3840x2160) modes, the camera automatically switches to crop mode, approximately APS-C (3936x2624).  Similar to Super35 on film stock.  The native 6000x4000 sensor has plenty of coverage to allow for "clean" crops to the two modes.

- in the 1080p (1920x1080) and 720p (1280x720) modes using "full-frame" lenses, the camera does not crop, but resamples from the whole frame ("pixel-binning"?), which means that the angle of view of the lens does not change e.g the Elmarit-M 1:2.8/21mm gives the same angle of view on 1080p video as for still images, but ...

- some of the R and M lenses I tested in the 1080p and 720p modes (especially 21mm and 28mm) show a lot of chromatic aberration and colour shifts around the edges, suggesting that the camera is not applying lens corrections, even when it knows the focal length via the Adapter-R or Adapter-L.  This is not a problem in the crop modes, but means that getting true wide-angle views on video requires rather shorter focal lengths than what is generally available in native R or M lenses.

- the Summicron-TL 1:2/23mm ASPH gives excellent results in all video modes as it is already cropped to APS-C, confirming the comments above that TL lenses are ideally-suited to video on the SL and giving access to wider angles of view e.g. the 11-23 lens (which I have not had the chance to test).

- thinking about the use of APS-C, I tried an experiment using the Leica-R lens.  If I set the camera to APS-C mode before going into video mode, it respects the crop.  This is a surprise that I could not find documented anywhere.  It means the wide lenses (e.g. Vario-Elmar-R 21-35 or Summicron-M 1:2/28 ASPH) become useable for video without smearing at the edges, albeit with the narrower angle of view closer to the equivalent of 28-50 in "full frame" terms.

This leads me to the view that, for ease of use and image quality (especially if working hand-held), the Leica TL lenses are a very good first choice for shooting video on the SL.