Travel Tibet with Leica M8

[khun_k]

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Just came back from 2 weeks trip from Tibet, travel with Leica M8, 2 memory cacrd, 2 battery, Zeiss Hologon 16/6, Summicron-M 28/2 and Summilux-M 35/1.4 ASPH. Some images to share;

 

Tibet - a photoset on Flickr

M8 Gallery - a photoset on Flickr

 

Suggestion: Don't leave home without M8.

 

Regards.

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[hdrmd]

The photo with the peeping cat is priceless. good work. DR

[fefe]

Nice pictures from a beautifull place. I wish I were still there.

 

Which part of Tibet was it ? It looks like a relatively low altitude area from the amount of green. The places I went to in Tibet were mostly desertic (I can't recall seeing any green between Lhassa, Shigatze and the Nepalese border 3 months ago, or it was just the season).

[khun_k]

That was east part of Tibet, boarding to the mianland China. I traveled between Ranwu city to Lintz, then to Lhasa. Still busy processing all the files.

[Etruscello]

K --

Your work is breathtaking. You seem to wisely choose the right lens for the scene and mood. Your use of the Hologon 16mm is brilliant. And your images are often moving, as in the case of the worshiping pilgrim.

You motivate my wife and I to want to go to Tibet. We have been to China and Japan. We plan to do Thialand. Tibet will be added to our list.

I had used my M6. Now I will use my M8. I have been testing the M8 and among my lenses is the Hologon 16mm f8.0, which DAG converted for me from G to M mount.

You have a great artist's eye, but I think I can give you some technical advice. First, I have come to believe that one should always use an IR Cut filter with lenses on the M8. They are absolutely necessary in available light for color fidelity. They are useful in daylight if you want true foliage color and sharp foliage (unfilitered IR softens foliage focus). It is true that the IR Cut filter will give you cyan creep in the corners and edges. If your lenses are coded, that should not be a big problem.

The Hologon 16mm is a special case. It is possible to fit a filter. I use a step-up 60 to 67 ring . With some padding around the inner ring (sticky-backed felt), it fits around the lens and is held on by the pressure of the felt. A 67 thread IR Cut filter may then be used. To my knowledge, this lens cannot be coded. I fix the cyan and vignetting problems easily in Photshop CS3. For jpegs do the following. Lasso the clear center area after setting the Lasso to 250. Select Inverse. Correct the vignetting with Curves. Correct the cyan problem with Color Desaturation -- about -67 Cyan and - 34 Blue. You must also use Color Balance to add about 10 Red. You'll be surprised how perfect the results can look. This method is so much better than Leica's coded in-camera correction that I sometimes turn off the Leica correction -- I prefer post-image processing.

If you shoot RAW, as I do, The process is actually easier in CS3. I'll send you those instructions if you have CS3. Just ask.

Again, thank you for the treat of your Tibetan images and your effective body of work.

Tom P.

[khun_k]

K --

Your work is breathtaking. You seem to wisely choose the right lens for the scene and mood. Your use of the Hologon 16mm is brilliant. And your images are often moving, as in the case of the worshiping pilgrim.

You motivate my wife and I to want to go to Tibet. We have been to China and Japan. We plan to do Thialand. Tibet will be added to our list.

I had used my M6. Now I will use my M8. I have been testing the M8 and among my lenses is the Hologon 16mm f8.0, which DAG converted for me from G to M mount.

You have a great artist's eye, but I think I can give you some technical advice. First, I have come to believe that one should always use an IR Cut filter with lenses on the M8. They are absolutely necessary in available light for color fidelity. They are useful in daylight if you want true foliage color and sharp foliage (unfilitered IR softens foliage focus). It is true that the IR Cut filter will give you cyan creep in the corners and edges. If your lenses are coded, that should not be a big problem.

The Hologon 16mm is a special case. It is possible to fit a filter. I use a step-up 60 to 67 ring . With some padding around the inner ring (sticky-backed felt), it fits around the lens and is held on by the pressure of the felt. A 67 thread IR Cut filter may then be used. To my knowledge, this lens cannot be coded. I fix the cyan and vignetting problems easily in Photshop CS3. For jpegs do the following. Lasso the clear center area after setting the Lasso to 250. Select Inverse. Correct the vignetting with Curves. Correct the cyan problem with Color Desaturation -- about -67 Cyan and - 34 Blue. You must also use Color Balance to add about 10 Red. You'll be surprised how perfect the results can look. This method is so much better than Leica's coded in-camera correction that I sometimes turn off the Leica correction -- I prefer post-image processing.

If you shoot RAW, as I do, The process is actually easier in CS3. I'll send you those instructions if you have CS3. Just ask.

Again, thank you for the treat of your Tibetan images and your effective body of work.

Tom P.

Thanks a lot for the tip. I went on the trip with the three lenses, and just one IR filter for the Summicron-M 28/2, I did not receive another IR filter until I returned from Tibet. Since in 2 weeks we cover a lot of mileage so many shots were made in a hurry, too bad, therefore I often did not change the filter and just shoot as is. I have a lot more still in process and yes, I shoot 100% RAW and only in daylight white balance, I found shooting jpeg and rely on AWB is somewhat a little risky for using M8. But with raw and self-define white balance, M8 is indeed very impressive.

[jedbest]

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Would you be kind enough to send me the instructions for correcting the cyan shift in post processing. I'm off to Iceland and will bringing my M8 along.

 

Thank you very much.

 

Jed Best (jedbest@mac.com)

[Etruscello]

Jed --

My procedure for dealing with cyan shift in Jpeg using Photoshop is posted above in my response to kuhn-k.

If you shoot RAW and have Photoshop CS3, the procedure is easier and more effective. In Camera Raw 4.1, first use the Lens Correction vignetting and midpoint controls. This eliminates the vignetting with a very smooth transition (because of mid-point control). You'll find that in eliminating vignetting, you eliminate most of the cyan in the corners because most of it is caused by underexposure in the corners. (Underexposure on the M8 sensor has a cyan/blue color shift.) Then use the WB Tint and Temperature controls to get rid of the overall greenish cast caused by the IR-Cut filter. (You'll be moving the sliders to the right to make the image warmer.) For any remaining color cast, you may still have to use the HSL HUES control panel to remove some Yellow, Green and Aqua, as well as some Green/Blue in the Camera Calibration control panel. This does not take as much time as it may sound.

Finally, after you convert to Jpeg for additional manipulations, for wide-angles of 24/25mm or greater, you may still need to add about 10 Red in the corners of images using Color Balance. The best way to do this, I find, is to Lasso the corners with the Lasso set to 250 so that the color transitions are very smooth. Experiment before you leave on your trip. For me, these Photoshop methods are consistently superior to the results from in-camera corrections only. Good Luck and happy shooting. (Please let us know how image-making goes in Iceland and the best equipment to bring there.) Tom P.

[khun_k]

I have upload some more pictures from the trip to Tibet, still have a lot to process. I did totally may be close to 2,000 captures, all in RAW, going to take some time.