Leica M10 Ordered; What is about a lens

[wosamko]

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Personally I prefer the Zeiss. Although both lenses are of impeccable quality, the Zeiss renders a bit more delicate wide open. I would call the images more transparant.

 

Can you please tell me what do you mean by the word "transparent"? Thanks in advance

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[wosamko]

Fast in this case means large aperture, to gather in more light. You want fast lenses for indoor ot low-light photography, typically. The term "fast" is used because the lens can gather the same amount of light with a fast shutter speed that a slower lens will gather with a longer shutter. A lens at f/5.6 at 1/250 will gather X amount of light; a lens at f/1.4 will gather the same amount of light (for the same exposure) with a shutter of 1/4000. A lens at f/1.4 will let in 16x more light than a lens set at f/5.6, at the same shutter speed.

 

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-exposure.htm for some education on this.

 

For indoor, is F2 is enough/more than enough? If not, then what? Like F1.4

[IkarusJohn]

In the digital age, we’re told by the experts that our cameras are not long term investments - they have redundancy, if not being “disposable”.

 

I started with an M9, and then watched with some incredulity as Leica denied, ducked and avoided responsibility for the failure of the LCD on the M8 and the corrosion of the M9 sensor. I don’t say this to discourage - I’d happily buy an M10 as my main camera. However, I decided on the SL and I have the original Monochrom and a film M. Another M camera would be superfluous.

 

What does hold its value (relatively speaking) and is, I think, the place to spend your money, is in Leica lenses. I have 8 such lenses, dating from 1948 to 2016, all usable on any M camera, and the SL, CL & TL with adapters. Granted, you need an M camera, and the M10 is the best M digital so far. I would now start adding Leica lenses, as you can afford them. Look on flickr and the various review sites to get a sense of what you like.

 

For one lens, I’d get a 28mm (Elmarit 2.8 is very highly regarded, as are the Summicron and Summilux). It’s just a little wider and more interesting than the 35mm, and will pair nicely with a 50mm when you can afford to add one (everyone needs a 50, right?).

 

My tuppence. I’ve had Zeiss lenses - to my eye, they had greater micro contrast, but I found them “cold”. Look at flickr, and see what you think. In the end, I see no point in buying an M10, and not having at least one Leica lens to start with.

 

Cheers

John

[wosamko]

In the digital age, we’re told by the experts that our cameras are not long term investments - they have redundancy, if not being “disposable”.

 

I started with an M9, and then watched with some incredulity as Leica denied, ducked and avoided responsibility for the failure of the LCD on the M8 and the corrosion of the M9 sensor. I don’t say this to discourage - I’d happily buy an M10 as my main camera. However, I decided on the SL and I have the original Monochrom and a film M. Another M camera would be superfluous.

 

What does hold its value (relatively speaking) and is, I think, the place to spend your money, is in Leica lenses. I have 8 such lenses, dating from 1948 to 2016, all usable on any M camera, and the SL, CL & TL with adapters. Granted, you need an M camera, and the M10 is the best M digital so far. I would now start adding Leica lenses, as you can afford them. Look on flickr and the various review sites to get a sense of what you like.

 

For one lens, I’d get a 28mm (Elmarit 2.8 is very highly regarded, as are the Summicron and Summilux). It’s just a little wider and more interesting than the 35mm, and will pair nicely with a 50mm when you can afford to add one (everyone needs a 50, right?).

 

My tuppence. I’ve had Zeiss lenses - to my eye, they had greater micro contrast, but I found them “cold”. Look at flickr, and see what you think. In the end, I see no point in buying an M10, and not having at least one Leica lens to start with.

 

Cheers

John

 

Thank you John. I have ordered Leica Summicron-M 50mm f/2 Lens. I will either later buy 28mm or I sell M10 and 50mm ): Next reply you will know why I might sell it

[wosamko]

That is a very good resource for anyone needing to know the relationship between the basic camera settings. I fear that we have introduced confusion to the OP simply because in our eagerness to supply the whole gamut of photographic knowledge we may have overestimated his current knowledge. I tend to try to look at the background of a post on the forum. In this case, the OP clearly does not have English as his first language and terminology can be confusing. Also, we should appreciate that his location may limit or should strongly influence his purchasing opportunities. Finally, I’m not even sure that he has ever handled a fully manual camera and rangefinder and I’m concerned that the combination will prove to be a steep learning curve.

I would have advised him to get full and continuous advice from a local dealer and purchase locally. I think he is in one of the Arab states.

 

Let’s keep it simple and straightforward in our future exchanges. It’s his money, not ours and he is taking note of what we are saying as best he can.

 

Dear Lucerne, you have great observation and analysis and the way you express. Here are some facts:

1- I am Arabic "Qatar". Dear all, please keep being humble. I have had enough facing racism while traveling in Europe. 

2- Since 2005, I always shoot with Autofocus DSLR camera and autofocus lens and image stabilization. 

3- Due to getting older "pain in carrying large DSLR and lenses" and other issues I decided to go to a small compact camera

4- Since I alway look into half empty cup and look for perfect, I found I cannot use power shoot camera at all, therefore only full frame>mirrorless> Great image quality. It exists in Leica M10. No camera can provide great color and small size such as M10

5- I have never done manual shooting and I am scared that I might regret buying M10 but I got encouragement from an Indonesian said to me "It is not about the gun, it is about who is behind the gun". I work in IT Data Center and I hope I can handle the manual focus issue especially my hand is little shaking due to illness I cannot mention.

 

Dear all, Please advise shall I cancel the order or not. I cannot buy something that I am not satisfied. I mean after seeing M10 I cannot buy Sony RX1 or A7II or anything else less than M10

[wosamko]

Another thing, the dealer in Qatar does not know the answers for my question therefore he gets my answers from Google. This post answers much better than him. Also, he doesn't have the camera physically to try it, therefore order from Germany

[ramarren]

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Makes you wonder why there were so many types of film to chose from, only to discover now that choosing a film because of it's colour, contrast, grain, and sensitivity to a different spectrum of light, or using a filter, was all cancelled out by using a Leica lens.

 

A lens only renders something when projected onto a medium that can record what it is rendering, and that medium changes how an image is recorded. As Marshall McLuhan said 'the medium is the message'. 

 

 

Sorry, but don't be so foolish and snarky. It's unlike you.  

 

The lens rendering qualities are able to be measured on an optical bench and viewed on a fine ground glass screen, they don't require film at all. Films have different characteristics in grain structure, acutance, spectral sensitivity, et cetera, which work with the lens rendering to produce your results. They are two completely different parts of the total rendering package. 

 

[ramarren]

Ummm.. Leica does nothing to improve the rendering of a lens in their M10 profiles. Only vignetting and sometimes a smidgen of distortion correction. Anything else you might see is a placebo effect.

The coding was introduced on the M8 to combat extreme colour shifting in the corners and to enable EXIF data. That is when the development was done (2004-2006). Even then there was no attempt to influence the rendering of any lens.

With the M10 this is no longer needed, except for some vestigial corrections and EXIF (on which even aperture was dropped) There is no reason, however, not to leave the system in place.

 

If you claim to have seen differences, back it up with your results and testing method. It will be interesting, because you will be the first of all reviewers to document this.

 

 

I disagree. I've done comparisons between the same lens on an M4-2 film body, and then on M9, M-P240, and M-D bodies with the profiles on and off. There are subtle  differences between the two exposures made on the digital bodies, and the ones with the profiles on match my reference negative with more fidelity. 

 

Good lenses that image well with digital sensors need only minor corrections, of course. Many times the corrections are very small changes. Of course. But they are there. 

 

Leica continues to develop and improve the lens profiles. There have been changes to them in each revision of the Leica SL firmware, and likely in other cameras too. And the lens profiles have done different things with the different model cameras. So there's cost associated. If they made no difference at all, I don't see Leica wasting the money on continuing to develop them: that would not make good business sense.

 

And of course you don't NEED to use the lens profiles and you can use any lens you want. The lenses will continue to work just fine, the EXIF data will be incorrect, and you'll do whatever corrections you feel are necessary in post processing to warp the captured data into the photograph you want anyway. So buy any Coke bottle bottom you want and go make photographs, that's what's important. In fact, I think I'll take out my Skink Pinhole now... 

 

Leica CL + Skink Pinhole Pro f/127

ISO 12500 @ 1/4 sec

 

No glass to correct in that lens at all! 

 

I don't feel any compulsion to go back and re-do the testing I did. It is very laborious because there are a lot of use cases and process to do it right; I didn't cover all the use cases when I did it, I just did enough to confirm that there was a good reason to stick with the Leica lenses and profiles for my purposes and satisfaction. And I know that we will still disagree, so why bother? 

 

You can believe whatever you like, it's no skin off my back.

Edited July 24, 2018 by ramarren

[jaapv]

Unspecified differences... I guess you are seeing the effects of the vignetting correction. It will affect the apparent density of the preview on your computer screen. On the M9 there will be corrections for the IR-induced corner effects as well. Possibly slightly different for the M240.

 

Obviously a film reference negative will never match any digital file -including a scan of said negative which will have had an extra round of processing by the scanner.

 

Al this has nothing to do with changing the rendering of the lens as such.

[ramarren]

Oh, so a vignetting correction isn't "changing the rendering qualities of the lens." News to me!

Edited July 24, 2018 by ramarren

[pgh]

Dear Lucerne, you have great observation and analysis and the way you express. Here are some facts:

1- I am Arabic "Qatar". Dear all, please keep being humble. I have had enough facing racism while traveling in Europe. 

2- Since 2005, I always shoot with Autofocus DSLR camera and autofocus lens and image stabilization. 

3- Due to getting older "pain in carrying large DSLR and lenses" and other issues I decided to go to a small compact camera

4- Since I alway look into half empty cup and look for perfect, I found I cannot use power shoot camera at all, therefore only full frame>mirrorless> Great image quality. It exists in Leica M10. No camera can provide great color and small size such as M10

5- I have never done manual shooting and I am scared that I might regret buying M10 but I got encouragement from an Indonesian said to me "It is not about the gun, it is about who is behind the gun". I work in IT Data Center and I hope I can handle the manual focus issue especially my hand is little shaking due to illness I cannot mention.

 

Dear all, Please advise shall I cancel the order or not. I cannot buy something that I am not satisfied. I mean after seeing M10 I cannot buy Sony RX1 or A7II or anything else less than M10

Personally, I have no idea why you are fixated on buying a Leica let alone an M10 given the original reasons you stated.

You said you didn't want manual focus. You spent 7k on a manual focus camera?

 

I own both a Sony Rx1RII and an M10. I love the M10, but I have shot with manual focus rangefinders for a long time so I knew exactly what I was getting in to and why. I can't imagine buying an M10 and not even knowing what lens I wanted to use with it. Usually you have a pretty good idea of exactly how you want to use the tool and why when you're going to spend around 10k or more USD on a kit.

If you have Parkinson's or something similar, the M10 will indeed be more difficult to use.

 

And when it comes to image quality, you have it backwards - at least if you're going by resolution, dynamic range etc. Color is a non-issue. You can get great color from any camera now if you shoot raw and know how to use Capture 1 or Lightroom. The M10 is less than the Rx1RII and the A7RII in these respects. I use the M10 in spite of it having lesser image quality because of the specific experience of what it is like to shoot and see with a rangefinder.

 

If and when I just wanted a small camera with the best image quality possible, that is the Rx1RII no doubt, which has respectable autofocus even. When IQ is the ultimate goal that's the camera I grab. It is smaller and lighter than the M10 with better files. It is only 35mm though.

 

It is true that it is who is behind the camera that matters, but you're asking for certain technical attributes - there's no Leica that satisfied what you were asking for. There are very good Sony, Fuji and Olympus cameras that all come much closer and that many of us use as primary cameras, where our Leicas are more for niche uses.

 

You may fall in love with using the M10, it is a wonderful tool - it's just not really what you claimed to be asking for in any real way.

 

As for what lens to get - well, what are the focal lengths you usually use? That should dictate your decision, not everyone else's opinions because that's what works for them. I will never need more than a 35mm and 50mm summicron. I don't like the Zeiss or Voigtlander glass, though they are both just fine to even excellent. I am happy with 2-3 generations old standard Leica summicrons. But I usually only use 35mm and 50mm on my other cameras as well, so it was easy to know, but I probably photograph with different concerns, so my preferences like have no use to you. 

Edited July 24, 2018 by pgh

[jaapv]

How could it? Vignetting correction is on the digital file, not on the lens. You would need a center spot filter to correct vignetting on the lens. You cannot add anything to the rendering of the lens that is not there optically. You can only change the output of the sensor.

[ramarren]

How could it? Vignetting correction is on the digital file, not on the lens. You would need e center spot filter to correct vignetting on the lens. You cannot add anything to the rendering of the lens that is not there optically. You can only change the output of the sensor.

You see? There is no point in this discussion any further because you will continue to play semantic games. Now you've delimited that a lens correction without an optical element to implement it cannot be termed a lens correction at all. How much further are you going to define your own language to stay right?

[jaapv]

You see? There is no point in this discussion any further because you will continue to play semantic games. Now you've delimited that a lens correction without an optical element to implement it cannot be termed a lens correction at all. How much further are you going to define your own language to stay right?

A digital correction of a lens only makes sense for things like vignetting and distortion, possibly CA. Only if a lens  exhibits such obvious faults, or is designed with such corrections in mind (i.e. the aberrations have been shifted to distortion, enabling a higher state of optical correction (read: Q) ) does it make any sense to apply a profile. On Leica M lenses the only things a profile will do is correct the vignetting and colour shifts produced by the sensor, a part of the optical vignetting of the lens (as this is influenced by aperture, it cannot be a precise correction) and distortion on some wideangle lenses. Everything that we define as lens rendering remains an unique property of the lens itself, and is not subject to digital manipulation by the camera.

 

Obviously one can change the rendering of a lens dramatically in post-processing, like for instance DOF manipulation by focus stacking,  but that will never be done in-camera as a profile.

[earleygallery]

Personally, I have no idea why you are fixated on buying a Leica let alone an M10 given the original reasons you stated.

You said you didn't want manual focus. You spent 7k on a manual focus camera?

 

I own both a Sony Rx1RII and an M10. I love the M10, but I have shot with manual focus rangefinders for a long time so I knew exactly what I was getting in to and why. I can't imagine buying an M10 and not even knowing what lens I wanted to use with it. Usually you have a pretty good idea of exactly how you want to use the tool and why when you're going to spend around 10k or more USD on a kit.

If you have Parkinson's or something similar, the M10 will indeed be more difficult to use.

 

And when it comes to image quality, you have it backwards - at least if you're going by resolution, dynamic range etc. Color is a non-issue. You can get great color from any camera now if you shoot raw and know how to use Capture 1 or Lightroom. The M10 is less than the Rx1RII and the A7RII in these respects. I use the M10 in spite of it having lesser image quality because of the specific experience of what it is like to shoot and see with a rangefinder.

 

If and when I just wanted a small camera with the best image quality possible, that is the Rx1RII no doubt, which has respectable autofocus even. When IQ is the ultimate goal that's the camera I grab. It is smaller and lighter than the M10 with better files. It is only 35mm though.

 

It is true that it is who is behind the camera that matters, but you're asking for certain technical attributes - there's no Leica that satisfied what you were asking for. There are very good Sony, Fuji and Olympus cameras that all come much closer and that many of us use as primary cameras, where our Leicas are more for niche uses.

 

You may fall in love with using the M10, it is a wonderful tool - it's just not really what you claimed to be asking for in any real way.

 

As for what lens to get - well, what are the focal lengths you usually use? That should dictate your decision, not everyone else's opinions because that's what works for them. I will never need more than a 35mm and 50mm summicron. I don't like the Zeiss or Voigtlander glass, though they are both just fine to even excellent. I am happy with 2-3 generations old standard Leica summicrons. But I usually only use 35mm and 50mm on my other cameras as well, so it was easy to know, but I probably photograph with different concerns, so my preferences like have no use to you. 

 

Agreed. The OP first started a thread about wanting a more discreet camera than his Nikon DSLR due to the amount of 'racism' he experienced when using the camera in public. He also stated that he didn't want a manual focus camera.

 

Wosamko, if your questions here are genuine then my advice to you is to first try a rangefinder camera to see if you can get along with it. Find a dealer with an M in stock you can try out, or someone who'll let you try theirs. Failing that, buy an old Zorki on ebay and buy it. You don't even have to shoot film with it, just handle it and try focussing on subjects etc.

 

A DSLR is very different to a rangefinder camera and it's risky to spend so much money on something you don't know enough about.

[otto.f]

Personally, I buy Leica cameras to use Leica lenses.

 

 

+1

Leica has never been excellent in bodies, Contax and Nikon were better IMO.

 

Maybe I’d sooner buy a Leica lens on a Sony A7something than reverse

 

But coming to the OP’s question, I’d go for a 35mm: Summicron 35 pre-asph, or Summarit 35/2.4

Edited July 24, 2018 by otto.f

[hteasley]

For indoor, is F2 is enough/more than enough? If not, then what? Like F1.4

I've never missed a shot because f2 was too slow. I've wished for an f1.4 occasionally (if I didn't have one with me) for depth of field reasons.

 

F1.4 gives you more options, but the lenses will be larger and at twice as expensive.

[wosamko]

Personally, I have no idea why you are fixated on buying a Leica let alone an M10 given the original reasons you stated.

You said you didn't want manual focus. You spent 7k on a manual focus camera?

 

 

“You said you didn't want manual focus. You spent 7k on a manual focus camera?”

I prefer driving manual Ferrari over automatic Japanese car. Fast acceleration and fast stops, therefore reaching destination earlier than the Japanese car with enjoyments. The cores are high capacity engine, and advanced gearbox.

The same theory applies to Leica, from the internet I see M10 images sample much better than Sony A9. The cameras’ core “Sensor” of M10 is better than Sony A9. But M10 is manual. I don’t know will it be easy for me like driving a manual Ferrari car or I will be like the disabled guy who loves to drive Ferrari but has to drive Automatic Lexus![/size]

“If you have Parkinson's or something similar[/size]” Do not worry I will use a monopod or high shutter speed or both.

“And when it comes to image quality, you have it backwards” Well the sample images says M10 is better. Sharpness is better on Leica lenses. You are right about Lightroom. But I do not want to spend long time on Lightroom. Family and work balance is required.

I will see Sony RX1RII and hopefully it is better than M10 

I truly appreciate your advice. If you are in Qatar I will invite you for a big sheep dinner 

 

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[cp995]

...

But coming to the OP’s question, I’d go for a 35mm: Summicron 35 pre-asph, or Summarit 35/2.4

 

Did you still use the Voigtlander Ultron 1./35?

Regarding sharpnes an Bokeh it blows awy every Leica Summicron, incl. the apsh. and ist still faster at a much lower price.

So why to buy a Leica Summicron?

Edited July 24, 2018 by cp995

[wosamko]

Agreed. The OP first started a thread about wanting a more discreet camera than his Nikon DSLR due to the amount of 'racism' he experienced when using the camera in public. He also stated that he didn't want a manual focus camera.

 

Wosamko, if your questions here are genuine then my advice to you is to first try a rangefinder camera to see if you can get along with it. Find a dealer with an M in stock you can try out, or someone who'll let you try theirs. Failing that, buy an old Zorki on ebay and buy it. You don't even have to shoot film with it, just handle it and try focussing on subjects etc.

 

A DSLR is very different to a rangefinder camera and it's risky to spend so much money on something you don't know enough about.

 

"Wosamko, if your questions here are genuine"

Well, Human unlike animals. Animals their thoughts are fixed. Human changes his thinking and believes over decades, years or in a second. Due to other posts replies in addition to my Asian friends' photographers; my the questions have been changed, the answers changed and everything will be changed UNTIL I get the camera and try it. I hope I will not regret! I hope at that time my question will be how to make the most of the camera. I will check the Sony and I will see if I can cancel M10