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M10, the new M9?


Kwesi

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2 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Oh? It takes me 1/125 of a second to take a photograph and 2-3 minutes to postprocess it. That is far more than 3/4.

Using exposure time comparisons, I must be the worlds worst and spend zillion % more on PP!

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20 minutes ago, jdlaing said:

It’s maybe 20% but not 3/4.

He said it was 3/4 of the image, not 3/4 of the time. Once again, tweaks can make ALL the difference between a decent rendering and a superb rendering, especially for a print. One person might take all day and never understand the reason(s) it’s not quite right (the OP), and another will take minutes or seconds.

Jeff

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23 hours ago, nejad_b said:

Let say if the fish & chips you get is cooked enough, you eat it and you don’t think of cooking it again

There's a reason a .DNG file or other raw format is called "Raw" - it is uncooked data. (Oh, it may have a little salt or other spices added by the camera for marination, and it may be plaice, haddock, or cod, but it isn't anywhere near finished yet.)

The post-processing IS the cooking stage. Leica just supplies the raw fish.

Now, you have a choice in LR - you can accept Adobe's (not Leica's) default or auto-cooking (which may amount to: toss every picture into a deep fryer for 3 minutes, whether it is cake batter, veggies, or fish). Or you can make adjustments to cook each picture yourself to your own taste. Or you can at least change the defaults and save them - and then every picture gets, perhaps, baked in a slow oven, or sauteed, or even simply pounded into picture-tartare. But it will be prepared for final consumption only in the post-processing.

Adobe calls their own raw format (which Leica uses) DNG, for Digital NeGative. Which emphasizes the point that what comes out of the camera is not the finished work (unless one only exhibits little orange or gray chips of plastic when using film).

Color slides and digital jpegs are cooked in the camera - they come out of the little box done and dusted, without much room for additional processing.

(Although even then, for serious published or exhibited work, even chromes got a lot of post-processing adjustment, in the pre-press processing, or in making darkroom dye-transfer or Cibachrome prints. Contrast masks, color correction, "unsharp masking"* and so on).

But in that case, the photographer - if they knew what they were doing and not just producing sleeping-aids (amateur slide shows) - often did far more in taking the picture than just setting aperture and shutter. Using polarizers, or 81A or 80A or other color filters over the lens for color balance and saturation control, fill-flash or graduated filters for contrast control, bracketing, and so on. Pre-processing at the moment of exposure - but still processing reality into a finished photograph.

_______________________

* the original darkroom sharpening technique, from which the Photoshop filter takes its name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking

Edited by adan
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Jeff Schewe’s books, ‘The Digital Negative’ and ‘The Digital Print’ will be enormously helpful for anyone who didn’t already know, for example, the basic concept Andy explained above.  There are many more such concepts, just as in darkroom days, for anyone looking for a good primer (with background history), from a smart guy involved with some of that history.

Jeff

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28 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

He said it was 3/4 of the image, not 3/4 of the time. Once again, tweaks can make ALL the difference between a decent rendering and a superb rendering, especially for a print. One person might take all day and never understand the reason(s) it’s not quite right (the OP), and another will take minutes or seconds.

Jeff

Where did I mention anything about time?

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12 hours ago, adan said:

On the original topic.

Yes, Leica tweaked the color profile of the M10 over the M(240) to bring up greens and blues a bit and suppress an overall red tint the 240 had (compared to M9). You have to use the "Embedded M10" profile to see that, however (Leica's idea of good colors) - using the "Adobe Standard" profile (Adobe's idea of good colors - see below) is not as pleasant and M9-ish.

 

Thank you very much for the heads up, I've been using the Adobe Standard profile not being aware that there is a Leica M10 profile!

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4 minutes ago, jdlaing said:

Where did I mention anything about time?

Just my phrasing...to suggest your point about the amount of an image that, I guess in your view, must be ‘salvaged’.  Salvaging would take lots of wasted time, and isn’t the topic... a bad pic is a bad pic.  But a good pic can’t be realized fully (in a well presented print, or to a lesser degree a screen view) without some PP.  And to me, that’s more like 90% of the importance  than 75%, since if it’s not done, it’s never great.

I think we’re debating principles more than percentages.

Jeff

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I have enjoyed this thread, not the least because it illustrates how people can often fail to grasp another's point of view. I particularly enjoyed the analogy with fish and chips for two reasons. First it reminds me of the many, many hours spent in the darkroom getting the colour balance etc. just right, only to be told that the print was too yellow or too blue or whatever. We all see colours very differently and that has to be born in mind. PP of digital images may be a pain but it pales into insignificance when compared to colour filters and test strips etc. in the darkroom. The second point is a little more light hearted as it takes me back to when I was working (on the railway). A colleague of mine was very partial to fish and chips but liked pepper rather than salt on it. One lunch time we popped into the local chippy and ordered cod and chips, Bob then sprinkled pepper on his only to find that what he had sprinkled was not pepper but the chocolate for the cappuccino, the look on his face as he watched it bubble up was a picture, I should have had a camera then. 

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12 minutes ago, Matlock said:

I particularly enjoyed the analogy with fish and chips

When I lived in England, a friend who was a social anthropologist ordered fish & chips on the street, then turned to me and asked, "Would you like the food? I only buy this for the newspaper wrap." Somehow we got along.

Edited by pico
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44 minutes ago, Matlock said:

PP of digital images may be a pain but it pales into insignificance when compared to colour filters and test strips etc. in the darkroom.

"The negative is the score - the print is the performance." - Ansel Adams.

And on the question of time or effort, Adams, like Gene Smith, often spent hours per picture dodging and burning in the darkroom.

"Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships." - also Ansel Adams.

"You have to do that (dodging and burning). Film (or a sensor) doesn't understand what the picture is all about." - Paul Fusco, in Masters of Contemporary Photography: The Photo Essay.

 

Edited by adan
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6 hours ago, Matlock said:

I have enjoyed this thread, not the least because it illustrates how people can often fail to grasp another's point of view. I particularly enjoyed the analogy with fish and chips for two reasons. First it reminds me of the many, many hours spent in the darkroom getting the colour balance etc. just right, only to be told that the print was too yellow or too blue or whatever. We all see colours very differently and that has to be born in mind. PP of digital images may be a pain but it pales into insignificance when compared to colour filters and test strips etc. in the darkroom. The second point is a little more light hearted as it takes me back to when I was working (on the railway). A colleague of mine was very partial to fish and chips but liked pepper rather than salt on it. One lunch time we popped into the local chippy and ordered cod and chips, Bob then sprinkled pepper on his only to find that what he had sprinkled was not pepper but the chocolate for the cappuccino, the look on his face as he watched it bubble up was a picture, I should have had a camera then. 

Hi Matlock

Thank you for your post that I liked most.

A cousin of mine who thinks / is a professional photographer has a Sony and to my disgust he points and shoots at any condition, day or night! He probably has no idea what aperture is, however he is probably a master of photoshop and produces some good results from time to time. That's how some people do it and its fine as it makes them happy! But what I fail to understand is that do you really need a Leica lens or M camera to get there? Post processing is so good these days you can do it with any camera or lens! 

I recall I was visiting V&A and after an hour or so I realised that using my M & Tri Elmar + 90mm f2 without a tripod is utterly hopeless. In desperation just to record a memory I pulled out my iPhone 8 Plus and it was incredible to learn what those tiny lenses were capable of!

What I am trying to say is that do we really appreciate the Leica lens we handle? What if Leica engineers think like some of us; why bother cooling the glass down for months & months before cutting it for lens,  photoshop will take care of the result! Photography in some respect has become like painting: you could do watercolour, Oil, acrylic, canvas, paper ......

Finally I quote someone in here: "It is like using film Leicas for Walmart prints exclusively". Indeed imagine that, what if your photos were so good that even Walmart can't ruin it!

I think I have to rest my case as I can't handle so many replies but no regret, I learned a lot

PS: the images are iPhone's and again I think small file sizes don’t do them justice. Also I may be exporting it wrong!

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Edited by nejad_b
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7 minutes ago, nejad_b said:

Hi Matlock

Thank you for your post that I liked most.

A cousin of mine who thinks / is a professional photographer has a Sony and to my disgust he points and shoots at any condition, day or night! He probably has no idea what aperture is, however he is probably a master of photoshop and produces some good results from time to time. That's how some people do it and its fine as it makes them happy! But what I fail to understand is that do you really need a Leica lens or M camera to get there? Post processing is so good these days you can do it with any camera or lens! 

I recall I was visiting V&A and after an hour or so I realised that using my M & Tri Elmar + 90mm f2 without a tripod is utterly hopeless. In desperation just to record a memory I pulled out my iPhone 8 Plus and it was incredible to learn what those tiny lenses were capable of!

What I am trying to say is that do we really appreciate the Leica lens we handle? What if Leica engineers think like some of us; why bother cooling the glass down for months, they can always photoshop the result!

I think I have to rest my case as I can't handle so many replies but no regret, I learned a lot

PS: the images are iPhone's and again the small file sizes don’t do them justice. Also I may be doing it wrong too!

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

You seem to be missing all the fundamentals. Leica optical engineers have brought out new lenses and upgraded others to support the extra definition that is available in digital files (negatives). Do you think they do not want the full potential of their lenses to be exploited? Do you think any of the images they use in their publicity have not been post processed?

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22 minutes ago, pedaes said:

You seem to be missing all the fundamentals. Leica optical engineers have brought out new lenses and upgraded others to support the extra definition that is available in digital files (negatives). Do you think they do not want the full potential of their lenses to be exploited? Do you think any of the images they use in their publicity have not been post processed?

Sir

You misunderstood me completely. 

What I tried to say - very obvious to me - is that all that hard work is for the lens to produce perfect result. I have no inside knowledge of inner working of Leica's publicity department

Edited by nejad_b
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Yes - the lens is optimized, so is the sensor, and yet you are content not to optimize the half-product that the camera produces? Rather a waste IMO.

You have a weird idea about postprocessing. It cannot create what is not there. What it can do is pull out the full potential that you wouldn't see otherwise and reproduce it to fit your vision. I suspect that your friend knows more about photography than you think or even can imagine.

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On 8/31/2019 at 1:34 AM, nejad_b said:

There is a big difference between then (film) and now. With film you complete the work in the darkroom. You only guessed the result at the time of taking the picture but with digital if you use an electronic viewfinder then aperture and EV setting combination are the tools you have. I am not saying using Lightroom is wrong, its just the question of one camera producing better result than the other. Let say if the fish & chips you get is cooked enough, you eat it and you don’t think of cooking it again

But sometimes you want your fish and chips battered. Sometimes you want it with a side of lemon and tartare sauce. And sometimes you want vinegar on your chips too. Post-processing is the sauce (and the extra bits) that make it come to life.

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