S3 monocolor (?)

[helged]

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Those using Lightroom and S3 have likely noticed that Lightroom's default colour profile - Adobe Color - is not the best for the S3. The profile LEICA S3 Color is, generally, better, but may need some slight adjustments as well. Interestingly, Adobe has included a monochrome profile for the S3 as well, named LEICA S3 Monochrome - so perhaps a monochrome version of the S3 is on the horizon...? The attachment shows the two S3 profiles as listed in the latest version of Adobe Lightroom Classic. 

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Edited September 13, 2020 by helged

[Stuart Richardson]

I am not sure if the presence of that profile means that there will be an S3 monochrome, but I suppose it is possible. I have also preferred the Leica S3 color profile, or my own custom profile, which is quite similar. As is typical with Adobe Profiles, it desaturates and shifts the tonality yellower in the skies, and overall I think the Leica S3 color profile has better separation and more accuracy in the greens and blues. It is slightly too saturated for my taste though. One important note, however, I found that using the Leica S3 color profile or my own custom profile substantially increased apparent noise and chroma contamination in high ISO images. So if you are boosting the shadows a lot or shooting at high ISO, the Adobe profile might be a better choice. It seems to desaturate the shadows, along with whatever else it does. They are clearly doing more than just shooting a color chart in two lighting scenarios...

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[mgrayson3]

Why would a monochrome camera require a color profile? I'm pretty sure that's a default BW conversion from the color sensor.

[Dsauro]

Sorry for the naive question, but I am new to Lightroom.  How do I pull in the S3 color profile?

 

 

[helged]

6 hours ago, mgrayson3 said:

Why would a monochrome camera require a color profile? I'm pretty sure that's a default BW conversion from the color sensor.

Good point, but the monocolor profile is grayed out (=inactive) if you chose bw in Lightroom. 

[helged]

4 hours ago, Dsauro said:

Sorry for the naive question, but I am new to Lightroom.  How do I pull in the S3 color profile?

 

 

In Lightroom's Develop module, near the top of the menu choices, you have the 'Profile Browser' panel (see photo in post #1). The used profile name is shown, in your case likely 'Adobe Color'. Click on this profile, and you get various profile options. You see the effect on the photo when the cursor is over the profile. By clicking on a profile, followed by 'Close', you activate the profile. By clicking on the star in the upper right corner of a profile, you short-list the profile in the 'Profile Browser' panel. 

[mgrayson3]

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6 hours ago, helged said:

Good point, but the monocolor profile is grayed out (=inactive) if you chose bw in Lightroom. 

Which also makes sense if the RAW is in color. A Monochrome profile gives B&W mode no color information to work with.

[helged]

1 hour ago, mgrayson3 said:

Which also makes sense if the RAW is in color. A Monochrome profile gives B&W mode no color information to work with.

Agree. But what is the purpose of the "Leica S3 Monochrome" profile? I ask since I don't know; it's rendering on a colour photo is identical to the "Leica S3 Color" profile (at least for my eyes).

Edited September 14, 2020 by helged

[Chaemono]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb helged:

Agree. But what is the purpose of the "Leica S3 Monochrome" profile? I ask since I don't know; it's rendering on a colour photo is identical to the "Leica S3 Color" profile (at least for my eyes).

Doesn't LR also show a Monochrome profile for the SL2?

[helged]

3 minutes ago, Chaemono said:

Doesn't LR also show a Monochrome profile for the SL2?

No, there is actually no dedicated profiles in Lightroom for SL2, at least not as I can see in Lightroom Photoshop Classic (9.4 release, Camera Raw 12.4). I attach a screenshot of the available profiles for SL2 (the flower picture) and S3 (bike picture); the dedicated Leica S3 profiles are listed under the heading "Profiles (2)".

Regarding post #8: There are some differences between the "LEICA S3 Color" and "Leica S3 Monochrome" profiles (both giving a colour image), but this doesn't explain the presence of "Leica S3 Monochrome", at least for me... 

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[SrMi]

Assuming that S3, M10-R and M10-Monochrom share the same 'kind' of sensor, it should be feasible to create an S3 Monochrome.

[Stuart Richardson]

All sensors are monochrome...the color filter is added, so it is more about the market they anticipate, rather than feasability, which if anything is actually much easier than having a color camera...

[Jeff S]

3 hours ago, Stuart Richardson said:

All sensors are monochrome...the color filter is added, so it is more about the market they anticipate, rather than feasability, which if anything is actually much easier than having a color camera...

Reinforced by the fact that the M10 Monochrom was finished and released well before the M10-R.  Leica execs told us about the extra time required to deal with the color array and associated issues.

Jeff

[Dsauro]

On 9/13/2020 at 10:29 PM, helged said:

In Lightroom's Develop module, near the top of the menu choices, you have the 'Profile Browser' panel (see photo in post #1). The used profile name is shown, in your case likely 'Adobe Color'. Click on this profile, and you get various profile options. You see the effect on the photo when the cursor is over the profile. By clicking on a profile, followed by 'Close', you activate the profile. By clicking on the star in the upper right corner of a profile, you short-list the profile in the 'Profile Browser' panel. 

Hi Helged.

Thank you for the instruction and great tip.  I am fortunate that my office looks over a mountain and I can take a quick pic of the mountains, sky and clouds and then immediately import them into LR and view the resulting capture on my eizo monitor.  I can then compare the natural view and the image in the monitor immediately and basically in real time.

I ran such a test with the S3 profile, the adobe standard profile, as well as David Farkas’s presets.  I can say unequivocally that the S3 profile replicates colors spot on!   The blues (as well as earth tones) are not as nuclear as in the adobe profile., and to my eye match great.  This provides me utmost flexibility when I print and gives me a true starting point for any artistic direction I choose.

I am not generally a fan of presets as I think every image, assuming proper exposure, focus, composition etc., should stand on its own.  But profiles, especially the S3 profile, are invaluable in getting a great start point to the evolution of the final print.

I haven’t tried reds, or saturated colors yet, but am excited to see what the S3 profile yields with these colors.

Thanks again for the tip.  Very much appreciated 

[helged]

2 hours ago, Dsauro said:

Hi Helged.

Thank you for the instruction and great tip.  I am fortunate that my office looks over a mountain and I can take a quick pic of the mountains, sky and clouds and then immediately import them into LR and view the resulting capture on my eizo monitor.  I can then compare the natural view and the image in the monitor immediately and basically in real time.

I ran such a test with the S3 profile, the adobe standard profile, as well as David Farkas’s presets.  I can say unequivocally that the S3 profile replicates colors spot on!   The blues (as well as earth tones) are not as nuclear as in the adobe profile., and to my eye match great.  This provides me utmost flexibility when I print and gives me a true starting point for any artistic direction I choose.

I am not generally a fan of presets as I think every image, assuming proper exposure, focus, composition etc., should stand on its own.  But profiles, especially the S3 profile, are invaluable in getting a great start point to the evolution of the final print.

I haven’t tried reds, or saturated colors yet, but am excited to see what the S3 profile yields with these colors.

Thanks again for the tip.  Very much appreciated 

+1. And here is David Farkas' discussion about Lightroom and profiles (for those havn't seen it): https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2020/04/lightroom-presets-for-leica-cameras/. And a forum thread: 

 

[mgrayson3]

10 hours ago, helged said:

+1. And here is David Farkas' discussion about Lightroom and profiles (for those havn't seen it): https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2020/04/lightroom-presets-for-leica-cameras/. And a forum thread: 

 

+2

I strongly recommend that everyone try some of these presets. Not because I think they're better, whatever that means, but because they show how much difference different presets can make. When you choose a different Adobe preset, all the sliders change, except you can't see them move, because they are the new Zero. With a User Preset, you can see what actually changed. The point, and David makes it right at the top of his post, is that there is no such thing as "out of camera" for RAW shooters. And comparing different cameras is, in large part, comparing their default or user choice of profiles.

And I'd LOVE an S(007) profile to match the S(006) as David did for the M9. I'll ask (beg, plead...)

Edited September 16, 2020 by mgrayson3

[Stuart Richardson]

It is quite interesting to see how different the tastes can be. I have not tried the presets, but I disagree with many of David's suggestions in the article, particularly in regarding to profiles, noise reduction and sharpening. Basically, I think Adobe profiles tend to look less natural than custom profiles, though I agree that they do a better job with high ISO images and mixed lighting. I think sharpening is better tailored to the image than generic, though I do have a generic setting a start with, and I think noise reduction in general is to be avoided, so I generally baseline all my noise reduction at all ISO settings to 0 for luminance noise reduction and 5 for color noise reduction (which may go up to 30 for high ISO images). With the S system at least, all the profile corrections are turned off, as is the checkbox for removing chromatic aberration (which with most APO Leica lenses can cause as many problems as it solves). In general, I think most of these interventions do less to help the image than to take it further away from natural. As an example, I found that the profile corrections with the 120mm APO summicron actually make the image less sharp, as the lens has almost zero distortion and CA to begin with, so the very slight transformation actually shifts the pixels slightly and softens the image. It is not helping you at all...in fact the opposite. The only S lens that I have used that really benefits is the zoom, because it has strong and variable distortion at the different focal lengths.

The default luminance noise reduction simply reduces detail for no good reason...at low ISOs the grain is nearly invisible, so you are just making your image look plastic...it is like putting an AA filter back on the camera. Color noise reduction is very important in terms of controlling chroma noise, but it becomes effective almost immediately at a setting of 1 or 2. Beyond 10 or so and you start killing your finely detail colors. In certain images this is not an issue, but when dealing with images with a lot of saturated high frequency detail, you can really get in trouble. So for example, if you have a scene where you are photographing a landscape and there are flowers in the distance, turn off the color noise reduction and turn it back on again and see just how much fine color detail you lose at the standard 25 setting. It can be quite dramatic! I found with the S cameras at lower ISOs you generally don't need more than 5 to have an image completely free of any chroma noise. The same goes for the presence section of clarity, texture and dehaze, all of which are useful, but very very easily misused tools which can make an image look unnatural with even a few points applied.

I know Adobe has worked with Leica to develop settings for their cameras, but in general I think they are more used to working with companies who make lower quality lenses and whose cameras need more sharpening, and consequently the standard sharpening, color and noise reduction all seem to be rather far from ideal.

Edited September 16, 2020 by Stuart Richardson

[ZHNL]

I tried S007 preset from Reddotforum just now out of my curiosity. tested a few images. Disappointed! Way too contrasty and saturation to my taste , (texture 10, clarity to 10, dehaze to 5, vibrance to 15 and saturation to 11 and over sharpened???) It kills tonarity of otherwise superb Medium format S files. 

I would way prefer just a "profile" than a few slider change if there is one for S007 to mimic S006/S2.

For S, I used adobe neutral and standard as base most of time and think they did a good job. Those profile don't over stressed raw to kill tonarity. (that is why you want a good raw to start with, profile is not free lunch to boost or subdue different color channel) For me, Color and mid tone is still better with 006 even i do prefer 007 images to most FF output.  

[ZHNL]

Hi, Helged, Stuart, 

Since both of you have both 006 and S3, do you have any comment about color and tone difference between the two? 

I am very curious to hear your opinions. 

Thanks. 

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[Stuart Richardson]

I traded in my S006 when I got the S3, so I have not been able to compare the exact same scenes and lighting. So far, I would say that I prefer the pictures from the S006, but I am trying to sort out my issues. I seem to be largely alone in my feelings, but my manner of working does not seem to mesh well with the new sensor. If I cannot resolve the issue, then I will either return it or resell it with an extremely heavy heart.