M10M gate coming?

[Hanno]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

2 hours ago, jplomley said:

Well, LR is the RAW processor recommended by Leica, 

Just as a side note, and not to distract from the rest of your post,  but as an update, I think that the above statement is no longer true. It seems to me that Leica promote even more C1 than LR but at least they promote both.

https://en.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-SL/Leica-SL2/Workflow

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[adan]

So let's see if this adds any "clarity."

First, here is the entire .DNG as it came from the camera at default ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) settings. I show this because I noticed how much distortion there is in the original, and in particular that the top and bottom of the dark gray wall are not "squared up," either with each other, or with the bottom of the picture, as they are in your final .DNG.

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!

"A-Haaa," sez I, I sez. "He must have cleaned up the distortion with the same tools I have in ACR." But when I looked in the ACR Lens Corrections controls that were saved in your .DNG - they were all neutral (zeroed out). Something else must have been used to straighten up the picture, that my 8--year-old ACR hasn't heard of. And of course that would probably be the "Auto-Transform" settings you applied in LR.

So I took the default original, and duplicated all your settings that I could (exposure, clarity, sharpening, NR, etc. etc.) - except for the "unavailable" LR Auto-Transformations. I then used the ACR "lens corrections" controls to manually try to achieve the same transformations and crop (gray wall and window grille all squared up to the frame edges).

To cut to the chase, here is how a "waffle-y" part of the picture (right of man's hip) came out in 3 versions: direct from the camera; as processed by LR by you; and as processed by ACR with manual transforming (but identical sharpening, NR, clarity, exposures, etc. etc. settings to your version).

I notice your version is upscaled very sightly - the details are a tad bigger than in 100% views straight from camera, or via my ACR (see wall blob right)..

(click to enlarge)

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by adan

[adan]

As to why this happens with the M10-M and not the M10-R or SL-2.

The most obvious difference is that the latter two are color digital cameras. The original "image" as captured, is a checkerboard of pure red and green and blue pixels.

.DNG images from those cameras must be "demosaiced" - which means brightness data is swapped around and borrowed ("interpolated") between neighboring pixels so that the green, red and blue pixels eventually come out as all three colors in varying amounts.

That means the neighboring pixels have been "averaged together" or blurred together slightly - no pixels stand alone. That happens in post-processing - automatically, behind the scenes.

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

The Monochrom, as gobert says, is a different duck. It does not need to be de-mosaiced like a color-sensor camera. Each pixel stands alone and the transitions between pixels are not "smoothed" by sharing data with their neighbors.

Which is why a Monochrom image is about 1.4x sharper than an M10-R with the same megapixels, and one of its key advantages and selling.

However, the Monochrom's clear, sharp uninterpolated transitions from pixel to pixel are therefore more prone to acquiring artifacts if the images is scaled or distorted in post-processing.

The pixel grid of an image has to remain a pixel grid. If you start twisting or stretching the pixel locations, they have to snap back to fill the grid, by the computer interpolating new pixels to patch any holes or overlaps caused by scaling or transforming.

If you upscale an image 20%, there will be a "missing" pixel every 5 pixels,

••••••••••••••••>

•••• •••• •••• ••••

.....that the computer has to re-create by interpolation (i.e. educated guesswork). If you scale in two dimensions, the interpolated pixels may in fact create overlapping "scaled patterns" like the row of dots with gaps in it, times 2. Which results in the waffle pattern (or something similar).

Here's a question - does the LR auto-transform have any setting controls, such as using different interpolation methods "Bicubic auto, smoother, sharper, nearest neighbor, bilinear")?

Photoshop's transformation tools allow the user to pick an interpolation method to best suit what is being done (scaling smaller, scaling larger, distorting, perspective, etc.)

[jplomley]

26 minutes ago, adan said:

So let's see if this adds any "clarity."

First, here is the entire .DNG as it came from the camera at default ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) settings. I show this because I noticed how much distortion there is in the original, and in particular that the top and bottom of the dark gray wall are not "squared up," either with each other, or with the bottom of the picture, as they are in your final .DNG.

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!

"A-Haaa," sez I, I sez. "He must have cleaned up the distortion with the same tools I have in ACR." But when I looked in the ACR Lens Corrections controls that were saved in your .DNG - they were all neutral (zeroed out). Something else must have been used to straighten up the picture, that my 8--year-old ACR hasn't heard of. And of course that would probably be the "Auto-Transform" settings you applied in LR.

So I took the default original, and duplicated all your settings that I could (exposure, clarity, sharpening, NR, etc. etc.) - except for the "unavailable" LR Auto-Transformations. I then used the ACR "lens corrections" controls to manually try to achieve the same transformations and crop (gray wall and window grille all squared up to the frame edges).

To cut to the chase, here is how a "waffle-y" part of the picture (right of man's hip) came out in 3 versions: direct from the camera; as processed by LR with auto-transform; and as processed by ACR with manual transforming (but identical sharpening, NR, clarity, exposures, etc. etc. settings to your version).

I notice your version is upscaled very sightly - the details are a tad bigger than in 100% views straight from camera, or via my ACR (see wall blob right)..

(click to enlarge)

 

Thank-you Adan, very interesting. Hmmm, so seems LR is the culprit here. Do you observe the same trend for the image with waffling in the sky? 

Image was scaled up slightly for printing from PS prior to a final round of sharpening. Do you also have the most updated version of ACR to compare against your 8 year old version? I assume it would perform analogously to LR. One other difference between LR and ACR is the Detail slider; absent in ACR but present in LR. By decreasing the Detail slide in LR, the waffling also becomes less noticeable.  But that is not the root cause of the problem. Seems its the re-mapping of the image when transforming.

As a side note, because I shoot with the 24 Elmar for street, I often do not have the luxury of ensuring everything in the image is perfect before tripping the shutter. Hence a reliance on post-acquisition processing to tidy things up.

[jplomley]

5 minutes ago, adan said:

As to why this happens with the M10-M and not the M10-R or SL-2.

The most obvious difference is that the latter two are color digital cameras. The original "image" as captured, is a checkerboard of pure red and green and blue pixels.

.DNG images from those cameras must be "demosaiced" - which means brightness data is swapped around and borrowed ("interpolated") between neighboring pixels so that the green, red and blue pixels eventually come out as all three colors in varying amounts.

That means the neighboring pixels have been "averaged together" or blurred together slightly - no pixels stand alone. That happens in post-processing - automatically, behind the scenes.

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

The Monochrom, as gobert says, is a different duck. It does not need to be de-mosaiced like a color-sensor camera. Each pixel stands alone and the transitions between pixels are not "smoothed" by sharing data with their neighbors.

Which is why a Monochrom image is about 1.4x sharper than an M10-R with the same megapixels, and one of its key advantages and selling.

However, the Monochrom's clear, sharp uninterpolated transitions from pixel to pixel are therefore more prone to acquiring artifacts if the images is scaled or distorted in post-processing.

The pixel grid of an image has to remain a pixel grid. If you start twisting or stretching the pixel locations, they have to snap back to fill the grid, by the computer interpolating new pixels to patch any holes or overlaps caused by scaling or transforming.

If you upscale an image 20%, there will be a "missing" pixel every 5 pixels,

••••••••••••••••>

•••• •••• •••• ••••

.....that the computer has to re-create by interpolation (i.e. educated guesswork). If you scale in two dimensions, the interpolated pixels may in fact create overlapping "scaled patterns" like the row of dots with gaps in it, times 2. Which results in the waffle pattern (or something similar).

Here's a question - does the LR auto-transform have any setting controls, such as using different interpolation methods "Bicubic auto, smoother, sharper, nearest neighbor, bilinear")?

Photoshop's transformation tools allow the user to pick an interpolation method to best suit what is being done (scaling smaller, scaling larger, distorting, perspective, etc.)

Unfortunately the LR auto-transform does not have any setting controls.

[frame-it]

i really like this shot of the man..

anyways...

 

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!

[jplomley]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

1 hour ago, frame-it said:

i really like this shot of the man..

anyways...

 

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!

Cheers for the feedback! When there are no artifacts, it is an incredible imaging tool. Nothing else like it for B&W digital.  

[Likaleica]

6 hours ago, frame-it said:

i really like this shot of the man..

anyways...

 

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!

Great beard!

[jplomley]

On 6/3/2021 at 9:57 PM, hdmesa said:

Would someone with this issue share a DNG file of one of the offending images? I would like to try editing the image in Capture One using its Dehaze tool to see if the problem exists in both applications. I'm about to buy an M10M, and if the issue is limited to Lightroom, I'll be fine since I use Capture One.

I downloaded a bunch of DNG samples from DPR, and in Capture One with +100 Dehaze and +100 Shadows, I'm not seeing any issue.

Any chance to process the DNG's in Phase One? Extremely curious if the artifacts are specific to LR.

[hdmesa]

19 hours ago, jplomley said:

Any chance to process the DNG's in Phase One? Extremely curious if the artifacts are specific to LR.

Will do. Have family from out of town visiting, but I want to check for the vertical line artifacts when I get a chance.

[hdmesa]

On 6/6/2021 at 8:25 AM, jplomley said:

https://shared-assets.adobe.com/link/ba32f172-e8a7-4ae5-50eb-bc070d672584

Link provided for both DNG and edited PSD files.

3264-line down right hand side when lifting shadows

2463-white line down right hand side

2892+2053-waffle pattern when straightening the image in lightroom manually or using Transform>Auto function

3178 + 2432-line on top centre when adjusting clarity and dehaze

Looking forward to whether or not Phase One processor solves the issue. I suspect this is a combination of a bad sensor and/or signal processing board

 

In Capture One:

• No waffle patterns when rotating
• No black vertical lines with +100 clarity +100 dehaze (with or without +100 shadows)
• There is a white line on 2463 when pushing clarity and dehaze mildly

Assumptions based on this: White line is probably a bad write to the SD card or some other random in-camera glitch. For the dark lines, Lightroom must be processing the image in quadrants, and this breaks down on DNG images from the M10-R/M10M sensor, with the monochrome images without a Bayer color filter array making the issue much more visible. For the waffle pattern, that is probably also bad code in Lightroom.

Cool photos, by the way. Thanks for sharing the DNGs. This makes me much more comfortable about adding an M10M since I use Capture One.

Edited June 9, 2021 by hdmesa

[jplomley]

38 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

In Capture One:

• No waffle patterns when rotating
• No black vertical lines with +100 clarity +100 dehaze (with or without +100 shadows)
• There is a white line on 2463 when pushing clarity and dehaze mildly

Assumptions based on this: White line is probably a bad write to the SD card or some other random in-camera glitch. For the dark lines, Lightroom must be processing the image in quadrants, and this breaks down on DNG images from the M10-R/M10M sensor, with the monochrome images without a Bayer color filter array making the issue much more visible. For the waffle pattern, that is probably also bad code in Lightroom.

Cool photos, by the way. Thanks for sharing the DNGs. This makes me much more comfortable about adding an M10M since I use Capture One.

Many thanks Sir. I will be purchasing Capture One then to optimize raw processing on the M10M files and just keep LR for cataloging. 

[Jeff S]

42 minutes ago, jplomley said:

Many thanks Sir. I will be purchasing Capture One then to optimize raw processing on the M10M files and just keep LR for cataloging. 

You might want to share your experience with Adobe.  I haven’t experienced any problems with my LR edits, with the M10M or other, but I have always treaded lightly with de-haze, clarity and rotations.  LR also integrates well with IP for my final edits and printing.  
 

Jeff

[jplomley]

19 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

You might want to share your experience with Adobe.  I haven’t experienced any problems with my LR edits, with the M10M or other, but I have always treaded lightly with de-haze, clarity and rotations.  LR also integrates well with IP for my final edits and printing.  
 

Jeff

Glad to hear the M10M is working out Jeff. As I did not experience the issues with the first M10M I had, I’m still suspecting LR is not the only culprit here. Sigh...

[Jeff S]

So far, so good.  But still a long way from putting it through a full range of situations and conditions. Hope you resolve your concerns.

Jeff

[RMF]

Yes, you might share your LR observations (with the M10M .dng's) in the Adobe community forum.  BTW- LR update v10.3 came out a couple of days ago.

 

 

 

 

.

Edited June 9, 2021 by RMF

[digger1914]

7 hours ago, jplomley said:

Many thanks Sir. I will be purchasing Capture One then to optimize raw processing on the M10M files and just keep LR for cataloging. 

I downloaded your 3264 image and if I set Shadow and Black each to 100 in Capture One I see a black line running north - south on the suit on the right of the photo.

 

BTW I do not get the same thing with my M10M shots

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 June 9, 2021 by digger1914

[Gobert]

Inspired by David, I took 5 recent pictures and had them processed in both PS and LR ( windows version).
I did anything to the extreme that can be done, and what you normally never would do, but I could not get any black line on the screen.

Conclusion: it seems not Adobe to blame. Although not in the windows version.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[hdmesa]

14 hours ago, digger1914 said:

I downloaded your 3264 image and if I set Shadow and Black each to 100 in Capture One I see a black line running north - south on the suit on the right of the photo.

 

BTW I do not get the same thing with my M10M shots

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!

Ok, so maybe this isn't just Lightroom after all. Lloyd Chambers also thinks it's still a sensor issue and not Lightroom, though Capture One may show the issue to a different degree. I think I'll go back to holding off on purchasing an M10M and put that money toward a nice lens. Not sure I want to roll the dice with a $9K bet on the table.

 

[Gobert]

Mine is perfect. And when it is perfect it is an amazing tool.

I would suggest to buy one and agree with the dealer to make some test shots and process those before finally accepting the camera.