The SL2-S is making people look... wide?

[hellobrandonscott]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Haha, ok, sort of... I'm running into this weird situation where out of two or three frames, usually the last one (not always) of the set is making the scene look wide or distorted. Examples... (good on top, bad on bottom). FWIW, I'm using the electronic shutter when this is happening I think. Any correlation? 

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!

[Advertisement]

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

[beewee]

That’s really weird. Looks like a bug.

[beewee]

Did you upgrade to the latest FW version?

[gbealnz]

I'd say yes, the electronic shutter to be honest.

[Stuart Richardson]

The electronic shutter is not a global shutter, meaning it does not take the image all at once from the whole sensor. It reads the sensor line by line, which takes time. So even if your shutter speed is high, that is only for each individual line. The readout speed (the time to get all the information from the entire sensor) is slower. I am not sure of the exact number, but I think around 1/50th to 1/100th. In that time, if your subject is moving, the picture can be distorted. This is basically the same effect as rolling shutter is in videos. For any kind of photography that involves moving subjects, it is probably best to stick with the mechanical or hybrid shutter modes. Are you using the e shutter just to keep it silent at the weddings?

That said, these pictures look a bit different than I might expect from rolling shutter, but in a way they make sense. I suspect that you were panning the camera in the first frame, so it gave the man the impression that he is leaning. In the last picture, I suspect the camera is reading top to bottom (the top of the picture would be at the bottom of the sensor), so as the people are walking towards the camera, the readout for the feet are further away than the readout was for the heads, which gives them the impression of being quite a bit more stout than they likely are. Have you sent them to Leica? They might be better able to answer.

Edited June 29, 2021 by Stuart Richardson

[Gavin Cato]

I use electronic shutter 90% of the time with SL2 and don't get this. It looks to me like you may be moving the camera at the same time as shooting.

But I've never used a sl2-s.

 

[hellobrandonscott]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Yep, using the e-shutter to be silent at weddings.

Where/how does one send stuff like this to Leica?

[hellobrandonscott]

4 hours ago, Gavin Cato said:

I use electronic shutter 90% of the time with SL2 and don't get this. It looks to me like you may be moving the camera at the same time as shooting.

But I've never used a sl2-s.

 

I thought this too, but it’s also happening in a small burst sequence where a middle one is bad.

[nicci78]

It’s the e-shutter. That’s why I stopped using it. Results are unpredictable. You can experience distortion :  the longer the focal length is or/and the faster the subject moves. 
Mechanical is better and flawless. Albeit not silent. 

Edited June 30, 2021 by nicci78

[Gavin Cato]

1 hour ago, hellobrandonscott said:

I thought this too, but it’s also happening in a small burst sequence where a middle one is bad.

Ahh, crap. 

So it's either a bug or the sensor in the sl2-s just ain't that good at e-shooting.

 

[hansvons]

If these are DNGs, I'd look into into lens correction settings in the raw converter.

[BernardC]

Are these JPEG, or DNG, or both? The distorted shots are significantly wider than the straight shots, which points to lens correction (as hansvons noted).

 

The SL is so quiet that it never occurred to me to use e-shutter at weddings. You can barely hear it from a few feet away, you would need to be in a very echo-prone venue for it to be distracting.

[Slender]

I know the sensor readout on SL2 (for video) is about 14ms for FF and below 10ms for s35... I would assume the lower resolution SL2s would be even better (those number are really good... Lumix S1H is around 22-24ms for FF as an example.... and Hasselblad X1D 60ms I believe???). I used the electronic shutter extensively for a couple of days on a film set didn't experience any issues like this but I always switched back to mechanical whenever possible: I prefer the feel of it and you are fool-proof-peace-of-mind on top.

[Gavin Cato]

no, this isn't lens correction related. it looks like my SL2 does when shooting in electronic IF I move the camera quite a bit during the shot.

in other words I might see this as I burst a few photos and then when putting the camera down to my waist belt to grab my other camera, I accidentally press the shutter whilst putting it away and it takes a E shutter photo during the camera moving physically.

[Gavin Cato]

9 hours ago, BernardC said:

The SL is so quiet that it never occurred to me to use e-shutter at weddings. You can barely hear it from a few feet away, you would need to be in a very echo-prone venue for it to be distracting.

It is pretty quiet, but it's still louder than zero. During vows etc I'd rather be completely silent. Silent cameras are wonderful at weddings.

I switch to mechanical in artificially lit indoor venues. But thankfully 90% of my ceremonies are outdoors.

[hellobrandonscott]

On 6/30/2021 at 3:20 PM, Gavin Cato said:

It is pretty quiet, but it's still louder than zero. During vows etc I'd rather be completely silent. Silent cameras are wonderful at weddings.

I switch to mechanical in artificially lit indoor venues. But thankfully 90% of my ceremonies are outdoors.

Yep, basically this. Before realizing there was a trade-off, it seemed like a no-brainer to just be that much quieter, assuming there wasn't a price for doing so. Now that there is, using a mechanical shutter is by no means noisy, so not a problem to just use that instead. 

 

[laowai_]

On 6/30/2021 at 5:06 PM, Slender said:

I know the sensor readout on SL2 (for video) is about 14ms for FF and below 10ms for s35... I would assume the lower resolution SL2s would be even better (those number are really good... Lumix S1H is around 22-24ms for FF as an example.... and Hasselblad X1D 60ms I believe???). I used the electronic shutter extensively for a couple of days on a film set didn't experience any issues like this but I always switched back to mechanical whenever possible: I prefer the feel of it and you are fool-proof-peace-of-mind on top.

To put this on perspective and for references: 1/60 s is 16.7 ms, 1/30 s is 33.3 ms, 1/125 s is 8 ms

[Photoworks]

I shoot on film sets often with SL2 and there you can't have any sound.

The electronic shutter does have issues on LED lighting and rolling shutter . what you have is rolling shutter issues when moving.

This is not a isolated problem, all mirrorless camera have the same issues until we get global shutter.

to overcome some of this issues I will sometime use the Q2, the shutter is in the lens very quiet.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica L-Mount

[jaapv]

On 6/30/2021 at 6:46 AM, hellobrandonscott said:

Yep, using the e-shutter to be silent at weddings.

Where/how does one send stuff like this to Leica?

Why should one do this? It is a well-known effect of electronic shutters in general - on all brands.  Perfectly normal on nearly all CMOS sensors.  Slow focal plane shutters will do the same, known since the early 1900-rds.

Browse the forum, there are a number of threads on the subject.

 

 

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!

[Stuart Richardson]

As I thought about it a bit more, since this seems to happen to you at the end of a burst, it may well be that there is a slowdown in the data processing which then causes that last burst to read out even slower, which might be why the distortion is so obvious in those pictures. So the first shots have minimal distortions or issues, but as the buffer fulls or the camera gets overwhelmed, the readout of the sensor slows, which in this case would cause more obvious distortions.

I think it is totally reasonable to ask the Leica Customer Service department, and they can look at the DNGs and perhaps say whether this is just movement during the exposure, or a slow readout.