3rd Party IR/UV filters

[sean_reid]

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Appreciate the extra info on filters. Heliopans sounds like the go!

(I grabbed brochures on Heliopans at Photokina last year, so I will seek a supplier here in Australia)

 

Thanks again.

 

You're drawing a different conclusion from this thread than I would have. What focal lengths are you filtering?

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

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[usefeet]

Hi Sean,

 

I have a couple of free Leica filters on the way (46mm), ..been waiting a month though!

 

But in this case (thread) I was particularly in need of a filter for my 21/f2.8 asph (55mm), and i see that heliopan emphasize that their slim filters are especially good for Leica wide angle lenses, and for Leica Summilux lenses.

Also have the 28/f2.0 asph, 35/f2.0 asph and up, ..more filters needed here!

 

Regards,

william

[sean_reid]

Hi Sean,

 

I have a couple of free Leica filters on the way (46mm), ..been waiting a month though!

 

But in this case (thread) I was particularly in need of a filter for my 21/f2.8 asph (55mm), and i see that heliopan emphasize that their slim filters are especially good for Leica wide angle lenses, and for Leica Summilux lenses.

Also have the 28/f2.0 asph, 35/f2.0 asph and up, ..more filters needed here!

 

Regards,

william

 

For the 21 you'll find that the in-camera corrections will match better if you use the Leica filter. Again, I'd recommend the "Leica" filters for 24 mm and wider lenses.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[@bumac]

I have a B&W 486 Serie 7 on my 1,4/35 without coding and it is working really well.

[leseinne]

just received my B&W IR filter, will test it next week.

 

by the way i strongly recommend this site for BW filter :

 

Willkommen bei Foto Huppert

 

yes it is in German but they do sell to international , have a big stock , a lightning speed shipment and great advices !

 

you can contact Michael directly in case of problems / questions at info@foto-huppert.de

 

he does speak english

 

Jerome

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Hi Sean,

 

I have a couple of free Leica filters on the way (46mm), ..been waiting a month though!

 

But in this case (thread) I was particularly in need of a filter for my 21/f2.8 asph (55mm), and i see that heliopan emphasize that their slim filters are especially good for Leica wide angle lenses, and for Leica Summilux lenses.

Also have the 28/f2.0 asph, 35/f2.0 asph and up, ..more filters needed here!

 

Regards,

william

 

STOP reading marketing BS, they are trying to sell filters. For 21mm i would certainly use the leica filters since the firmware is fine tuned for them and you will clean up better than any other filter used.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

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For the 21 you'll find that the in-camera corrections will match better if you use the Leica filter. Again, I'd recommend the "Leica" filters for 24 mm and wider lenses.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

 

Folks you need to READ this and go with what folks like Sean and I recommend and have been recommending all along. With the wide angles you WILL get better results from the Leica filters. The firmware is tuned for leica filters period. From 24mm down i would not use anything but the leica filters. It completely takes out any residual cast or drift that using the IR filters create.

[Guest tummydoc]

Folks you need to READ this and go with what folks like Sean and I recommend and have been recommending all along. With the wide angles you WILL get better results from the Leica filters. The firmware is tuned for leica filters period. From 24mm down i would not use anything but the leica filters. It completely takes out any residual cast or drift that using the IR filters create.

 

The firmware poses an average-value correction for each specified lens. The efficacy changes with differing light sources and at differing apertures. Therefore the use of a different marque of IR filter might indeed show more or less correction than the Leica filter, but under circumstances where the firmware under-corrects with a Leica filter, the B+W or Heliopan will actually correct better. I have both Leica and Heliopan filters for my 21mms (ASPH and non-ASPH) and find that slight additional correction with PanoTools is required in many instances with either filter. Since I've found time and again that the anti-reflective coatings of the Heliopan are far and away more effective at reducing reflections, flare, and ghosting, I prefer them. That's why I chose to pay for the Heliopans and put the free Leica filters in my bag as emergency spares.

[Guest guy_mancuso]

But Vinay the firmware is specifically tuned to the Leica filters be it we like it or not it is still tuned to Leica filters specs and it cleans up better than any B+W that I have seen and B+W will leave a global green cast although very slight it is there. Now Helipan i have yet to test but it is closer to the leica spec so i could assume it maybe better than the B+W. Now filter flare and reflections i honestly have not seen much of it in my work although i have seen it in others but that could be also because any filter can cause a problem on occasion too.

[Guest tummydoc]

But Vinay the firmware is specifically tuned to the Leica filters be it we like it or not it is still tuned to Leica filters specs

 

Let me try another approach at explaining it.

 

Under circumstances (light source and or aperture) where the Leica filters present more cyan vignetting than the firmware's average-value assumes, a different filter that presents less cyan vignetting than Leica's filter, is more "tuned" to the firmware. Conversely, under light and/or aperture situations where the Leica filters present less cyan vignetting than the firmware's average-value assumes, a different filter that presents more cyan vignetting than Leica's filter, would be more "tuned" to the firmware. In short, the firmware is not "tuned" to the Leica filters because the firmware's correction, whilst lens-specific, is otherwise a fixed applpication, yet cyan vignetting is variable even with a Leica IR filter. If there is a "global" green cast to the B+W then it would be a simple matter of a "global" colour correction in C1 profile. Heaven knows that the M8 requires significant colour correction in many instances regardless of filters. But to me it's a moot point because I found the B+W 486, a single-coated non-MRC filter, to be as poorly anti-reflective as the Leica filters. In addition to flare and ghosting caused by reflections off the inner surface, the greater percentage of incoming light excluded by the more-reflective filters contributes to lessened image contrast. Subtle, I doubt it could be shown on the web, but there in the print for the discerning eye. And contrary to erroneous belief, lowering contrast at the incoming level does not help prevent highlight clipping whilst preserving shadow detail. Quite the contrary, it narrows the tonal range.

[wattsy]

I've recently switched back to the B+W 486 filters for my 28/F2 and 35/F2 lenses. I often shoot with strong evening or morning light coming directly into the frame and I was finding that the Leica filters were too often introducing an annoying rainbow coloured splodge of flare into the shot. This is a problem I hadn't encountered during many months using the B+W filters (though the B+W filters are not perfect as I find these quite prone to showing reflected light sources when shooting at night).

[usefeet]

Sean & Guy, thanks for your advice.

 

My (free) 46mm Leica UV/IR filters arrived today. I noticed the coating reflect a color very different from any other filter I have owned (mostly B+W MRC).

 

A note with the filter said, " Please ensure that your LEICA M8 has a firmware version higher than 1.10". That's OK, ..I need to move up from my existing 1.094.

 

Question:

The note also instructs, "Leica 6-bit coded lenses are necessary for the use of this filter".

Why is this?

 

William

[sean_reid]

Sean & Guy, thanks for your advice.

 

My (free) 46mm Leica UV/IR filters arrived today. I noticed the coating reflect a color very different from any other filter I have owned (mostly B+W MRC).

 

A note with the filter said, " Please ensure that your LEICA M8 has a firmware version higher than 1.10". That's OK, ..I need to move up from my existing 1.094.

 

Question:

The note also instructs, "Leica 6-bit coded lenses are necessary for the use of this filter".

Why is this?

 

William

 

William,

 

There's a lot of good information about this on my site that you might want to read. There, you'll get an introduction to cyan drift, which is the visual consequence of red vignetting. It's only an noticeable problem with 35 mm and wider lenses. The M8 corrects for it when coded lenses are used.

 

Sometimes people confuse this issue by mistakenly referring to "cyan vignetting" (which is not what happens) or "cyan cast" (which is also not the case because the color change does not go across the frame). Some people shorten this to "cyan corners" which is true but incomplete. The drift to cyan begins at a certain area in the lens' image circle and increases in intensity in locations that are further and further off axis.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[sean_reid]

Under circumstances (light source and or aperture) where the Leica filters present more cyan vignetting than the firmware's average-value assumes, a different filter that presents less cyan vignetting than Leica's filter, is more "tuned" to the firmware.

 

Vinay,

 

You've written "cyan vignetting" several times when I think you mean to refer to red vignetting which shows as cyan drift. The filters do not vignette cyan. It's quite the opposite actually.

 

Your point, otherwise, is that there may be some subjects and some lighting conditions in which the combination of certain filters (not only Leica) on UW lenses will work well with the firmware. That's a reasonable point.

 

But on the whole, given that lighting conditions, etc. can vary, the Leica filters tend to work better with the UW lenses than the other two if one is allowing the camera's firmware to correct the cyan drift. If one is using Cornerfix, any of the filters can work well.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[sean_reid]

And contrary to erroneous belief, lowering contrast at the incoming level does not help prevent highlight clipping whilst preserving shadow detail. Quite the contrary, it narrows the tonal range.

 

Vinay,

 

Would you like to expand on this argument? I'm curious.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[ho_co]

Sean--

I want neither to raise hackles nor to be seen as overly curmudgeonly; please consider the following as an intellectual argument:

 

You are correct that it is the removal of red toward the edges that causes cyan drift in images made with wide angles and UV/IR-cut filters, just as it is the diminishment of light toward the edges of images that causes the shadowing that we identify as 'vignetting.'

 

That is, it is a vignetting of red which causes a cyan drift; and in this sense it is improper to speak of a cyan vignetting. I understand and accept the argument.

 

On the other hand, we normally refer to an increased shadowing toward the edges of an image as "vignetting." Technically, the fact that the edges are darker is not the vignetting, but the _sign_ of vignetting. That is, vignetting refers to an increasing reduction of light toward the edges of an image, which makes itself felt by darker edges. Or again, the lens that exhibits vignetting isn't actually darkening the edges, but is instead failing to transmit adequate light to keep the edges bright.

 

However, I don't think most of us think of vignetting in that way. We tend to see vignetting as a darkening toward the edges. We say "that lens vignettes," by which we mean that images made by that lens have a kind of darkening from the center to the edges. Normally there's no color cast to the darkening; the image just gets darker.

 

By extension, therefore, even if it's technically inaccurate, I think it's natural to refer to "cyan vignetting" simply in the sense that the images in question exhibit a pattern of light fall-off toward the edges that is the same as what we normally call 'vignetting,' except that in this case the vignetting isn't of all colors equally (i.e. gray), but rather exhibits the color cyan.

 

Or: "It's just like vignetting, except it's cyan." Or: "This combination exhibits vignetting, but it's cyan." Or: "This appears to be cyan vignetting."

 

There are two different linguistic usages involved: We are dealing not with a vignetting _of_ the color cyan, but rather with a vignetting that _is_ cyan. We are dealing with a vignetting of the color red, which manifests itself as a vignetting which is the color cyan. In the one case (vignetting of a color) we are using the noun adjectivally, while in the other we are using the adjective: It is red vignetting (noun used adjectivally, 'red' answering the question "vignetting of what wavelengths?") which produces cyan vignetting (the adjective 'cyan' answering the question "what color is the vignetting?" or "describe the vignetting").

 

----------------------

 

I've tried to analyze what I think is the mental process that is present when people refer to 'cyan vignetting' instead of 'red vignetting which manifests itself as a cyan drift.' I think that in common English usage there's room for both expressions, even though one may be technically preferred.

 

Similarly, we refer to filters which transmit yellow as "yellow filters" and to filters which transmit red as "red filters," but we accept the technically reverse designation "UV/IR filter" (as in the thread name) when what we wanted to say is "UV/IR-cut filter."

 

Consider, flame and refute!

 

--HC

[wlaidlaw]

Howard,

 

There is much in what you say. After all we call a red coloured filter "a red filter" although it is acutally filtering green and blue light out.

 

Wilson

[Guest tummydoc]

Vinay,

 

You've written "cyan vignetting" several times when I think you mean to refer to red vignetting which shows as cyan drift. The filters do not vignette cyan. It's quite the opposite actually.

 

I comprehend the actual phenomenon. To describe the greening that intensifies toward the corners I merely used a term that others have used frequently.

 

But on the whole, given that lighting conditions, etc. can vary, the Leica filters tend to work better with the UW lenses than the other two if one is allowing the camera's firmware to correct the cyan drift.

 

On the whole, lighting conditions do vary, and, on the whole, the camera's firmware correction doesn't compensate for it. Therefore, on the whole, there is no on the whole. It's a matter of degree and acceptibility. At other than optimal conditions, there is either residual cyan or residual red, with any of these filters. The only thing that varies is the single condition where the filter and software and lighting conditions all come together for complete neutrality.

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[Guest guy_mancuso]

Honestly after thousands of images with the leica filters on my WATE, 28 and 35 cron i get absolutely zero side effects. My images in the corners always are dead on with regards to clean up. Maybe with shooting test images may not be the case but real world there is not any issues.

 

Indoors with a 28 cron and outdoors with a WATE at 18mm, there is just nothing there that is wrong with them in the corners.

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[Guest tummydoc]

Honestly after thousands of images with the leica filters on my WATE, 28 and 35 cron i get absolutely zero side effects. My images in the corners always are dead on with regards to clean up. Maybe with shooting test images may not be the case but real world there is not any issues.

 

Indoors with a 28 cron and outdoors with a WATE at 18mm, there is just nothing there that is wrong with them in the corners.

 

I'm sure those are your findings. I have shot almost a thousand images now and I would say that at least 50% of them exhibit some degree of under- or over-correction from the firmware. It's very slight, and most people probably wouldn't notice. I can see what appears to be a cyan cast in the upper right corner of your second shot. Let's face it, most people don't notice that Leica gives better results than Canon or Nikon, but we do Nonetheless I do not see that the Leica filters correct better than Heliopans. What I do see is that Leica filters flare more, and that is a more serious issue to me. I can easily apply a simple global colour correction, but covering-up the effects of filter flare is a major challenge that I'm not up to.