M8 and vignetting

[Olsen]

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I looked up this Epson RD-1 Lens Report and this Luminous landscape

 

Once these two articles were regarded as 'the lens primer' of M-series lenses mounted on digital rangefinder cameras. - Sort of. But looking it up now - with hundreds of M8 picture on my HD - comparing to this article; I look at all that vignetting coming out of this RD-1 camera! Sure, that M8 gives me some agony sometimes, but, Moses, we are spared all that vignetting! It dawns on me that M8 represents a quantum leap in picture quality - well, a small step for a man, perhaps. But still...

 

This Read fella', he'd better re-write the whole thing.

[ho_co]

Tom--

Good observations all!

 

There are those who feel that the R-D1 convinced Leica that they better produce an M8. I don't know whether they are right, but it sounds reasonable to me.

 

And Leica's new sensor design with offset collecting lenses seems to have been the optical breakthrough needed.

 

It seems to me that the M8 is at the cutting edge in a lot of ways. It may be 'behind the times' in some ways, but not in getting the best out of Leica lenses.

 

Thanks for reminding us how quickly up-to-date information passes!

 

--HC

[scott kirkpatrick]

To put the comparison in perspective, the RD-1 had an even smaller sensor than the M8 has, so it was showing greater vignetting over that smaller area than the M8 now does, with its offset sensors. If you set an M8 to "Lens detection ON" (without UV/IR filter correction), the vignetting correction ranges from 30-50% undercorrection for Leica wide-angles wide open to pretty good correction over most of the wide angle working range, to a slight over-correction for 50mm lenses at normal apertures.

 

The fast 50s and teles only vignette very close to wide open, because the full effective aperture isn't seen from the very edges of the frame -- a different effect from the high angle at which the light hits the edges of the frame with a short focal length lens. As a result, the correction you need varies more rapidly with aperture, and since the M8 can't be sure of the lens aperture, overcorrection away from wide open is easy to do. (See Reid Reviews for some examples.) As a result, when Leica brought out "Lens detection ON+UV/IR" firmware, they dialed back the luminance vignetting correction to about half of what it had been, and concentrated on cancelling the color cast at the corners.

 

Sean Reid, and probably most other RD-1 users, prefers to work in black and white, and in B/W a little vignetting around the edges of a frame just looks like careful printing, burning in the edges. If Leica ends up tuning the "lens detection ON" behavior for black and white work, and the "ON+UV/IR" for color, we may see still further changes.

 

scott

[Olsen]

To put the comparison in perspective, the RD-1 had an even smaller sensor than the M8 has, so it was showing greater vignetting over that smaller area than the M8 now does...

scott

 

That is indeed the point. I did some comparisons between WATE and Voigtländer 15 mm 4,5 last night. Sure, the WATE comes out the best - even with lens detection 'off'. Should be no suprise. It costs about ten times as much. But I am impressed how this little Voigtländer is doing on a M8 - without any support from software compensation. The M8/Voigtländer 15 mm 4,5 is a fully usable combination. While it vignettes on RD-1 to such a degree that you have to 'like it' to use it. On the M8 the 15 mm 4,5 Voigtländer comes out as a 'about 20 mm' wide angle without any disturbing vignetting.

 

Not only that; with the small Voigtländer mounted on it makes the M8 look more 'innocent' and amateurish. Which is a great advantage in many instances. Like when photographing people at public places.

 

A small sample attached; Grand Cafe', Oslo - M8/Voigtländer Super Wide Heliar 15 mm 4,5 - at 1/16 and 4,5 hand held.

[lct]

Did LL use the Epson raw converter for their tests?

No doubt that the microlenses of the M8 are more effective than those of the R-D1 but in 2+ years use of the latter i haven't got significant light falls off with this converter and my Leica's 28, 35, 40, 50, 75, 90 & 135 lenses.

Not the same with my little CV 21/4 P below but vignetting would have been better with an Elmarit i guess.

 

 

 

 

 

(Epson R-D1, CV 21/4 P, 200 iso, f/8, 28mm setting of the Epson raw converter, no filter, no noise correction, full frame and 100% crops)

[marknorton]

I keep my R-D1 more out of historical interest than as a working tool. However cool the dials are, the viewfinder is poor (other than the 1:1 magnification), especially the viewfinder display of shutter speed. These days, the circular menu system looks contrived. That said, put a 28mm Summicron on the front and I like the images.

 

Epson's heart was never really in it, and the best thing the R-D1 ever did for us was to kick Leica out of their lethargy and drop their "nicht moeglich" mantra.

[lct]

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...Epson's heart was never really in it, and the best thing the R-D1 ever did for us was to kick Leica out of their lethargy and drop their "nicht moeglich" mantra.

You mean 'for us M8 users' i guess. To me the R-D1 is the digital M3.

[lct]

Same in BW at f/4.

 

 

[Guest tummydoc]

Epson's heart was never really in it, and the best thing the R-D1 ever did for us was to kick Leica out of their lethargy and drop their "nicht moeglich" mantra.

 

Certainly the best thing they ever did for Leica. Likewise the Konica Hexar-RF had the same effect on the same mantra years earlier and was the catalyst that brought about the M7. I believe that under Leica's current management, that mantra is veboten.

[Piers]

I got RD1s + leica 2/8 28 asph to put toe in water of digital rangefinder, having sold M6 +lenses a few years back to fund Nikon Digital kit for professional reasons.

 

The lens performed really poorly on the epson, with heavy vignetting and excessive corner softness/smearing; moreover the epson software (and PS CS2/ACR), while correcting the vignetting, introduced noise.

 

So concerned, I contacted Nobby Clarke at Leica UK, who sighed like he'd heard it all before, and said this was a product of the epson not the lens and it would be fine on the M8. In a leap of faith I bought the Leica M8 and certainly was not disappointed (other than by all the dirt on the sensor that came free and gratis with the Leica). I miss the foldaway LCD screen--the M8 screen and buttons feel plasticy and, kind of non-Leica-y. But the sensor on the epson was poor in other ways, especially producing blocky pixellation around blown highlights--but then exposure at 1600 was remarkably noise free and without banding like the M8...

[jaapv]

<aside>Interesting that RD1 shot. It shows the only slightly lesser extent of IR sensitivity of the camera. The colour of the sky, the varying magenta hues in some trousers. Not that it bothers me, but is provides some perspective.

[jaapv]

Epson's heart was never really in it, and the best thing the R-D1 ever did for us was to kick Leica out of their lethargy and drop their "nicht moeglich" mantra.

 

It sounds logical, but I doubt that that was the deciding factor. I'm sure that declinig film camera sales and the financial dire straits of the company were the main arguments in the decision to develop the M8.