The M11 Raw files access thread

[tashley]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

One for Jon Warwick, who wants to see how the Macro Elmar 90mm does on the M11 with a lot of distant branches. This is certainly a lot of distant branches: exporting it per normal forum guidelines for the JPEG shown on this page required me to set jpeg quality to 80 rather than mu usual 90+... meaning there's an awful lot of detail there!

ISO 200 F5.6

Link to 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!

Edited January 27, 2022 by tashley

[Advertisement]

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

[graphlex]

I’m a big fan of the Macro-Elmar, but I’m not seeing a lot more detail in the DNG than an M10 file would show.  Would probably be a very different story with the 90 APO.

[lct]

Any lens but coke bottles will show more details at 40 let alone 60MP than 20 let alone 10 folks .

[Jon Warwick]

5 hours ago, tashley said:

One for Jon Warwick, who wants to see how the Macro Elmar 90mm does on the M11 with a lot of distant branches. This is certainly a lot of distant branches: exporting it per normal forum guidelines for the JPEG shown on this page required me to set jpeg quality to 80 rather than mu usual 90+... meaning there's an awful lot of detail there!

ISO 200 F5.6

Link to DNG

 

 

Many thanks indeed for posting the DNG, it is really much appreciated.  

It is impressive indeed, but truth be told I preferred the image quality even more off post #20 that I've noticed you also took with the Macro Elmar 90mm!

I'm definitely pixel peeping (in fairness I print very large at times, so pixel peeping here isn't for the sake of it!), but I think your earlier image on post #20 looks absolutely flawless at a very large image size, ie, exceptionally detailed rendering of the stone wall and its archway in front of the house, likewise for the tables on the terrace, and the utterly fine rendering of the branches across the frame. What I find amazing about #20 is the M11 & 90 Macro Elmar have captured these exceptionally fine details AND with such cinematic elegance too. I love it!

I'd say the same about the image in post #11 too .....the sheer level of resolution, and yet with a filmic gentleness to it, is a beautiful combination and mesmerising in its overall image quality, IMHO.

In comparison, the details in the image in post #81 (to my eyes) looks somewhat softer, possibly it was handheld and in this instance some micro-vibrations have possibly crept in? You can see the lens & M11 are recording a ton of "underlying" detail in post #80, and yet it's not quite as perfectly resolved (to my eyes at least) as the detail is in #20 or #11?  Regardless it is a very nice scene, and I very much liked your B&W processing of it in the other thread!

[tashley]

1 hour ago, Jon Warwick said:

Many thanks indeed for posting the DNG, it is really much appreciated.  

It is impressive indeed, but truth be told I preferred the image quality even more off post #20 that I've noticed you also took with the Macro Elmar 90mm!

I'm definitely pixel peeping (in fairness I print very large at times, so pixel peeping here isn't for the sake of it!), but I think your earlier image on post #20 looks absolutely flawless at a very large image size, ie, exceptionally detailed rendering of the stone wall and its archway in front of the house, likewise for the tables on the terrace, and the utterly fine rendering of the branches across the frame. What I find amazing about #20 is the M11 & 90 Macro Elmar have captured these exceptionally fine details AND with such cinematic elegance too. I love it!

I'd say the same about the image in post #11 too .....the sheer level of resolution, and yet with a filmic gentleness to it, is a beautiful combination and mesmerising in its overall image quality, IMHO.

In comparison, the details in the image in post #81 (to my eyes) looks somewhat softer, possibly it was handheld and in this instance some micro-vibrations have possibly crept in? You can see the lens & M11 are recording a ton of "underlying" detail in post #80, and yet it's not quite as perfectly resolved (to my eyes at least) as the detail is in #20 or #11?  Regardless it is a very nice scene, and I very much liked your B&W processing of it in the other thread!

I will need some time to think about that but my first reaction is that for really critical sharpness you might well be right that even 4xf might not be quite enough... however the other factor is that the Macro Elmar is, when you hit the sweet spot, such an amazing lens but that it has a very small circumference focus ring and consequently can feel a little under-geared when it comes to ultimate fine tuning of focus so it can be a little hit and miss...

 

EDIT: I had another look at #20 and I see what you mean. It's quite a boring image but you can wander around in it for ages. I just noticed the you can see a building in a town which is over 17 miles away - and it was a pretty hazy day. It was at 1/400th and ISO 80 and between those two factors I think it explains why there's so much more detail in it. I will try to shoot #81 above again with  tripod at ISO64 and 200 and 400 and see what happens. Then we'll know just how much of a hit ISO and handheld constraints are...

 

PS EDIT: if you like cinematic (I do) then #11 has it. It's so subtle, but crop it and do some geometry on it then season to taste and it has such very subtle rendering.

Edited January 28, 2022 by tashley

[tashley]

Extreme Pixel Peep Alert: Jon Warwick and Graphlex's comments above made me curious about how the Macro Elmar 90mm resolves fine detail (A lot of distant branches and twigs) when optimally shot. So I put my M11 on a tripod and went off with the lens. to shoot aperture X ISO series so as to get an idea not only of what the best it can do is (answer, F5.6 or F8 at ISO 64) but also what 'hit' you take from either shooting wide open, or from diffraction at F8 or F11. You can be the judge of that but one thing I will say: someone further up the thread posited that the ISO 800 performance was so good that he though it might match a Nikon Z7 and though I did not shoot my Z7 in this comparison, I think it shows that this is not the case since the ISO 800 files here show really pretty good but nowhere close to miraculous performance.d

A word about ISO: these were shot at +2/3rds of a stop and the sky was blinking in places on the camera screen, though there are no clipping warnings in Photoshop. I could also have shot them at -2 stops then bumped them up in Lightroom to the same overall luminance. Both files would have been shot at ISO 64 but one would have had a great deal more light than the other. SO just to state that when I personally do these tests I always expose so as to get the histogram in LR as far to the right as I can possibly nudge it without blowing any of the colour channels. I don't aways get it right but here it's pretty close. RAW Digger doesn't support the M11 yet but by fiddling with exposure sliders I can tell that I'm less than 1/4 stop from  clipping. SO this is about as much light as I could reasonably give it and it should show close to the best the camera can do on this scene at any given ISO.

The scene is below. First, links to each ISO at each F stop. Focus was at infinity and the woodland is approx 500m away.

ISO 64 F4

ISO 200 F4

ISO 400 F4

ISO 800 F4

ISO 1600 F4

 

ISO 64 F5.6

ISO 200 F5.6

ISO 400 F5.6

ISO 800 F5.6

ISO 1600 F5.6

 

ISO 64 F8

ISO 200 F8

ISO 400 F8

ISO 800 F8

ISO 1600 F8

 

ISO 64 F11

ISO 200 F11

ISO 400 F11

ISO 800 F11

ISO 1600 F11

 

 

 

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!

[SrMi]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Downloaded ISO 64/4, the sky is badly clipped. Photoshop's histogram is known to be unreliable. The raw histogram of Rawdigger shows heavy clipping.

Latest Rawdigger 1.4.5 works fine with M11 files.

[SrMi]

IMO, the sharpness in this images seem to be mainly determined by the haze in the air.

[tashley]

11 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Downloaded ISO 64/4, the sky is badly clipped. Photoshop's histogram is known to be unreliable. The raw histogram of Rawdigger shows heavy clipping.

Latest Rawdigger 1.4.5 works fine with M11 files.

Doesn't matter at all though: the trees are not at all clipped.

[SrMi]

10 minutes ago, tashley said:

Doesn't matter at all though: the trees are not at all clipped.

Yes, just to avoid people commenting on the sky :). 

[tashley]

24 minutes ago, SrMi said:

Downloaded ISO 64/4, the sky is badly clipped. Photoshop's histogram is known to be unreliable. The raw histogram of Rawdigger shows heavy clipping.

Latest Rawdigger 1.4.5 works fine with M11 files.

I will check it out - the last time I tried RD on a file from a camera it didn't know, it behaved oddly...

[SrMi]

3 hours ago, tashley said:

I will check it out - the last time I tried RD on a file from a camera it didn't know, it behaved oddly...

Just got an email from Iliah Borg that M11 is already supported in Rawdigger, they just need to update the online list.

[Jon Warwick]

6 hours ago, tashley said:

Extreme Pixel Peep Alert: Jon Warwick and Graphlex's comments above made me curious about how the Macro Elmar 90mm resolves fine detail (A lot of distant branches and twigs) when optimally shot. So I put my M11 on a tripod and went off with the lens. to shoot aperture X ISO series so as to get an idea not only of what the best it can do is (answer, F5.6 or F8 at ISO 64) but also what 'hit' you take from either shooting wide open, or from diffraction at F8 or F11. You can be the judge of that but one thing I will say: someone further up the thread posited that the ISO 800 performance was so good that he though it might match a Nikon Z7 and though I did not shoot my Z7 in this comparison, I think it shows that this is not the case since the ISO 800 files here show really pretty good but nowhere close to miraculous performance.d

A word about ISO: these were shot at +2/3rds of a stop and the sky was blinking in places on the camera screen, though there are no clipping warnings in Photoshop. I could also have shot them at -2 stops then bumped them up in Lightroom to the same overall luminance. Both files would have been shot at ISO 64 but one would have had a great deal more light than the other. SO just to state that when I personally do these tests I always expose so as to get the histogram in LR as far to the right as I can possibly nudge it without blowing any of the colour channels. I don't aways get it right but here it's pretty close. RAW Digger doesn't support the M11 yet but by fiddling with exposure sliders I can tell that I'm less than 1/4 stop from  clipping. SO this is about as much light as I could reasonably give it and it should show close to the best the camera can do on this scene at any given ISO.

The scene is below. First, links to each ISO at each F stop. Focus was at infinity and the woodland is approx 500m away.

.......

Fantastic! Many thanks. It's very kind of you to make the effort to do this test, and it gives one a really good idea of this specific lens + M11 combo.  The quality of the image is very impressive indeed, with its mix of very fine details that are captured but done with a very filmic grace. If I resample to 60" wide on screen (simply given it would equate to my maximum print size), it again reminds me considerably of the rendering I see off my drum-scanned 5x4, which is quite remarkable. In that sense, I expect a bit of that gentle rendering is coming from the Macro Elmar itself, but its pairing with the M11 looks lovely in terms of tons of detail but without an in-the-face digital sharpness, similar to what I also thought about your image in post #20.  I've now casually ...ie, handheld ... managed to try out the M11 + a more clinical modern lens of mine, the 50mm APO Lanthar, and simultaneously shot very similar scenes with my GFX100S + GF 63mm lens (= 50mm equivalent in 35mm), and my personal view was the output from the M11 + that lens in the images I took looked ridiculously similar to the GFX in terms of resolution and overall feel at 60" on screen, despite the fewer sensor megapixels of the M11. That the M11 achieves this in such a small and light body + lens set-up is a real pleasure, supported all the more IMHO by there being so many different native M-mount lenses that provide flexibility to choose a particular rendering for a particular subject.

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Jon Warwick

[tashley]

18 minutes ago, Jon Warwick said:

Fantastic! Many thanks. It's very kind of you to make the effort to do this test, and it gives one a really good idea of this specific lens + M11 combo.  The quality of the image is very impressive indeed, with its mix of very fine details that are captured but done with a very filmic grace. If I resample to 60" wide on screen (simply given it would equate to my maximum print size), it again reminds me considerably of the rendering I see off my drum-scanned 5x4, which is quite remarkable. In that sense, I expect a bit of that gentle rendering is coming from the Macro Elmar itself, but its pairing with the M11 looks lovely in terms of tons of detail but without an in-the-face digital sharpness, similar to what I also thought about your image in post #20.  I've now casually ...ie, handheld ... managed to try out the M11 + a more clinical modern lens of mine, the 50mm APO Lanthar, and simultaneously shot very similar scenes with my GFX100S + GF 63mm lens (= 50mm equivalent in 35mm), and my personal view was the output from the M11 + that lens in the images I took looked ridiculously similar to the GFX in terms of resolution and overall feel at 60" on screen, despite the fewer sensor megapixels of the M11. That the M11 achieves this in such a small and light body + lens set-up is a real pleasure. 

 

Thanks Jon. I’m of about the same opinion - I recently sold a Hassy X1D and the feeling I have is that I’m getting something slightly better in something notably smaller, when lens sizes are taken into account. I’m now considering selling most of my Phase One kit. The only purpose it still serves for me is the ability to use rise/fall on my Alpa and I might even sell everything but the Alpa and the Rodenstock 40HR I mostly use with it and just buy an old P45+ back or similar so as to be able still to do that sort of work. Otherwise I’m coming to the view that the M11 can do most of what I need. 

One thing I do notice is that with the Macro Elmar a certain percentage of shots taken handheld aren’t critically sharp even with 4/f  and it reinforces the fact that Leica really need to get IBIS into the M12. There’s no point going for a higher pixel count from hereon in without it unless the camera is to be mainly tripod based or unless they get four stops better noise out of it. 

Edited January 30, 2022 by tashley

[Jon Warwick]

8 hours ago, tashley said:

Thanks Jon. I’m of about the same opinion - I recently sold a Hassy X1D and the feeling I have is that I’m getting something slightly better in something notably smaller, when lens sizes are taken into account. I’m now considering selling most of my Phase One kit. The only purpose it still serves for me is the ability to use rise/fall on my Alpa and I might even sell everything but the Alpa and the Rodenstock 40HR I mostly use with it and just buy an old P45+ back or similar so as to be able still to do that sort of work. Otherwise I’m coming to the view that the M11 can do most of what I need. 

One thing I do notice is that with the Macro Elmar a certain percentage of shots taken handheld aren’t critically sharp even with 4/f  and it reinforces the fact that Leica really need to get IBIS into the M12. There’s no point going for a higher pixel count from hereon in without it unless the camera is to be mainly tripod based or unless they get four stops better noise out of it. 

Interesting re your thoughts on the Phase One and Alpa. A key reason for me getting involved in 5x4 was specifically for front rise to avoid key-stoning, and I’ve closely looked at Alpa over the years as a result. In hindsight, I’m content to have held off there, given other options that recently became available (1) a tilt-shift is now officially on the roadmap for the GFX system; and separately (2) I’ve been very impressed by just how little image quality is lost from perspective correction of Raws in ACR, despite the pixels being warped into shape. But then arguably shifting a sensor/film around an image circle isn’t making an “ideal” use of a lens’ capabilities either, however good the lens at its edges! Clearly visualisation at the time of capture has been the problem, but (with the caveat I haven’t tried it) Leica’s perspective correction “in camera” presumably resolves that? ….oddly it’s not currently available with the M11, but on paper it looks like I’d appreciate it a lot to accurately visualise both the right lens and composition at the time of image capture.

 

Edited January 30, 2022 by Jon Warwick

[tashley]

1 hour ago, Jon Warwick said:

Interesting re your thoughts on the Phase One and Alpa. A key reason for me getting involved in 5x4 was specifically for front rise to avoid key-stoning, and I’ve closely looked at Alpa over the years as a result. In hindsight, I’m content to have held off there, given other options that recently became available (1) a tilt-shift is now officially on the roadmap for the GFX system; and separately (2) I’ve been very impressed by just how little image quality is lost from perspective correction of Raws in ACR, despite the pixels being warped into shape. But then arguably shifting a sensor/film around an image circle isn’t making an “ideal” use of a lens’ capabilities either, however good the lens at its edges! Clearly visualisation at the time of capture has been the problem, but (with the caveat I haven’t tried it) Leica’s perspective correction “in camera” presumably resolves that? ….oddly it’s not currently available with the M11, but on paper it looks like I’d appreciate it a lot to accurately visualise both the right lens and composition at the time of image capture.

 

I'm all for perspective correction a lot of the time but for some architectural work it gives you the angle of view of one image with the geometry of another and can be a bit subliminally disturbing. The closer you are and the wider the angle the lens, the worse the effect!

[tashley]

File

 

 

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!

[Jon Warwick]

Many thanks Tim for posting another DNG, it’s really informative. One thing I’m noticing is how much I like the rendering off the M11 with regards to bright highlights, the sensor seems to be very C41 “filmic” in that sense, and your DNG in post #97 is another example of that, to my eyes at least. Many thanks. 

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[tashley]

4 minutes ago, Jon Warwick said:

Many thanks Tim for posting another DNG, it’s really informative. One thing I’m noticing is how much I like the rendering off the M11 with regards to bright highlights, the sensor seems to be very C41 “filmic” in that sense, and your DNG in post #97 is another example of that, to my eyes at least. Many thanks. 

Thanks Jon, I am noticing the same thing though there are other reasons: I have a real predilection for that look, too, and some combinations of subject matter and lighting really bring it out. In particular, buildings with relatively uniformly painted stucco or fine render, photographed in light where the sun is quite low and is shining through very thin cloud but with a blue area behind the subject itself - that's when you really get this look!

Edited February 6, 2022 by tashley

[Guest]

On 2/6/2022 at 4:49 AM, tashley said:

File

 

 

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!

Thanks Tim, while some of us are still waiting for our M11s this is a great way to satisfy some of our curiosity. Kudos!

Below is the current state of Lightroom and Capture One profiles applied to your DNG above (no changes to sliders or settings). For Capture One, I am very impressed by their new Pro Standard profiles (not available for all bodies) and would give C1 now strong consideration for "no tweak" conversions.

Capture One 22 (15.1.2), Pro Standard:

Lightroom Classic 11.2,  Leica embedded profile

Lightroom Classic 11.2, Adobe Standard

Lightroom Classic 11.2, Adobe Color

Lightroom Classic 11.2, Cobalt Standard (3rd party)