Problems getting sharp images by 60MP

[Tailwagger]

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1 hour ago, KenTanaka said:

So do you really expect Leica’s management to hold the M waistline a few millimeters for posterity, dimensions they’ve already ceded once for other “features”?   Never.  IBIS will be what ultimately keeps the M line alive.

So far the only never involved has been to leave IBIS off the table.  Certainly following the M240, they could have continued with tat body style and potentially incorporated it, but instead chose to slim the M10 back down. They had four years to consider the wisdom of that decision and did not reverse it. Perhaps the tech will catch up in terms of space requirements, but otherwise, its by no means a certainty that IBIS will ever make its way in to an M body.  More likely, IMO, that some form of electronic stabilization will appear at some point rathter than flopping the sensor around mechanically. 

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[jdlaing]

1 minute ago, Tailwagger said:

So far the only never involved has been to leave IBIS off the table.  Certainly following the M240, they could have continued with tat body style and potentially incorporated it, but instead chose to slim the M10 back down. They had four years to consider the wisdom of that decision and did not reverse it. Perhaps the tech will catch up in terms of space requirements, but otherwise, its by no means a certainty that IBIS will ever make its way in to an M body.  More likely, IMO, that some form of electronic stabilization will appear at some point rathter than flopping the sensor around mechanically. 

M-240 body didn’t allow it either. Too constraining.

[scott kirkpatrick]

My guess is that Leica feels that they can deal with the declining population of vigorous healthy (except for the odd spare parts) over 70s that are the hard core of their customer base by broadening that base.  Affluent young graduates of the startup generation, encouraged by celebrity endorsements to photograph like Real photographers.  Outstanding quality in an artist's tool pared to the minimum,  enhanced by just a trace of Veblen sauce.  I've used Fuji, Panasonic, and Olympus gear which offer many stops of IBIS but they don't take better pictures.

[Stevejack]

I think IBIS should be included as soon as possible on the M, it's definitely a valuable tool, but knowing that you don't have IBIS should be enough to compensate in most cases.... I mean if you need tack sharp images use a tripod, rest the camera on something, or realise that you can't shoot a subject in the way you might have liked and make a different photograph instead.

A storm rolled through the other night just on sunset, I jumped on the roof and the wind was gusting in hard, I could barely stay on the roof let alone keep steady hold of the M11... plus I only had a 50mm lens on the camera which wasn't wide enough to capture the entire scene. So I set the shutter to 1/125, bumped my ISO up a stop to compensate, and took a 7 shot vertical pano and later stitched the shots in post.   Yes I would have preferred a lower ISO and probably would have liked to be at f/8 and not f/5.6 but the M11 has such great ISO performance a couple of stops here and there makes so little difference it doesn't matter. I would have preferred my 24mm as well, but honestly with all the tools available these days it's not such a big deal to compensate.   

The only time I miss IBIS is if I'm trying to intentionally blur elements in a scene, like traffic, running water, or a moving person, but maintain a sharp background. But in those cases I only miss IBIS because I didn't bring my tripod, which is the correct tool for the job... In all other cases, I just choose a faster shutter speed and compensate with ISO. 

The 7-shot hand-held pano I made with the M11, with a final resolution of 19198 x 8450px (reduced down to 2480px on the longest edge to post here):

 

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[Tailwagger]

1 hour ago, scott kirkpatrick said:

I've used Fuji, Panasonic, and Olympus gear which offer many stops of IBIS but they don't take better pictures.

Agreed...but... they do when hand held and the exposure runs potentially up to a couple of seconds. I don't personally see IBIS as all that essential in most situations, but there are times when its magic. 

[Jeff S]

3 hours ago, FlashGordonPhotography said:

It's more likely that Leica will make an EVF and IBIS based body ….

Before ‘departing’ the forum, Steven wrote that these were goals for the M12, if proven feasible.

Jeff

[harmen]

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It sounds like a market opportunity worthwhile testing out.  With both Q and SL being popular, an M-styled SL for M mount will likely attract buyers.  That would continue to allow Leica to optimise the M itself as the best possible rangefinder, without compromise solutions.

[harmen]

So earlier I did the thing with the spinning helicopter blades.  Now I also tried what I saw some others do - see what I get when shooting handheld, standing up, without leaning against something.  I've used an APO 90 to take many shots at 1/60th, 1/125th, and 1/250th.  I'm not the steadiest as most of the 1/60th have motion visible, a good number of the 1/125th, and none of the 1/250th.  I'll set my setting for auto ISO to 1/(2f).  More to the topic at hand, I picked out representative photos at 1/60th (with blur) and 1/250th (without) taken as 18MP shots and 60MP shots.  I wouldn't say that the motion is invisible at 18MP, but it is a little less obvious.  For me, I'll just use 60MP each time as it's not really harder to get a sharp image and it's very nice to have the 60MP shot when it works.  In practice I see no difference with my M(240) in terms of how steady to hold it.  I would never have done 1/60th for 90mm then either.

(All cropped, but no other edits applied, Capture One.  ISO and aperture vary.)

1/250th (steady)

60MP

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18MP

1/60th (not steady)

60MP

18MP

 

Cheers!

Edited February 18, 2022 by harmen

[TrickyMrT]

Thank you so much for all your replies!

@Stevejack What a amazing image! 

@ harmen Thank you for showing the issue. I´m happy that im not alone with it!

@scott kirkpatrick Your image of the monitor, shows also a decent blurr.... which would be ok but it shows as well a bit the issue.

 

 

The M11 is good weather & light camera.

In my opinion, Leica had better taken the time to focus on Image-Quality as they did in the M9.
All features and new gimmicks wifi, USB-c etc have zero value, if you can use an M11 only in well conditions....
 
If some had asked me, do not spend any time on all the gimmicks like Wifi and USB-C with iPhone connection. nice... but it is needed like a toaster with wifi connection 😂 
Better:
- get a nice sensor with the colors of the M9
- find a solution for the dust on the sensor sensor
- make it usable in low light
- Battery was never an issue, but the new one is nice

 

 

It helped me a lot, and underlined my thoughts and decided to go back to my M10. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aristotle]

2 hours ago, TrickyMrT said:

Thank you so much for all your replies!

 

@ harmen Thank you for showing the issue. I´m happy that im not alone with it!

 

He showed that there isn't an issue.  Here is his 18MP image crop  enlarged to the same size as his 60MP image crop.  Same amount of motion blur, which is exactly what you would expect.  The blur hasn't anything to do with the sensor resolution, but rather the amount that the image is enlarged for display.  Great image to demonstrate this by the way harem.  60MP on the left and 18MP on the right.  

 

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[TrickyMrT]

1 hour ago, aristotle said:

He showed that there isn't an issue.  Here is his 18MP image crop  enlarged to the same size as his 60MP image crop.  Same amount of motion blur, which is exactly what you would expect.  The blur hasn't anything to do with the sensor resolution, but rather the amount that the image is enlarged for display.  Great image to demonstrate this by the way harem.  60MP on the left and 18MP on the right.  

 

If i had no issues, i had no complains. 

M10 = 9 of 10 razor sharp, also zoomed

M11 = 9 of 10 Blurry no matter if 60MP or 18MP

Sorry, for me it has something to do with the new sony sensor

 

Maybe 60MP are too much? i don´t know, but im happy to go back to my M10 

 

 

[wizard]

vor 17 Stunden schrieb KenTanaka:

Oh, and about that tiltable rear screen….

Which would further bloat the M body's thickness. No way. What I think Leica will eventually do is introduce another model having an M mount, but they will not call it an "M" Leica. That other model will have IBIS, EVF, probably a tiltable rear screen, etc., and Leica will then closely monitor which model sells better, the traditional M or that yet to be developed new model.

[scott kirkpatrick]

If I were magically teleported into Jesko and Stefan's strategy discussions (and my rusty German was up to the challenge) I would argue for not expanding the in-house products  beyond two models (M and SL), and keeping them as similar as possible under the covers.  We seem to be headed that way, as the M11 has an "SL without IBIS" engine squeezed into its tight frame.  Since Leica has already invested in a computational photography team for its smartphone partnership they should know that doing IBIS by wiggling the image computationally without wiggling the sensor mechanically is possible.  It takes the same path as their 38 and 18 MPx image compression does, and can be done in-camera.  But because it uses measured inputs rather than a fixed compression ratio, it will probably be a more involved computation, requiring the Maestro IV processor and some clever systolic array processing to get the most use out of every pixel.  I hope they will avoid being tempted to advertise this as "deep learning".  Basically, the image pixels, each captured as 2 bytes behind one of three Bayer filters, need to be transformed into their three components, then collected for a smaller image or translated to correct for distortion, or translated and collected to undo motion.  They can then be reversibly transformed back into a pseudo-Bayer image at the desired pixel spacing and output.

edit:  Isn't Leica thought to be doing image stabilization of the picture that is presented in the Visoflex 2?  That's the same problem, of making a 2D correction in real time, applied to about 1/40 as many pixels as in the actual image.

Edited February 18, 2022 by scott kirkpatrick

[SrMi]

2 hours ago, TrickyMrT said:

If i had no issues, i had no complains. 

M10 = 9 of 10 razor sharp, also zoomed

M11 = 9 of 10 Blurry no matter if 60MP or 18MP

Sorry, for me it has something to do with the new sony sensor

 

Maybe 60MP are too much? i don´t know, but im happy to go back to my M10 

Your post does not match my experience with M10-P and M11.

[M9reno]

3 hours ago, TrickyMrT said:

If i had no issues, i had no complains. 

M10 = 9 of 10 razor sharp, also zoomed

M11 = 9 of 10 Blurry no matter if 60MP or 18MP

Sorry, for me it has something to do with the new sony sensor

 

Maybe 60MP are too much? i don´t know, but im happy to go back to my M10 

 

 

Once you eliminate a problem with the camera, there being no reason why 60MP (or any other resolution) should produce the blur that you dislike, the obvious alternative is user error.  For example, have you considered that the M10 was released in 2017 and the M11 in 2022, and none of us is getting any younger?

[hdmesa]

5 hours ago, TrickyMrT said:

If i had no issues, i had no complains. 

M10 = 9 of 10 razor sharp, also zoomed

M11 = 9 of 10 Blurry no matter if 60MP or 18MP

Sorry, for me it has something to do with the new sony sensor

 

Maybe 60MP are too much? i don´t know, but im happy to go back to my M10 

 

 

It has zero to do with the sensor. If there is more blur with the M11 (I emphasize "if"), then the only logical explanation is shutter shock due to the new M11 shutter that has to close before opening again to expose the sensor. And if it is shutter shock, that usually only shows up at certain shutter speeds that align with the shutter vibration. For example, let's say the shock is most evident at 1/125 sec. If you're always shooting around 1/125 but never at 1/125, you may never notice it.

[TrickyMrT]

2 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

It has zero to do with the sensor. If there is more blur with the M11 (I emphasize "if"), then the only logical explanation is shutter shock due to the new M11 shutter that has to close before opening again to expose the sensor. And if it is shutter shock, that usually only shows up at certain shutter speeds that align with the shutter vibration. For example, let's say the shock is most evident at 1/125 sec. If you're always shooting around 1/125 but never at 1/125, you may never notice it.

100% correct.  At low shutter-speed i have issues getting sharp images with the M11. With identical shutter-speed on the M10 i have no problems and i get razor sharp images.

[hdmesa]

2 minutes ago, TrickyMrT said:

100% correct.  At low shutter-speed i have issues getting sharp images with the M11. With identical shutter-speed on the M10 i have no problems and i get razor sharp images.

Electronic shutter can mitigate this, but due to the slow scan time of the sensor, it's not a viable way to shoot moving subjects like street photography.

If Leica wanted to have more accurate metering by keeping the shutter open, then they should have used a stacked BSI sensor like Nikon uses in the Z9 that doesn't even require a mechanical shutter. And that would have the bonus of fewer moving parts, plus perhaps the cost savings of removing the shutter could have offset the cost of a high-res stacked sensor.

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20 hours ago, Tailwagger said:

So far the only never involved has been to leave IBIS off the table.  Certainly following the M240, they could have continued with tat body style and potentially incorporated it, but instead chose to slim the M10 back down. They had four years to consider the wisdom of that decision and did not reverse it. Perhaps the tech will catch up in terms of space requirements, but otherwise, its by no means a certainty that IBIS will ever make its way in to an M body.  More likely, IMO, that some form of electronic stabilization will appear at some point rathter than flopping the sensor around mechanically. 

Electronic stabilization is similar to what can be done in software (e.g. Photoshop / Filters / Sharpen / Shake Reduction) so putting that in camera would mostly increase convenience. Recently saw a YouTube video (in German) with a Leica person who indicated that they are waiting for IBIS to become feasible within current form factor, "maybe in 5 years or later"

[pgk]

23 minutes ago, hdmesa said:

..... the only logical explanation is shutter shock due to the new M11 shutter that has to close before opening again to expose the sensor. And if it is shutter shock, that usually only shows up at certain shutter speeds that align with the shutter vibration. For example, let's say the shock is most evident at 1/125 sec. If you're always shooting around 1/125 but never at 1/125, you may never notice it.

Some 40+ years ago, as part of my course, I used a Fastax high speed camera (an 'accelerating' 16mm which used to shred the end of the film as the speed reached its maximum) to film the focal plane shutter of a Pentax SLR. When the second curtain closed, the blind actually rebounded and the whole assembly shuddered. Four decades later shutter technology has matured with dampeners fitted as standard. I would be astounded if Leica had fitted a shutter which was anything but extremely low in vibrations, to the M11, especially given how it operates.