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Glow with Leica lenses


orcinus

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36 minutes ago, orcinus said:

I never said anything about resolution being lower.

Correction noted - thank you.

As to whether the highlights are bleeding into the shadows - or the shadows are bleeding into the highlights. That's just the old conundrum - is a zebra a white horse with black stripes, or a black horse with white stripes? ;)

But one way or the other, you are saying there is a loss of edge acutance or MTF (contrast at a specified resolution).

..................

Personally, I think this is just the M11 revealing the limitations of a 25-year-old lens design created when digital was but a "glow" on the horizon, and further constrained by the desire to retain the traditional compact E39 size of 35 Summicrons as much as possible. And a non-FLE lens that is not focused at infinity (which is where Leica calculates their MTF charts).

I'm just not sure the 35 Summicron ASPH (with center MTF of 50-60% at any aperture) is the perfect laboratory tool to test a 60 Mpixel sensor - we may just be seeing a lens test, not a sensor test.

We always say that a better sensor will improve any lens, and that seems to be the case (as I previously noted) regarding lpmm and moiré.

But there are limits - a better sensor will not magically turn a Holga lens into a 35 Summicron ASPH - nor a 35mm Summicron ASPH into a 35mm APO-Summicron-ASPH (FLE).

The fact that you yourself says it "doesn't happen as much" with Voigtländer lenses (of more recent development) tends to support that idea.

But I look forward to additional experiments and comparisons, by anyone.

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35 minutes ago, lct said:

I simply cannot believe that something did not go wrong in the lens, the camera or the focusing process.

I cannot vouch for the lens, but the camera appears to work as expected, and the focusing process was as good as it can be with added checks (slightly front and back-focused extra shots) just to make double sure it was where it's supposed to be. The distance to target was approx. 170cm.

If someone here has a 60MP Sony camera, a recently produced cron 35mm and an M adapter, we could do a head-to-head in controlled conditions to confirm.

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4 minutes ago, adan said:

But one way or the other, you are saying there is a loss of edge acutance or MTF (contrast at a specified resolution).

 

Correct.

 

5 minutes ago, adan said:

Personally, I think this is just the M11 revealing the limitations of a 25-year-old lens design created when digital was but a "glow" on the horizon, and further constrained by the desire to retain the traditional compact E39 size of 35 Summicrons as much as possible. And a non-FLE lens that is not focused at infinity (which is where Leica calculates their MTF charts).

My thoughts were similar, but i wasn't sure why it wasn't as apparent on M240 shots when comparing them at the same (feature) size, i.e. M11 shots downsampled to M240 size.

I think Tailwagger might be onto something - the M11 WB and contrast curve might be making it *seem* like there is more bleed or glow.
I'll experiment some more.

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21 minutes ago, orcinus said:

I cannot vouch for the lens, but the camera appears to work as expected

Do you mean with that blur? Did you have the opportunity to do tests like this with other lenses on the M11? Just asking and nothing personal of course :cool: but I can't simply believe my eyes.

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1 hour ago, 84bravo said:

Try setting the whites point in post so that both photos show the same color balance. To my eyes the contrast when comparing the two can be deceiving.

Indeed. Here's the same shot I posted at F1.4 out of the M11 in the previous comparisons, this time processed quickly with some added sharpening and contrast to tight things up to demonstrate a before and after. Expecting a satisfying result SooC under most circumstance is at best fanciful. The M11, no news here, requires work on the back end to achieve what you're looking for.

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28 minutes ago, Tailwagger said:

Indeed. Here's the same shot I posted at F1.4 out of the M11 in the previous comparisons, this time processed quickly with some added sharpening and contrast to tight things up to demonstrate a before and after. Expecting a satisfying result SooC under most circumstance is at best fanciful. The M11, no news here, requires work on the back end to achieve what you're looking for.

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I mean, yes, adding sharpening will indeed increase the apparent contrast / acutance, that's not very surprising :)
Unsharp masking does the exact opposite of the observed issue - it will "unbleed" light areas bleeding into dark and vice versa.

The question is, does just playing with the WB and the gamma curve make things look comparable to M240 or M10 or not, mid-frequency contrast-wise.

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2 hours ago, lct said:

Do you mean with that blur? Did you have the opportunity to do tests like this with other lenses on the M11? Just asking and nothing personal of course :cool: but I can't simply believe my eyes.

I have, and did not notice any contrast loss or veiling with e.g. Heliar 15mm, compared to M240.
Granted, that lens is much better corrected to begin with.

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4 minutes ago, orcinus said:

I have, and did not notice any contrast loss or veiling with e.g. Heliar 15mm, compared to M240.
Granted, that lens is much better corrected to begin with.

If you are close enough to a Leica Store or dealer, you should go over with both cameras and compare results with a 50 Apo.

Actually it sounds like you've already concluded that its the lens and not the sensor that is causing the contrast loss.

 

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25 minutes ago, orcinus said:

The question is, does just playing with the WB and the gamma curve make things look comparable to M240 or M10 or not, mid-frequency contrast-wise.

Perhaps, but not particularly what I'm worried about. The question in the end, AFAIC, is how malleable the files are. ie. Can I raise or lower contrast/sharpening/curves and easily come away with what I'm looking for in either direction. As the comparo with the 10-R suggests, the M11 files pop out of the oven a little softer than previous Ms, but, AFAICT once one digs in, are far more amenable to pushing things which ever way you care to.  Just a question of learning over time which buttons to push in which situations. 

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22 hours ago, orcinus said:

I cannot vouch for the lens, but the camera appears to work as expected, and the focusing process was as good as it can be with added checks (slightly front and back-focused extra shots) just to make double sure it was where it's supposed to be. The distance to target was approx. 170cm.

If someone here has a 60MP Sony camera, a recently produced cron 35mm and an M adapter, we could do a head-to-head in controlled conditions to confirm.

th Sony sensor is not too great with M lenses. it would be a misleading test.

 

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Okay, here's a quick outdoors test.
Some caveats, as before:

  • taking Tailwagger's suggestions in account, i did my best to equalize the brightness and white balance between the photos to exclude the effect on percieved contrast
  • focus is near or at infinity
  • there was some inevitable shift in lighting between the M11 and M240 shots - we've had a lot of wind recently, so clouds move fast, also, i'm working nights and it is still winter, so by the time i'm taking these the sun is already starting to set
  • M11 images have been downsampled to M240 size using the bicubic sharper algorithm
  • images processed using Lightroom, as before
  • noise reduction was set to 0 for luma, and 20 for chroma noise
  • sharpening set to 40
  • M11 built in profile disabled, all lens corrections disabled (for both)
  • all images are 100% crops

I will only include the f/2.0 shots. I've got the "full" range, f/2.0-f/8.0 and can post that well if there's interest.
I think it's not necessary as this already brings this to conclusion, at least for focus at infinity and these lighting conditions.
I might repeat the test in bright sunlight, pending weather conditions and free time.

First, center of frame:

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Conclusion: with exposure and white balance equalized, there is little to no difference, as suggested by Tailwagger.

 

Second, edge of frame:

 

Interestingly, here, the M240 has an edge, both in terms of CA and spherical aberation, as well as apparent sharpness. Albeit not a huge edge.

Full frame with marked locations of crops, for reference:

Edited by orcinus
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Sorry - but for me, downsampling a high-res camera's file to match a lower-res camera is like having a race between a tall athlete and a short athlete...

....and cutting the feet off the tall athlete so that both athletes are the same height!

"Crippling" the larger file for equality's sake produces meaningless results.

The only rational approach is to either show 100% pixels for both (as you already did) - or up-sample the smaller file to the same resolution as the larger file, to show the absolute best each can achieve (which can be sometimes be surprising, especially with Leica's lack of anti-alias filters).

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1 hour ago, adan said:

Sorry - but for me, downsampling a high-res camera's file to match a lower-res camera is like having a race between a tall athlete and a short athlete...

....and cutting the feet off the tall athlete so that both athletes are the same height!

Depends on what is being evaluated.

Keep in mind this thread is NOT about the resolution or high frequency detail.
This seems to keep getting lost over and over again for some reason.

The claim was not that M11 somehow produces less detail, or less lines/mm, or less megapixels.

Therefore, what you propose is a meaningless metric - yes, upsampling the M240 file will reveal that M11 has higher resolving power. And? We knew that already, and that has never been contested, has it? In fact, you can see it in the downsampled photos of the resolution chart too.

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22 minutes ago, orcinus said:

upsampling the M240 file will reveal that M11 has higher resolving power. And? We knew that already, and that has never been contested, has it?

Yes it has, by me. Your M11 pics charts above look blurry at f/2 to me, to the point that i wonder if resolution is not affected. I may be wrong, so much the better then, but so far what your downsized files prove to me is that the M11 is softer than the M240, at least on edges and/or corners, and this is not normal at all. 

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1 hour ago, lct said:

Yes it has, by me. Your M11 pics charts above look blurry at f/2 to me, to the point that i wonder if resolution is not affected. I may be wrong, so much the better then, but so far what your downsized files prove to me is that the M11 is softer than the M240, at least on edges and/or corners, and this is not normal at all. 

No F-ing way this is even remotely true generically. None, nada, nope. They both look soft to me and frankly, I'm starting to suspect the lens. Last shot I took with the M11 with the 75 'lux, a lens not known for its edge performance, unprocessed... after clicking, careful you don't cut yourself 😃

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Those pics have been shot with the same lens but i don't mind to be proved wrong.

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9 hours ago, lct said:

Those pics have been shot with the same lens but i don't mind to be proved wrong.

To my eye, these two appear similar.  I wouldn't say that either is better.  Which is reasonable since the M11 file has been down-sampled to match the M240.  If anything, the center of frame crop looks better to me from the M11, but again, probably too close to really call.

So where did we net out on all of this?  I've enjoyed reading the thread, but I think that I've lost the bubble.  I never actually figured out where in the original set of resolution chart images I was supposed to be looking for the "glow".  It wasn't obvious to me.

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Hard to work on so little files but i see less details on the M11 crop. Lack of resolution would be surprising but lack of acutance seems in question. The sensor stack thickness of the M240 is 0.8mm. Do you folks know that of the M11?

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