Could the 1.3x and 1.8x Digital Zoom (potentially) replace a prime lens?

[THEME]

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Say you got a 28mm lens, the Digital Zoom on the M11 can turn it into a 36mm and 50mm focal length. At what cost? Gimmick? Useful? What are the tradeoffs, especially in relation to bokeh?

Thanks heaps in advance for inputs!

Edited March 29, 2022 by THEME

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[Overgaard]

Hello Daniel, 

It works, just as it does on the Q2. There is enough megapixels available and lens resolution quality that you can crop in. 

You can do that in editing. That they implemented it in the camera as a feature to "crop" in camera is ... well, it's a well-intended gimmick aded maybe because they could, and as a reminder to the user that there is enough information that cropping will work. 

The experience from the first Leica S was that one could crop drastically in the files. Now you can do the same in the Q2 and M11. 

Can it replace a prime lens? in my opinion not, because the value of a prime lens as the 50/1.4 is that you move to compose and take the photo, working with that specific depth of sharpness and more. The photo is made in your mind first, then executed with the camera. But then again, if you get used to "think 50mm" with a 28mm cropped 1.8x ... not much difference. 

 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Overgaard

[SrMi]

18 minutes ago, THEME said:

Say you got a 28mm lens, the Digital Zoom on the M11 can turn it into a 36mm and 50mm focal length. At what cost? Gimmick? Useful? What are the tradeoffs, especially in relation to bokeh?

Thanks heaps in advance for inputs!

The digital zoom simulates smaller sensor sizes, and has all the advantages and disadvantages of smaller sensor size.

[THEME]

20 minutes ago, Overgaard said:

Hello Daniel, 

It works, just as it does on the Q2. There is enough megapixels available and lens resolution quality that you can crop in. 

You can do that in editing. That they implemented it in the camera as a feature to "crop" in camera is ... well, it's a well-intended gimmick aded maybe because they could, and as a reminder to the user that there is enough information that cropping will work. 

The experience from the first Leica S was that one could crop drastically in the files. Now you can do the same in the Q2 and M11. 

Can it replace a prime lens? in my opinion not, because the value of a prime lens as the 50/1.4 is that you move to compose and take the photo, working with that specific depth of sharpness and more. The photo is made in your mind first, then executed with the camera. But then again, if you get used to "think 50mm" with a 28mm cropped 1.8x ... not much difference. 

 

Torsten appreciate, kind of what I expected, therefore wondering what Leica aims to achieve with this feature. Oh and only works in Live View. Thought there might be some magic viewfinder adjustment... 

If anyone has sample images with the respective 1:1.3x and 1:1.8x "crops," would be interested to see!

The ideal case would be: left home with a 28mm, but in need of a 50mm focal length. Simply adjust the digital zoom...

[Overgaard]

2 minutes ago, THEME said:

If anyone has sample images with the respective 1:1.3x and 1:1.8x "crops," would be interested to see!

The ideal case would be: left home with a 28mm, but in need of a 50mm focal length. Simply adjust the digital zoom...

Yes, it works that way: Wish I had a 50mm, and ups yes, I do. I jus switch to 1.8x and then I can see in the EVF where the frame lines will be. 

I'm posting a new M11 article tomorrow or so about "What is this megapixels game about?" and examples of 1.3x and 1.8x crops.

Here's a 28mm Leica Q2 with crops I did some time ago:

 

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Here's a 60Mp Leica M11 photo with 90mm APO-Summicron made into a 300mm photo (5MP file after the crop)

Full frame original:

[Tailwagger]

48 minutes ago, Overgaard said:

Can it replace a prime lens? in my opinion not, because the value of a prime lens as the 50/1.4 is that you move to compose and take the photo, working with that specific depth of sharpness and more. The photo is made in your mind first, then executed with the camera. But then again, if you get used to "think 50mm" with a 28mm cropped 1.8x ... not much difference.

Totally agree. 

I think it's important to mention that what's often overlooked when discussing this topic is that added DoF is a double edged sword. If you embrace in advance the deeper DoF when cropping or in a crop mode, it can actually become another tool in the box.  One can get the angle of view of a longer lens, but with the DoF of wider one.  Not an everyday thing, but it can be useful when you're focusing on something in the near field, but want elements in the background to be more distinct and recognizable.  For subjects within a few meters, I have on a few occasions found myself pulling the 75 or 90mm off and re-shooting with a 28 or 35mm in portrait and then cropping back to the approx. FoV of the original lens so that the background blur is less severe. One reason why I personally find having more pixels useful from time to time.

[Jared]

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1 hour ago, THEME said:

Say you got a 28mm lens, the Digital Zoom on the M11 can turn it into a 36mm and 50mm focal length. At what cost? Gimmick? Useful? What are the tradeoffs, especially in relation to bokeh?

Thanks heaps in advance for inputs!

It does sort of beg the question, if we had a 1 giga pixel camera and a 21mm lens, could we use that for everything and just zoom in software? The answer is, "not really." Here is the problem... If you take your 21mm lens at, say, f/2.8 and digitally zoom it to 210mm your spatial resolution is going to drop way down. You'd still have plenty of megapixels--about 100 megapixels or so--but each pixel would be dramatically less sharp than a true 210mm lens because of diffraction. You'd effectively have stopped down a little beyond f/22. 

So, digital zooms (or cropping in software) can be very useful and effective, but it's not a substitute for having a prime lens of the actual desired focal length. Personally, I have no problem using my Q2 cropped in to 35mm or 50mm, but I start to lose useful resolution by the time I get to 75mm, and it isn't due to megapixel counts. You're just reaching the limit of what you can accomplish with a lens aperture of 16mm. The same would be true in an M11. No worries using the 28mm at 36mm or even 50mm, but I wouldn't go beyond that, and for certain applications even 50mm might be stretching things. So, not a gimmick per se, but limited usefulness.

[ianforber]

I use it in the Q2 as an aid to composition when I know I will be cropping to roughly that extent - the decision on precisely how much to crop only being taken when back home on the computer. 

I haven’t used it yet on the M11 because I can’t see the effect. I don’t use LV and only very rarely review images I’ve just taken.

I still crop massively though and frame my shots with the intention of doing so.

[Jeff S]

Cropping does not change perspective (relationship between near and far subjects); only changing camera to subject distance does that. That depends on whether you move your feet and/or change subject matter/distance, which people often do when changing lenses (focal lengths). 
 

Jeff

[Photoworks]

I find the zoom tool convenient in some situations. Unlike the Q2 this tool is applicable to every lens you need.

You will need to use LV with the back of the screen or Visoflex to activate the function and be able to see.. 
If you have the camera set to 36mp the activation of crop in zoom will temporarily switch the resolution to 60MP. Good thinking Leica!

This was shot on a 90mm lens in challenging lighting. the EVF was very hard to focus with all this blue light but this is more a discussion of another topic.

original framing at 1.8x  ( come out to 160mm? )

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Full frame image..

 

then I saw I can get another format as well

 

this was all shot wide open on the 2.4 Summarit 90mm lens ISO 3200.

 

[Tailwagger]

On 3/29/2022 at 5:34 PM, Jared said:

So, digital zooms (or cropping in software) can be very useful and effective, but it's not a substitute for having a prime lens of the actual desired focal length. 

In my experience, at least in some instances, particularly on the long end, with a good capture one can crop fairly heavily and scale digitally with your tool of preference on the back end to good effect.  I posted an example with the M11 in an earlier thread where I pushed a 90mm Elmarit shot extremely hard, cropping down to a 3 or 4 Mpx and then scaling back up to 18Mpx. Is it every inch as good as if I had a CaNiSon with a native 600mm? No, but it might be as good or better than a zoom with a 2x converter from a couple of years back.  Regardless, I find the results convincing enough to attempt when necessary. 

Here's another example from about a year ago using PS upscaling, not as extreme. This was taken with the SL2/75mm APO as it was the longest I had with me at the time.  I've since gotten the Topaz suite and the Adobe algorithms have improved quite a bit, so I'd expect if I revisited this shot I could do quite a bit better. 

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And the original, unprocessed: