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Any experience with the C-Biogon 21/4.5 on M11? I suspect it doesn't exhibit red edges thanks to the BSI sensor but a confirmation would be appreciated 😇.

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I am following this discussion. If there are no others who post their results, within the next few days, I will, as soon as practicable, drive into nearby Houston, Texas, with a memory card, and my Zeiss C Biogon 4,5/21mm ZM, to see for myself, on the demonstrator M11 at Houston Camera Exchange.

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I just used an old 21mm super angulon lens on the m11. There was very very little ‘purple’ cast as there was on m8-m/p cameras. There is about a half a stop+ darkness fall off on each left/right of the frame leaving about the size of a 24-28 mm size image even tonal range.  This is easily brought into balance with PS or LR or Capture One masking.

Because the lens is not coded, I found using the light meter difficult…have to look up and see if there is a way to turn it off. Using EV or ASA 400 in my head interpretation gave me good raw files to manipulate slightly for bright sun, e.g. f16 @1/125 and within outdoor house shadows, f8@1/60 worked well. The histogram works appropriately.  `ajz

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vor 1 Stunde schrieb ajz:

....

Because the lens is not coded, I found using the light meter difficult…have to look up and see if there is a way to turn it off. Using EV or ASA 400 in my head interpretation gave me good raw files to manipulate slightly for bright sun, e.g. f16 @1/125 and within outdoor house shadows, f8@1/60 worked well. The histogram works appropriately.  `ajz

Why do you think lens coding and light metering are related? Is this new in the M11?

Edited by tom.w.bn
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1 hour ago, tom.w.bn said:

Why do you think lens coding and light metering are related? Is this new in the M11?

Coding applies lens vignette correction, which then aids metering since darker edges for strong vignetting lenses can lead to overexposure. I'm not sure why a RAW feed isn't use for metering but who knows with Leica... however, some lenses just evoke a strange metering behaviour... during the short time I had a Biogon-C 35mm f/2.8 the M11 perpetually underexposed images with this lens... coded or uncoded. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Note that this metering behaviour was applicable in the early M11 days a few firmware revisions back... I haven't tested this with current firmware so results may be different now.

Edited by hmzimelka
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4 hours ago, ajz said:

I just used an old 21mm super angulon lens on the m11. There was very very little ‘purple’ cast as there was on m8-m/p cameras. [...] Because the lens is not coded, I found using the light meter difficult…[...]

Interesting indeed. Is your lens a S-A 21/4? Just curious. My S-A 21/3.4 does not exhibit purple cast and metering works the same way as other lenses on the M11. BTW being a BSI sensor it seems that coding is not necessary on this lens. I had the same feeling with my Kolari mod Sony A7r2 which has a BSI sensor as well. 

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6 hours ago, hmzimelka said:

[...] some lenses just evoke a strange metering behaviour... during the short time I had a Biogon-C 35mm f/2.8 the M11 perpetually underexposed images with this lens... coded or uncoded. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [...]

Vignetting perhaps? Only flaw of the C-Biogon 35/2.8 in my book. Superb lens otherwise. High sharpness and saturation, minimum flare and color fringing, this lens is my favorite 35 in good light. On the M11, it works the same way as it did for 8 years on my other rangefinders and mirrorless cameras. Just a snap on M11 here with a mix of bright light and shadows. Auto iso in M mode, no 6-bit coding, no vignetting correction, detail in exif data. Sorry for the OT but it is another Zeiss "C" lens and i just hope the C-Biogon 21/4.5 will prove as good on the M11.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just received a mint ZM Biogon 21/4.5 from e**y. Same apparent quality as my favorite ZM 35/28, 50/2 and 50/1.5. Reminds me of the superb Biogon 21/4.5 for Zeiss Contarex in a package as compact as the ZM 35/2.8. 
IQ wise it is a character lens with high sharpness on the centre of the frame, softer results on edges and corners, strong vignetting at full aperture, negligible CA and flare, almost zero distortion. 
Main problem is red edges on earlier digital M's but the BSI sensor of the M11 seems to be immune from color shift the same way as with lenses like CV 15/4.5 v2 and S-A 21/3.4. 
BTW in auto lens profile mode, the M11 chooses the Elmarit 21/2.8 profile automatically. Same on the digital CL which works fine with the ZM 21/4.5 as well. This profile does not seem to correct for anything but i don't use LR. 
Distortion wise i appreciate such a lack of correction as the Biogon 21/4.5 is neatly superior to all Leica lenses i have experience with like SEM 21/3.4, Elmarit 21/2.8 asph, WATE and even S-A 21/3.4 which does very well though. The only Leica competitor, distortion wise, could be the early S-A 21/4 but i have no experience with it.
Snap below on M11 at f/4.5, no 6-bit coding, no lens profile, no vignetting correction. Details on exif data. 

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23 hours ago, lct said:

Just received a mint ZM Biogon 21/4.5 from e**y. Same apparent quality as my favorite ZM 35/28, 50/2 and 50/1.5. Reminds me of the superb Biogon 21/4.5 for Zeiss Contarex in a package as compact as the ZM 35/2.8. 
IQ wise it is a character lens with high sharpness on the centre of the frame, softer results on edges and corners, strong vignetting at full aperture, negligible CA and flare, almost zero distortion. 
Main problem is red edges on earlier digital M's but the BSI sensor of the M11 seems to be immune from color shift the same way as with lenses like CV 15/4.5 v2 and S-A 21/3.4. 
BTW in auto lens profile mode, the M11 chooses the Elmarit 21/2.8 profile automatically. Same on the digital CL which works fine with the ZM 21/4.5 as well. This profile does not seem to correct for anything but i don't use LR. 
Distortion wise i appreciate such a lack of correction as the Biogon 21/4.5 is neatly superior to all Leica lenses i have experience with like SEM 21/3.4, Elmarit 21/2.8 asph, WATE and even S-A 21/3.4 which does very well though. The only Leica competitor, distortion wise, could be the early S-A 21/4 but i have no experience with it.
Snap below on M11 at f/4.5, no 6-bit coding, no lens profile, no vignetting correction. Details on exif data. 

 

It is VERY good to see this confirmation that the Zeiss C-Biogon 4,5/21mm ZM performs in this way, on an M11. I will not, necessarily, rush to buy an M11, upon which to use my Zeiss 21mm lens, but it is really good to see this news. (I recently bought a Voigtlander Nokton 21mm f/1.4 VM, which does not show color shift, on my M10.}

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6 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

How can M11 know (sorry, I do not own one) which lens is mounted without the 6-bit coding to choose something "automatically"?

Good question indeed. I can only guess but but when the M11 sees an uncoded lens it chooses a default lens profile based on infos it finds on the lens (flange?) possibly... Same for the digital CL BTW.

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On 12/6/2022 at 7:13 PM, lct said:

Just received a mint ZM Biogon 21/4.5 from e**y. Same apparent quality as my favorite ZM 35/28, 50/2 and 50/1.5. Reminds me of the superb Biogon 21/4.5 for Zeiss Contarex in a package as compact as the ZM 35/2.8. 
IQ wise it is a character lens with high sharpness on the centre of the frame, softer results on edges and corners, strong vignetting at full aperture, negligible CA and flare, almost zero distortion. 
Main problem is red edges on earlier digital M's but the BSI sensor of the M11 seems to be immune from color shift the same way as with lenses like CV 15/4.5 v2 and S-A 21/3.4. 
BTW in auto lens profile mode, the M11 chooses the Elmarit 21/2.8 profile automatically. Same on the digital CL which works fine with the ZM 21/4.5 as well. This profile does not seem to correct for anything but i don't use LR. 
Distortion wise i appreciate such a lack of correction as the Biogon 21/4.5 is neatly superior to all Leica lenses i have experience with like SEM 21/3.4, Elmarit 21/2.8 asph, WATE and even S-A 21/3.4 which does very well though. The only Leica competitor, distortion wise, could be the early S-A 21/4 but i have no experience with it.
Snap below on M11 at f/4.5, no 6-bit coding, no lens profile, no vignetting correction. Details on exif data. 

 

Cool, thanks for the test! Any chance you have a full res sample to share with us. I'd be very interested to see how this lens performs.

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1 hour ago, Al Brown said:

How can M11 know (sorry, I do not own one) which lens is mounted without the 6-bit coding to choose something "automatically"?

The M11 is a funny thing... My 90 Tele-Elmarit (fat) had a mount screw recess that partially obscured the optical sensor on the mount, and if it fouled with a little dirt it would ironically have the M11 automatically select the 90mm f/2.8 profile. Yeah, it's hard to believe. I think the focal length indexing also plays a key role in the automatic lens identification on the M11 

On my M10M, the same lens would not identify as a 90mm f/2.8 but would periodically cause a no lens attached warning if this same screw head had some dirt on it. 

 

Edited by hmzimelka
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Just now, Al Brown said:

100% that is not the case. As far as I remember my M10s all revert to the profile I last entered as "manual" if no 6-bit coding is available on the lens.

Most of my lenses are coded (or hand coded) so i can only guess sorry. What you're describing could be true when the camera has one or no user profile but each user profile seems to work independently on the M11. I mean each user profile can store 2, 3 or more lens profiles for uncoded lenses so that when selecting a user profile, one can choose either stored lens profile at will. In my case the user profile at work had perhaps only one lens profile (21/2.8) so that the same lens profile did bring up automatically. Another explanation could be that my user profile had 2 or 3 stored lens profiles and that the camera made a choice depending on flanges as i suspected above but on reflection, this explanation does not convince me.

 

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Same settings as above on closeup. This time i hand coded the lens as Elmarit 21/2.8 with no visible image modification. I don't use LR though. 

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Contre-jour at f/8. No visible flare, bit of CA on overexposed parts and still strong vignetting at f/8. A feature of the lens apparently. I seem to recall the same on Biogon 21/4.5 for Contarex but my memory may fail me. Easy to adjust in PP if needed but people disliking native vignetting may prefer lenses like WATE or SEM 21/3.4. They won't have the same distortion or flare performance though. 

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Couple of snaps at f/8 again. Vignetting is still apparent but besides Leica lenses from the same period (S-A 21/3.4, S-A 21/4), the character of the Biogon 21/4.5 looks rather unique IMHO.

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