Leica M11 - weird cartoonish look around light source

[nxko]

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See attached image and cropped in sample. Anyone know whats the cause of this cartoonish look around the blue light source? My Leica M11 is updated to latest firmware. DNG-file exported to jpeg from Lightroom. I only shoot .dng. I had similar looking issues with jpegs (when I stopped bothering with jpegs ouf of camera) this summer before they fixed the tone curve-issue (had brownish/cartoonish ugly look in shadow areas).

Lens: Latest 28mm elmarit asph
ISO: 3200
Shutterspeed: 1/60
Aperture: f4 or f5.6

 

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[jaapv]

Sensor blooming and flare around a vastly overexposed highlight. The star effect comes from the aperture blades. 

[nxko]

Ok, thank you, both!

The way to counter this smear would be to underexpose? It also looks like the ISO makes it worse. 

[wizard]

vor 45 Minuten schrieb nxko:

The way to counter this smear would be to underexpose?

Yes. You can recover the shadows in post, if needed.

[nxko]

@wizard Alright. The main interest is the ambulance with its blue lights, whatever is in the shadows is not that important. Thank you!

[S Maclean]

Yes, you over exposed the highlights and possibly pushed the processing a little bit.  Tough subject though on a dark countryside to get ths very bright ambulance lights and even some of the van is going to be a challenge, always.

[Siriusone59]

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47 minutes ago, nxko said:

@wizard Alright. The main interest is the ambulance with its blue lights, whatever is in the shadows is not that important. Thank you!

I think what wizard meant was that once you underexpose to keep those headlights and blue lights from blowing out(sensor blooming), the ambulance will be a shadow.  Post correction in Lightroom should then allow you to increase shadow detail and bring it back to what you need.  Bright lights are hard to recover because the sensor is overwhelmed but shadows(darker areas) can usually be recovered...within the limits of your camera and software.  The fun part is determining an exposure that will work well with both.

[nxko]

17 minutes ago, Siriusone59 said:

I think what wizard meant was that once you underexpose to keep those headlights and blue lights from blowing out(sensor blooming), the ambulance will be a shadow.  Post correction in Lightroom should then allow you to increase shadow detail and bring it back to what you need.  Bright lights are hard to recover because the sensor is overwhelmed but shadows(darker areas) can usually be recovered...within the limits of your camera and software.  The fun part is determining an exposure that will work well with both.

Yes, I understood. And indeed this will be a challenge to get it well exposed. I can work my way down with the ISO I guess  Thanks for input!

[S Maclean]

You can also try masking the shadow areas before you recover them so the highlights remain at the right exposure.

[jaapv]

2 hours ago, nxko said:

Ok, thank you, both!

The way to counter this smear would be to underexpose? It also looks like the ISO makes it worse. 

Not underexpose, but expose for the highlights. They may blow out a bit, depending on the subject, but not this much. The resulting noise in shadow recovery can be countered by Topaz DeNoise AI or Topaz Photo AI (plugins)  Increasing ISO is not always the answer in night shots; it does amplify the signal from the sensor, but it also amplifies the noise and reduces dynamic range. I am not sure whether the M11 sensor is dual-gain, which would counter the problem a bit, but it is always better to find the optimum balance between shadow recovery in postprocessing on a powerful computer or cranking up the ISO in the camera with limited resources. The Histogram is your friend. Get it as full as possible and try to avoid the peak bunched up against the righthand side.  (Ideally  )

[nxko]

2 hours ago, jaapv said:

Not underexpose, but expose for the highlights. They may blow out a bit, depending on the subject, but not this much. The resulting noise in shadow recovery can be countered by Topaz DeNoise AI or Topaz Photo AI (plugins)  Increasing ISO is not always the answer in night shots; it does amplify the signal from the sensor, but it also amplifies the noise and reduces dynamic range. I am not sure whether the M11 sensor is dual-gain, which would counter the problem a bit, but it is always better to find the optimum balance between shadow recovery in postprocessing on a powerful computer or cranking up the ISO in the camera with limited resources. The Histogram is your friend. Get it as full as possible and try to avoid the peak bunched up against the righthand side.  (Ideally  )

Yeah, I did not think about exposing for the highlights in this situation  Topaz improved the overall look (amazing) of the image, but still blown highlights. So will try to redo this exposure when I get the time.

[Adam Bonn]

are you using the Leica M11 profile or one of the adobe ones (eg adobe standard or adobe color/landscape/etc)

either way you might be able to get some improvement by editing the blue sliders to minus values under the calibration tool in LR

[SrMi]

On 12/8/2022 at 4:46 AM, Musky said:

Funny I don’t see exposure this way. 

You’re not really underexposing. You have to choose what you’re exposing for. You chose to expose for the shadows. That means the highlights are totally blowing out. but the shadows are perfectly exposed  

or you can choose to expose for the highlights. The lights will be perfectly exposed. 

so now you make a decision what you want to expose properly. 

I think things that are in the shadow should look like they’re in the shadow.

In this case I would expose the lights on the building correctly. leave the rest in the shadow and let it be lit by the available light. It would bring more mood to the scene. 

I almost never choose to expose for shadows unless I am shooting somewhere where everything is under the same shadow/light. Otherwise if there are things lit and things in shadow I ALWAYS choose to expose the things that are lit. It just makes sense. 

Always expose for the lit parts of your scene. No matter day or night. Things that are lit look better. And then let the shadow go to shadow. Even deep into total blackness. 

a photo like this is a good example 

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/midnight-diner-tomeka-land.html

Yes.

Digital photography is about exposing for the highlights and processing for the shadows. 

[LikameLeica]

I have similar issues and normally use Lightroom for all my editing and RAW conversion.  I have tried the exact same RAW file conversion in Capture One (trial version) and it completely goes away.  I personally think that the LR Raw editing still needs tweaks for the M11.  Picture on this reply is RAW conversion with Lightroom (sharpen only adjustment).  Zoom into shoulder of singer in white t-shirt.  Also purple stage light top left of file.  I will post Capture One version same edit of only sharpen in separate post.

 

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[LikameLeica]

Just now, LikameLeica said:

I have similar issues and normally use Lightroom for all my editing and RAW conversion.  I have tried the exact same RAW file conversion in Capture One (trial version) and it completely goes away.  I personally think that the LR Raw editing still needs tweaks for the M11.  Picture on this reply is RAW conversion with Lightroom (sharpen only adjustment).  Zoom into shoulder of singer in white t-shirt.  Also purple stage light top left of file.  I will post Capture One version same edit of only sharpen in separate post.

 

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Capture One Version

Edited December 10, 2022 by LikameLeica

[LikameLeica]

One more example, RAW conversion Lightroom vs. Capture One.

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[LikameLeica]

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[nxko]

On 12/8/2022 at 1:24 PM, Adam Bonn said:

are you using the Leica M11 profile or one of the adobe ones (eg adobe standard or adobe color/landscape/etc)

either way you might be able to get some improvement by editing the blue sliders to minus values under the calibration tool in LR

Thanks for tip. If I go down enough it actually looks good, but at the cost of blue color

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[nxko]

On 12/8/2022 at 1:46 PM, Musky said:

Funny I don’t see exposure this way. 

You’re not really underexposing. You have to choose what you’re exposing for. You chose to expose for the shadows. That means the highlights are totally blowing out. but the shadows are perfectly exposed  

or you can choose to expose for the highlights. The lights will be perfectly exposed. 

so now you make a decision what you want to expose properly. 

I think things that are in the shadow should look like they’re in the shadow.

In this case I would expose the lights on the building correctly. leave the rest in the shadow and let it be lit by the available light. It would bring more mood to the scene. 

I almost never choose to expose for shadows unless I am shooting somewhere where everything is under the same shadow/light. Otherwise if there are things lit and things in shadow I ALWAYS choose to expose the things that are lit. It just makes sense. 

Always expose for the lit parts of your scene. No matter day or night. Things that are lit look better. And then let the shadow go to shadow. Even deep into total blackness. 

a photo like this is a good example 

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/midnight-diner-tomeka-land.html

Absolutely. I have never been in a situation like this before. But exposing for the lights on the building, and your photo example turned a switch in my head for how to think next time going into a similar situation. Thank you!

[nxko]

40 minutes ago, LikameLeica said:

I have similar issues and normally use Lightroom for all my editing and RAW conversion.  I have tried the exact same RAW file conversion in Capture One (trial version) and it completely goes away.  I personally think that the LR Raw editing still needs tweaks for the M11.  Picture on this reply is RAW conversion with Lightroom (sharpen only adjustment).  Zoom into shoulder of singer in white t-shirt.  Also purple stage light top left of file.  I will post Capture One version same edit of only sharpen in separate post.

 

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Interesting. So much better conversion from Capture One. Thank you for sharing!