M10-P Sequential images vary greatly in how reflected light glare is rendered

[TCHP]

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These three shots I did of a floor as a test example were done with three very rapid presses of the M10-P shutter button.  Lens is a Voigtlander 75mm Nokton, set on f2.8 I believe.  While there is no polarizer set up on the lens, each shot looks like the camera is doing its own internal polarization somehow, with each shot showing a wide variation in the glare on the floor.  I'd say the first shot looks most like what the glare actually looked like to me through the viewfinder. I tried to find out something about this via Google, but did not come up with any aspect of the camera or its settings that would cause so much variation in how reflected light glare is depicted.  Something wrong with the camera?  I've been noticing this variation with images I have been taking in a furniture store, where there is a lot of reflected glare on the tabletops, etc.  One shot to the next can look quite different in terms of its overall lightness or darkness due to the very different ways that the glare seems to randomly be either minimized, or not minimized.

My understanding is that the lighting in this store is all halogen floods, with no LED or florescent bulbs.

Thanks, Thomas

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Edited July 29, 2024 by TCHP

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[Indeepthought]

My initial thoughts are (1) the lens (2) lens settings within camera.. I would try a Leica fully coded lens and set the camera accordingly.. Then try some test shots, then change over to your Nokton- do the same settings & test shots.. If the results are still suspect then a trip to Leica with an exposure issue.. 🍷

[TCHP]

Thanks, I'll try some tests with some other lenses using a tripod.  I am double checking with the store owner if they changed the lighting.  I noticed that in my images above the cabinet leg that appears in the top right corner is casting a double shadow in two of the images, but in one image one of the shadows is completely gone.  So, perhaps there is a issue that relates to flickering/frequency of the light sources, and the many flood bulbs that are on the ceiling.

[pegelli]

What exposure times are you using?  If short enough you might be catching different moments in the 50 (or 60) Hz cycle causing these differences.

[Ecar]

Are you on Auto-something (ISO, A exposure mode)? Also, what metering mode did you use?

Edited July 29, 2024 by Ecar

[irenedp]

and… raws or jpgs? 

[mujk]

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What you see through the optical viewfinder can of course be quite different from what the sensor sees, particularly in situations when the direction of incoming light is critical. Rendering of directional light, as is the case with many reflections, is also very dependent on the angle it reaches the sensor. In these cases even a very small shift in camera position can cause a quite big difference. I would suggest repeating the test with the camera on a tripod and exposure (ISO, shutter speed and aperture) set to fixed values.

[TCHP]

I heard back from the store owner who said they began replacing all their halogen floods to LED over a year ago, and at this point almost all the floods are LED.  So, I'm betting this is all a false alarm on my part, and I am just catching the exposure shifts due to the light flicker.  I was shooting all manual, with manual ISO and multi-field metering.  I was probably shooting around a 250th in this case.  I normally shoot at f4 in that store, as it is still kind of dark, but I'd accidentally rotated the aperture to f2.8 and the shutter speed I was setting for the metering went up faster than I typically use in there, and that is when I began seeing big shifts in the exposure of the same view from shot to shot. I'll do some tests to rule out any issue with the camera, but right now I'm guessing it is probably the lighting.