AWB: now it really works

[Vieri]

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John it can be mechanical and electronic first they would take out the mechanical frame lines. Not a engineer here but my thoughts are the coding on the lens already lets the camera know which lens is on the body

 

Guy, this would work but leave non-coded lenses not only out the filter correction business, but also out of having the correct framelines showing in the finder... I am not sure this would work for many people using third party lenses and/or older & uncoded lenses. Maybe you could have a sensor coupled mechanically rather than an electronic-only one, that would work for every lens

[mjh]

this would work but leave non-coded lenses not only out the filter correction business, but also out of having the correct framelines showing in the finder... I am not sure this would work for many people using third party lenses and/or older & uncoded lenses.

Knowing which lens is attached is a prerequisite for a growing number of tasks performed by the camera, so the pressure to code our lenses can only increase. We might have to accept that there is no future for non-coded lenses. Let’s face it: any other camera on the market knows pretty well what kind of lens is attached, and the M8 needs to know as well. Being able to set the focal length manually to account for third-party lenses would certainly be desirable, but as far as Leica lenses are concerned, coding should be regarded as mandatory. If in the future we could get precise and unambiguous framelines that way, this alone should be worth the expense.

[scott kirkpatrick]

... It'd be nice if they had an AWB "bias", where you could either bias the AWB to be warmer or cooler. Kind of like an exposure compensation. Hmm...come to think of it, does such a thing exist on any digicam?

 

Yes. My E-3 has the ability to crank in a white balance offset, with two parameters, one for the blue-amber shift and one for the green-magenta shift. I can't imagine that this is unique. Of course it only matters for jpegs. I haven't tested to see if this affects the default color balance that you start with in developing the raw file.

 

scott

[stunsworth]

Guy, this would work but leave non-coded lenses not only out the filter correction business

 

Not necessarily, if a coded lens was used then the associated frame lines are displayed, if a non-coded lens is used then the camera just needs to display the pair of frame lines associated with the particular bayonet as currently.

[Alberti]

Finally AWB is working properly for a 5000€ camera,

 

 

best

 

Maurizio

 

Your pictures convince me this is no awefull while balance anymore but now an Awesome White Balance. Glad to be able to stick to the acronyms.

The store with the sales and the roll of tape on your desk are really nice, and complex.

alberti

[vanhulsenbeek]

For my, new firmware is much better. AWB works really good.

Thank you Leica.

 

Agreed! Impressively better.Some difficult colors came out great.

 

Still not perfect. The use of a WhiBal White Balanlca card suggested in a certain situation outside a shift from 5700 to 5400 K. But that is a kind of change that can also be attributed to taste.

 

BTW: the Whibal card is a great help in difficult situations:

 

WhiBal Gray Card for Digital Photo White Balance - RAW Workflow

[Vieri]

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Not necessarily, if a coded lens was used then the associated frame lines are displayed, if a non-coded lens is used then the camera just needs to display the pair of frame lines associated with the particular bayonet as currently.

 

Exactly what I am saying, but not what Guy was suggesting - he suggested having the whole system working only following the code's information, while I suggested to have it work both mechanically & electronically.

[Mauribix]

Your pictures convince me this is no awefull while balance anymore but now an Awesome White Balance. Glad to be able to stick to the acronyms.

The store with the sales and the roll of tape on your desk are really nice, and complex.

alberti

 

 

Really thanks Alberti for the explanation, I always wonder what AWB was for! and now I know!

Again, you're right, the store with the sale and my tidy desk were really bad mix-lighted, and the M8 this time made a great job!

I'm still just looking how to pop-up my built-in flash:confused:

 

Best

 

Maurizio

[Guest guy_mancuso]

Exactly what I am saying, but not what Guy was suggesting - he suggested having the whole system working only following the code's information, while I suggested to have it work both mechanically & electronically.

 

Yes that part the engineers have to sort out what will send the data to the circuit boards correctly. Not sure exactly how that all can be done since my engineering skills are NONE. LOL

[chris_tribble]

Reflecting on how quickly you take things for granted. In Tokyo this week for work with a couple of days to walk around (there are more people out with Leica's than I seen in a month of Sundays in London - from pre M to M8...). A couple of sets of incidental shots on my blog (Christopher Tribble: Tokyo ... a brief visit. Day 1 and Christopher Tribble: Tokyo ... a brief visit. Day 2 ). I've just realised that the white balance on all of these was As Shot.

 

In my book, that's pretty good...

[marknorton]

I'm really pleased with the AWB as well - big improvement.

 

Your pictures of Dhaka, Chris, remind me of an Air India flight I once took where every safety rule in the book was abandoned because of the amount of "stuff" people had brought on board...

[chris_tribble]

I really think it's worth stressing how good it's got. The attached was taken this evening in a little restaurant in Iidabashi, Tokyo. ISO 400 and exposed at 1/15th AWB with the 28 cron asph. I now have full confidence.

 

Thank you again, Leica. OK - some would say we should have been here at the outset, but I for one am happy to recognise what's been achieved.

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[Guest guy_mancuso]

Just a FYI we just got back from our workshop with at least 12 or more M8's shooting for the week and the AWB for everyone was dead on the money. As i looked at almost every image shot by everyone all the files were very very close to being either dead on or just slightly off a touch but i was very impressed looking at thousands of images how good it really was. Major turn around in my book.

[Guest jimmy pro]

Like I said on another thread, I've gotten so used to manual WB I'm not in a hurry to do this upgrade until it's been around a while and it's positive there isn't some bug in it that's lousing up the cameras. A few too many reports of shutdowns. Call me chickensh*t but the manual WB is fine for another couple months if it's been fine for a year and a half.