M8 with 2.0 firmware high ISO better noise performance?

[robsteve]

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This is the 1250iso shot.

 

I made some ful rez crops to get an idea of what the full file looks like. I chose an area of shadow under the table and it looks pretty good.

 

 

 

 

I will try some shots in very low light, but I don't know if I can get my son to sit still enough BTW, I found Capture One is better at the 2500iso files. It filters out some of the yellow blobs you can get in the shadows on skin tones. The images here were done in Lightroom.

 

Robert

[devils-advocate]

Wow, this thread is really depressing. I hadn't looked at the M8's high ISO 'performance' in a while. This is painful. Pretty much identical to the corresponding ISO on a D700, except with a extra "0" on the end

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[Dan States]

Wow, this thread is really depressing. I hadn't looked at the M8's high ISO 'performance' in a while. This is painful. Pretty much identical to the corresponding ISO on a D700, except with a extra "0" on the end

 

Yeah, the M8 is really only usable for making actual prints. For purposes of web pixel peeping it's definitely second rate. Either of the above shots would make fine prints. The 2500 ISO print needs just a touch more chroma noise reduction.

 

I know I would not be hauling out a D700 and blasting away in a restaurant, I'd feel like a fool. Considering that I'd say the M8 looks even better.

[erl]

I am more of an "image peeper" rather than a "pixel peeper" so I probably view the Hi ISO of the M8 a little differently. I use 640 iso regularly and am very happy with it. Frequently, I am required to switch to 1250 (thank you Leica for Auto ISO) and I must say it works well for me. My opinion is that 'light quality' is probably a more influential factor, along with correct exposure, rather than noise levels. If the light is good and your exposure is correct, I don't believe noise will too much pain for you, remembering the situation you are photographing in.

 

Below are 3 pics from a series I shot recently at 1250iso using ver. 1.2 firmware. Lens was 75mm cron @f2.0. To my eye, there is no noise for practical puroses. No idea what you will find if you 'pixel peep'. Now if I had shot in flat light and badly exposed, the result would be unrecognizable!

 

 

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I have loaded ver2.0 onto one camera, keeping the other on 1.2. So far my tests have not shown any discernable difference.

[mmk60]

I am more of an "image peeper" rather than a "pixel peeper" so I probably view the Hi ISO of the M8 a little differently. I use 640 iso regularly and am very happy with it. Frequently, I am required to switch to 1250 (thank you Leica for Auto ISO) and I must say it works well for me. My opinion is that 'light quality' is probably a more influential factor, along with correct exposure, rather than noise levels. If the light is good and your exposure is correct, I don't believe noise will too much pain for you, remembering the situation you are photographing in.

 

Below are 3 pics from a series I shot recently at 1250iso using ver. 1.2 firmware. Lens was 75mm cron @f2.0. To my eye, there is no noise for practical puroses. No idea what you will find if you 'pixel peep'. Now if I had shot in flat light and badly exposed, the result would be unrecognizable!

 

 

[ATTACH]103887[/ATTACH]

 

 

[ATTACH]103888[/ATTACH]

 

 

[ATTACH]103889[/ATTACH]

 

I have loaded ver2.0 onto one camera, keeping the other on 1.2. So far my tests have not shown any discernable difference.

 

 

Erl

 

Beautiful photos! Very encouraging:) Thanks for sharing them

 

Cheers

[caparobertsan]

Bloody hell! How come your camera is less noisy at 1250 iso than mine? Mine is chrome M8 bought May this year!

[stunsworth]

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Nice shots Erl. What's important is to nail the exposure. Any underexposure and the noise can be obvious.

 

Here's one of mine at 1250. Not as good as Erl's - either technically or visually - but not too bad. The colour's crap, I realise that. But I only spent a few seconds on the image.

 

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[nugat]

Nugat:

 

Is you M8 chrome by any chance?

 

My Black M8 serial number is 31049**.

 

Black #31029

 

What's this chrome obsession?

[KM-25]

Nice shots Erl. What's important is to nail the exposure. Any underexposure and the noise can be obvious.

 

Here's one of mine at 1250. Not as good as Erl's - either technically or visually - but not too bad. The colour's crap, I realise that. But I only spent a few seconds on the image.

 

I understand this, but what about really low light? This is where you want Leica optics in, they have tremendous separation ability. I can underexpose....or rather properly expose for the highlights with the D700 / D3 and get simply spectacular results.

 

I am not saying that your technique is not viable, but in all of these latest shots, the light is really good, not low light.

 

This to me, is medium low light, 1/30th at 1.4 at ISO 1250. It is usable to me in a reportage situation. It appeared one stop brighter than this so understand that I pushed it down a bit, added more black in the raw conversion slider. So bear that in mind as it is a technique I use to get rid of shadow noise with the M8. I think that ISO 160-640 is perfectly fine with this camera.

 

I guess for now, I am happy with what I am getting out of the M8. I never shoot above ISO 200 in my film M's so I can't complain too much..

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[Mauribix]

Bloody hell! How come your camera is less noisy at 1250 iso than mine? Mine is chrome M8 bought May this year!

 

I'm sure you camera behaves the same as Erl's. The secret for the low noise lays in the moment of the shot.

Keep the exact exposure that's all, (being Erl a Pro he surely knows ho to do that) and you'll find most of the high iso noise blown away...

[chris_tribble]

Woops - a problem. I attach two images + a 100% crop at 640 (the missing pixels are a bit faint in this one) + a further crop from at 1250 all from the same camera. The first is pre-firmware update, the second post-firmware 2.0 update. I think I may have seen this problem once before, but it now seems to be a permanent feature (traceable in lower iso shots too, but less noticeable. Damn! Is this a damaged sensor? Any thoughts on trying to re-install the firmware to see if it makes it go away .

Suggestions welcome. First problem I've encountered of this kind - and of course it's on my older body (3111815) bought April 2007... Can't remember if this is still under warranty (bought in the UK - I think this ought to be two years... am I right?

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[jaapv]

It looks like a sensor problem, Chris. It may be that C1 does not show it.

[nugat]

Oops! Pixel row failure. Run to have your sensor and electronics exchaged while under warranty. Nothing can be done with it at home.

How does M8 deal with bad pixels? Epson rd1 has a function to eliminate them. M8 does it automatically?

[chris_tribble]

Thanks guys - nice not to be alone - but what on earth are we doing glued to our computers on a sunny morning (at least it is that way in the UK!).

 

Jaap - Bedankt

Nugat - Dziękuję (I used to live in Warsaw - my greetings to that fair city...)

 

Any idea why this might have happened? I don't think it was the firmware upgrade (my other body's fine)...

 

I've now written to Leica UK asking them advice on what to do next. It may be best to do the shutter upgrade and sensor replacement all at the same time. I'd been considering this anyway, but was going to wait for the warranty to run out in April 09... But maybe the warranty will be extended by 12 months whatever?

[nugat]

What I would love you to do, as I have been meaning to, is to do another picture comparison for the readers to match a picture with the taking lens! This comparison was to compare high ISO noise pre- and post-firmware 2.0 update, but I want a lens comparison! Mix the same pix taken wth Voigtlander, Zeiss, and Leica glass (if you have them, I know you have leica glass and Voigt). I would bet my new car payment that the readers *cannot* tell the difference between pictures taken with various lenses much more than 50% of the time! Make this test with low ISO. If a LeciaNut cannot tell the leica glass 95% of the time, then (as I contend), the readers should stop dissing non-Leica glass!

 

I don't have any expensive...er high quality Leica or Zeiss lens to do the comparison.

I'd love the just announced summlux 1.4/ 24mm, but it's price tag of 5000 euro is my monthly installment on the maybach, so you understand I can't afford the extra expense.

I think the law of diminishing returns applies here as well. Human perception is a logarythmical phenomenon, something ten times different feels just like the next notch .

That new summilux must be a notch higher than my Ultron. And ten times the price.

I find pre-asph leica lenses slightly (third of notch?) better than contemporary CV asph, but they also have the character CV lacks. And character you cannot quantify. You like it or not. New Leica asph lenses don't have it for me. If I made a living of photography I would definitely need one of those new lenses. The market pays for formal perfection, not character. Formal perfection is the lowest common denominator of "quality" perceived by wide audiences.

[nugat]

 

Nugat - Dziękuję (I used to live in Warsaw - my greetings to that fair city...)

 

 

And you have Polish fonts! Fab!

It's raining and cold in Warsaw. Watching old disney cartoon movies with my daughter and glancing at the iMac...

The bad pixel row must have been there before. Look at your old pictures taken in low light/high ISO. Look at the same place, zoom in.

[nugat]

I am more of an "image peeper" rather than a "pixel peeper" so I probably view the Hi ISO of the M8 a little differently. I use 640 iso regularly and am very happy with it. Frequently, I am required to switch to 1250 (thank you Leica for Auto ISO) and I must say it works well for me. My opinion is that 'light quality' is probably a more influential factor, along with correct exposure, rather than noise levels. If the light is good and your exposure is correct, I don't believe noise will too much pain for you, remembering the situation you are photographing in.

 

Below are 3 pics from a series I shot recently at 1250iso using ver. 1.2 firmware. Lens was 75mm cron @f2.0. To my eye, there is no noise for practical puroses. No idea what you will find if you 'pixel peep'. Now if I had shot in flat light and badly exposed, the result would be unrecognizable!

 

 

I have loaded ver2.0 onto one camera, keeping the other on 1.2. So far my tests have not shown any discernable difference.

 

You are absolutely right. Light "quality" is more important that the overall level.

Professional stage or film lighting is just that: pointing the eye's direction towards what is important. And right there, on the subject, the light level must be high enough for the eye/sensor to be comfortable. Uniform low flat lighting is the worst. The eye wanders helplessly without any visual clues what the subject is. Noise as measure of entropy (chaos) becomes as important.

Photography is "drawing with light". As a young lad I went to a screening and meeting with Roman Polanski visiting my hometown in Poland. He had lived abroad since 1960s.

Somebody asked him if he would make a film in Poland again. He answered "No, because I can make a film without camera, but without telephones I cannot". At that time telephones were a great rarity in Poland.(He came back to shoot "The Pianist" when telephones became plenty).

It is no great feat to take good pictures with a professionally prepared light. Camera Obscura would do it.

But accidental, flat, low light is a real challenge. As a reportage camera M8 fails on all fronts, not only the Iraqi one (read Kamber report).

[ArtZ]

I am more of an "image peeper" rather than a "pixel peeper" so I probably view the Hi ISO of the M8 a little differently. I use 640 iso regularly and am very happy with it. Frequently, I am required to switch to 1250 (thank you Leica for Auto ISO) and I must say it works well for me. My opinion is that 'light quality' is probably a more influential factor, along with correct exposure, rather than noise levels. If the light is good and your exposure is correct, I don't believe noise will too much pain for you, remembering the situation you are photographing in.

 

Below are 3 pics from a series I shot recently at 1250iso using ver. 1.2 firmware. Lens was 75mm cron @f2.0. To my eye, there is no noise for practical puroses. No idea what you will find if you 'pixel peep'. Now if I had shot in flat light and badly exposed, the result would be unrecognizable!

 

 

[ATTACH]103887[/ATTACH]

 

 

[ATTACH]103888[/ATTACH]

 

 

[ATTACH]103889[/ATTACH]

 

I have loaded ver2.0 onto one camera, keeping the other on 1.2. So far my tests have not shown any discernable difference.

 

G'day erl,

 

Any particular reason to remove all metadata information from these files?

[Shootist]

G'day erl,

 

Any particular reason to remove all metadata information from these files?

Art that may not be his choice. There are some programs that strip all metadata when converting images for web posting. I think Lightroom does this if you use the Save for or Send to Web option. And maybe even Photoshop.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[erl]

ArtZ, Not aware of any removal. Files were processed in C1 and prep'd for the web in PS3. If you have an interest in the metadata I can provide it for you. I really don't know which part of my processing removed it.