M8: banding/0.68 finder/saturation — buy or wait?

[Guest malland]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I intended to buy an M8 soon but three issues that have come up in other threads are making me begin to think about waiting for a while:

 

1. Apparently shooting at ISO1250/2500 with a strong light source in the frame often results in a band of light going across the frame, as shown by Pascal in the thread M8 vs DMR, very different colors in Capture One. Mike Prevette states in the same thread:

 

The banding however is very hard to correct via firmware. It is a result of the circuitry of the sensor, and how it passes a charge down the row of pixels to the output terminal. It shows up when the sensor has it's gain turned up (high iso) and part of the sensor is exposed to a very bright light source. In order for the sensor to get that pixel data out it has to pass a signal down a row of active pixels to the output port, this causes interference that the other pixels pick up. Hence a band.

 

If this turns out to be the reason for the banding it may take a sensor upgrade to fix this, which would could take, how long, a year?

 

As I like the 35mm aesthetic, I find the lower-ISO settings to be too noiseless, and prefer would prefer to shoot at 1250 to get a look like 35mm film, as most of the time I don't want a medium-format look. Since July, I've been shooting B&W with the Ricoh GR-D because it gives me B&W that looks like Tri-X, as you can see here:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/

 

or perhaps in a more organized way in my Bangkok series here:

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/sets/72157594271568487/

 

It's really not a problem for me to continue shooting with the GR-D and, when wanting to shoot with 35mm and, particularly 50mm, lenses I can go back to shooting Tri-X, HP5 and Neopan 1600 with my M6. I've been thinking about occasionally going back to film anyway, after Simon Larbalestier looked at my M6 as well as my GR-D prints and suggested that some of the tonalities from the M6 prints were interesting.

 

 

2. The 0.68 finder has been bothering me in that, with the M6, I've been using mainly 50mm lenses and had the rangefinder on both my M6s converted to 0.85x because I found that the 50mm frame on the 0.72 VF was just too small. If I get an M8, I'm likely to use lenses above 28mm on it because the 28mm-equivalent lens on the GR-D is so good, as it the 21mm-equvalent adapter. Someone suggested in another thread that Leica may come out with alternative rangefinder magnification to the current 0.68x for the M8 in the future. This would be of interest to me.

 

3. Finally, as Sean Reid stated in his review, and as others have also indicated, the M8 RAW files have somewhat too much saturation. For me this is not a big problem, as it's easy to desaturate, and, as I'm now shooting mainly B&W, this does not matter.

 

 

So, the upshot of all this is that for me it may be best to wait some time before buying an M6, as I'm not in the situation that I have to shoot digitally, particularly as I have the GR-D, which I like a lot. Yes, selecting frames on a contact sheet is more diificult than seeing a digital shoot in Adobe Lightroom, and scanning a spotting is time-consuming, but I don't have to hurry.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

[pascal_meheut]

Buy. Do not wait. No camera is perfect but the M8 is pretty darn good. Learn to get the best out of it, live with its defaults like you did with any other camera.

 

Just my opinion.

[wattsy]

If you don't need an M8 why fret about the 'issues' you outline? The camera isn't going to be for everyone and if the GRD and/or M6 work better for you then stick with those.

[sean_reid]

I intended to buy an M8 soon but three issues that have come up in other threads are making me begin to think about waiting for a while:

 

1. Apparently shooting at ISO1250/2500 with a strong light source in the frame often results in a band of light going across the frame, as shown by Pascal in the thread M8 vs DMR, very different colors in Capture One. Mike Prevette states in the same thread:

 

The banding however is very hard to correct via firmware. It is a result of the circuitry of the sensor, and how it passes a charge down the row of pixels to the output terminal. It shows up when the sensor has it's gain turned up (high iso) and part of the sensor is exposed to a very bright light source. In order for the sensor to get that pixel data out it has to pass a signal down a row of active pixels to the output port, this causes interference that the other pixels pick up. Hence a band.

 

If this turns out to be the reason for the banding it may take a sensor upgrade to fix this, which would could take, how long, a year?

 

As I like the 35mm aesthetic, I find the lower-ISO settings to be too noiseless, and prefer would prefer to shoot at 1250 to get a look like 35mm film, as most of the time I don't want a medium-format look. Since July, I've been shooting B&W with the Ricoh GR-D because it gives me B&W that looks like Tri-X, as you can see here:

 

Flickr: Photos from Mitch Alland

 

or perhaps in a more organized way in my Bangkok series here:

 

Bangkok Series - a photoset on Flickr

 

It's really not a problem for me to continue shooting with the GR-D and, when wanting to shoot with 35mm and, particularly 50mm, lenses I can go back to shooting Tri-X, HP5 and Neopan 1600 with my M6. I've been thinking about occasionally going back to film anyway, after Simon Larbalestier looked at my M6 as well as my GR-D prints and suggested that some of the tonalities from the M6 prints were interesting.

 

 

2. The 0.68 finder has been bothering me in that, with the M6, I've been using mainly 50mm lenses and had the rangefinder on both my M6s converted to 0.85x because I found that the 50mm frame on the 0.72 VF was just too small. If I get an M8, I'm likely to use lenses above 28mm on it because the 28mm-equivalent lens on the GR-D is so good, as it the 21mm-equvalent adapter. Someone suggested in another thread that Leica may come out with alternative rangefinder magnification to the current 0.68x for the M8 in the future. This would be of interest to me.

 

3. Finally, as Sean Reid stated in his review, and as others have also indicated, the M8 RAW files have somewhat too much saturation. For me this is not a big problem, as it's easy to desaturate, and, as I'm now shooting mainly B&W, this does not matter.

 

 

So, the upshot of all this is that for me it may be best to wait some time before buying an M6, as I'm not in the situation that I have to shoot digitally, particularly as I have the GR-D, which I like a lot. Yes, selecting frames on a contact sheet is more diificult than seeing a digital shoot in Adobe Lightroom, and scanning a spotting is time-consuming, but I don't have to hurry.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

 

Hi Mitch,

 

Maybe today, I can get your picture download figured out. By all means, there's no need to get the M8 if it's not right for you but, to respond to your points:

 

1) I have rarely seen the banding/light blooming in my high ISO files.

 

2) Use the magnifier when you're at 35 or above. You may find that do like wider lenses on the M8 and then the .68 mag will be an asset.

 

3) The saturation comes from the default C1 profile, I believe. That's easy to deal with.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[marknorton]

Here in the UK, we have brilliant autumn sunshine, great picture taking weather and I am having so much fun with this camera. If it's a hobby, isn't that what counts? You can sit on the fence waiting for the perfect sensor or you can get stuck in and enjoy a camera developed by talented committed people and here earlier than any of us dared hope. Go for it!

[johnastovall]

BUY!!

 

There is no perfect camera and this is the best of it's breed. Banding? You want Banding? Try my Holga.

[sean_reid]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Here in the UK, we have brilliant autumn sunshine, great picture taking weather and I am having so much fun with this camera. If it's a hobby, isn't that what counts? You can sit on the fence waiting for the perfect sensor or you can get stuck in and enjoy a camera developed by talented committed people and here earlier than any of us dared hope. Go for it!

 

Hi Mark,

 

This isn't really a hobby for Mitch, as I see things. He's got some clear ideas about what kind of work he wants to make and he's already started making it. I understand completely why he's trying to sort this out. He's making rough and sketchy pictures with that GR and that may be the way things should continue. Ironically, the M8 sensor may be too "perfect" technically for what he's doing.

 

Mitch,

 

It may turn out that you're just a small sensor camera kinda guy. You may already have what you need.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[WestCoast]

To be honest, I'd be inclined to wait at least another few weeks to see how the reported issues pan out.

Maybe these are just some early production issues, or maybe they are more serious sensor / firmware design issues that need to be rectified.

But if I spent that amount of money on an M8 and it produced banded, over-saturated images that also suffered from reddish/purple sensor bloom, I'd be disappointed to say the least.

In fact, I have yet to see a single M8 image that surpasses some of the absolutely excellent ones I have seen from a 5D so far.

Hopefully someone will soon post some of that Leica magic to disprove me!

[sean_reid]

BTW, Mitch, you're right that the 4:3 ratio works for many of your pictures. That's worth considering as well.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[pascal_meheut]

But if I spent that amount of money on an M8 and it produced banded, over-saturated images that also suffered from reddish/purple sensor bloom, I'd be disappointed to say the least.

 

yes but the people who bought it are not disappointed. They know that such problems are common to every camera and that the occur rarely. And the M8 is giving excellent pictures 99.9% of the time.

[Guest malland]

It may turn out that you're just a small sensor camera kinda guy. You may already have what you need.

 

That's really the point: for what I'm interested in now I like the "35mm aesthetic" and, ironically, don't want the medium-format look that the M8 produces basically up through ISO 1250, although that is what most people want. But the conveninece of digital...

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

[WestCoast]

yes but the people who bought it are not disappointed. They know that such problems are common to every camera and that the occur rarely. And the M8 is giving excellent pictures 99.9% of the time.

Well, the people who have reported these issues are concerned about them; and rightly so, given the sum of money that have just handed over.

I think time will tell. We need to wait a few weeks and examine problematic images to see exactly what is going on. Perhaps Leica just need to tweak their firmware some more to resolve the issues.

[mat_mcdermott]

In fact, I have yet to see a single M8 image that surpasses some of the absolutely excellent ones I have seen from a 5D so far.

 

To be sure the 5D has unsurpassed high-ISO performance -- as Sean has shown in his review in is indeed cleaner than the M8 at the high sensitivities; at the low end it looked like a draw to me -- but comparing the user experience of the 5D and the M8 is comparing two entirely different things. I realize you didn't do this in your post, but it does seemed implied. If you like/need/want the rangefinder experience, the 5D isn't even an option, full stop. I just don't understand why people continually compare SLRs and rangefinders directly. It's like comparing a Porsche and a pick-up truck, they both get you down the road but do it very differently.

[sean_reid]

Well, the people who have reported these issues are concerned about them; and rightly so, given the sum of money that have just handed over.

I think time will tell. We need to wait a few weeks and examine problematic images to see exactly what is going on. Perhaps Leica just need to tweak their firmware some more to resolve the issues.

 

Pascal is one of the people who reported the banding or whatever we may want to call it. I read your summary of the M8 and had to wonder if we're talking about the same camera. I've made thousands of pictures with various M8s since August and generally they look great. I think that there's a degree to which pixel peeping could bring some to lose sense of the larger picture.

 

You wrote:

 

"But if I spent that amount of money on an M8 and it produced banded, over-saturated images that also suffered from reddish/purple sensor bloom, I'd be disappointed to say the least."

 

For what it's worth, from my experience.

 

1) The "banding" is real but I've seen it in only a small percentage of ISO 2500 files.

 

2) The saturation is just a touch high in the C1 profile, as it is with the default Canon profiles for the 5D in their own software. It has nothing to do with the RAW file and it's very easy to change with a modified profile. Moreover, some will like that level of saturation and consider it to be "just right".

 

3) Reddish/Purple sensor bloom?

 

Sean

[pascal_meheut]

Well, the people who have reported these issues are concerned about them; and rightly so, given the sum of money that have just handed over.

 

Read the threads, I'm the one who reported both issues and still quite happy with the M8.

[albertknappmd]

I handled the camera for the first time yesterday at the Javits Photo expo here in New York and came away more impressed than expected. I have a series of DMRs and Ms and came away convinced that the M8 is for me. I also want to commend Sean Reid on a superb job of critiquing the M8 and advise all of you to read his review. The 0.68 issue can be readily corrected by using the 1.25 magnifier which I use anyway on my M7 with my 90mm f/2 in low light situations. As to banding, well there will always be a firmwar update in the future if this is truely a problem.

[WestCoast]

If you like/need/want the rangefinder experience, the 5D isn't even an option, full stop. I just don't understand why people continually compare SLRs and rangefinders directly.

I understand that there is a world of difference in terms of "user experience" between the two cameras, however I think we should still be able to discuss and compare the actual images the two cameras produce without getting bogged down in the whole SLR vs Rangefinder debate.

 

Are there any 5D + M8 owners out there that could perhaps post a few side-by-side samples?

[johnll]

I don't have an M8 (yet) but (1) if banding is an issue it may be a problem; however, so far there has been little notice of this. It could be a rarity. The purple fringing I saw in one Noctilux image looked like plain overexposure (pixel bloom) which can affect any digital image if you have some strong spectral highlights. The saturation issue (2) is a non-issue. Just fix it in PP. Some folks like it like that.

[pascal_meheut]

Are there any 5D + M8 owners out there that could perhaps post a few side-by-side samples?

 

Maybe you should read Luminous-Landscape or even better Sean Reid's reviews?

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[handcoater]

Mitch,

 

Have you looked at Alien Skin's Exposure software? You can immulate the look of many film emulsions in color and B&W and add grain that looks very much like film. Email me at: butchwelch@charter.net if you would like me to send you a sample image.