M8 Viewfinder

[lct]

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Howard, the name of the framelines doesn't take into account the field of view (FoV) but the focal length of the lenses. When you put a 50mm lens on your M6 right now, you get the 50mm frame lines. And when you put again the same lens on the digital M in a couple of months, you'll get again a 50mm frame lines but its FoV will be different.

[burkey]

LCT - thanks for the explanation and picture. I appreciate the help. Only recently I have begun really considering the option of an M8. Again, thanks for the assistance.

. . . David

[ho_co]

LCT - what do you think will show in the M8 viewfinder, as far as frame lines is concerned, when M-mount lenses without the indicator marks are mounted on the camera?

LCT is correct, though he didn't answer your question directly. The lens flange alone determines the finder frame set. Zebra stripes add EXIF coding for the digital M. Many of us on this forum hope they will do more.

 

There would thus likely be no difference in VF display between zebra striped and uncoded lenses. (Leica has said the uncoded lenses will be usable on the new camera.)

 

--HC

[burkey]

Howard - thanks for adding a bit more clarity. So, the frame line/focal length remain constant but the FoV will change as is in the 35mm. equiv. "thing" we all end up dealing with in digital environments now. If the question has already been answered I'm sorry but is there any equiv. chart available now for the M8? (It would be nice to get a feel for my M-mount existing inventory.)

[ho_co]

Howard, framelines don't take into account the field of view (FoV) but the focal length of the lenses. When you put a 50mm lens on your M6 right now, you get the 50mm frame lines. And when you put again the same lens on the digital M in a couple of months, you'll get again a 50mm frame lines but its FoV will be different.

 

Well put. I am in 100% agreement. That is what I said in the first post (#23), and why I tried to distinguish the lens focal lengths from their equivalent fields on a reduced sensor. Maybe that didn't help as much as I had hoped.

 

As you and Bob Ross said, it's difficult to keep track of. For some folks I know, it may be downright confusing.

 

Sean Reid approached the matter very clearly in one of his recent reviews--you pick up the 50mm because you know it'll give you the field of view you want. You don't stop to say "Ah, yes, that scene looks as if it would be well served with a 46.8 degree field of view." Nor will we say with the digital M that we're looking for a lens with a 36 degree field to capture our vision.

 

But those relationships are something the viewfinder designers did to take into account.

 

"Das ewig Leicaliche zieht uns hinan!"

 

--HC

[lct]

... is there any equiv. chart available now for the M8?...

Not to cut Howard off at the pass but assuming that the digital M will have a 1.33x crop factor, we should get the following fields of view (FoV):

 

[burkey]

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LCT - again, thanks. That helps a lot.

[sean_reid]

It would seem to me that eventually some sort of accomodation will be needed for us other folks with CV or Zeiss M-mount lenses. I'm strongly leaning towards the M8 but doubt whether or not I'll ever be able to replicate the CV and Zeiss M-mount inventory I have with all new Leica glass. 'Just hoping, that's all.

 

Leica has not said anything about non-Leica M lenses being incompatible with the digital M.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[burkey]

Thanks, Sean. We can only hope. Obviously the folks at Leica would prefer otherwise but I'm sure many of us have a variety of m-mount lenses in our inventories and not all came from Leica.

[sean_reid]

Thanks, Sean. We can only hope. Obviously the folks at Leica would prefer otherwise but I'm sure many of us have a variety of m-mount lenses in our inventories and not all came from Leica.

 

Hi David,

 

I wouldn't worry about it. <G>

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[ho_co]

Howard - thanks for adding a bit more clarity. So, the frame line/focal length remain constant but the FoV will change as is in the 35mm. equiv. "thing" we all end up dealing with in digital environments now. If the question has already been answered I'm sorry but is there any equiv. chart available now for the M8? (It would be nice to get a feel for my M-mount existing inventory.)

 

Oh, David, I think my attempts at clarification are tending more to generate confusion.

 

Sean Reid published a useful chart in one of his recent reviews, though at the moment I don't recall which. If you're not a subscriber to ReidReviews, don't worry. Everyone on this forum (including me) THINKS he has a clear way to explain it, and we'll all give it a shot. {We ought to collect these ramblings and a year from now look back to see just how off-base our speculations were! }

 

As you said, a 50mm (say) covers a particular field of view; a reduced sensor sees only part of that field of view.

 

None of us knows what the digital M (so far officially unnamed by Leica, but called M8 on this forum because of supposedly well-sourced information) finder will look like.

 

Leica has said the camera will take almost all lenses ever made for the M series; that means the physical baselength of the rangefinder must remain unchanged. (LCT has calculated that doing so would require greater magnification than the current standard 0.72x. If so, I would imagine that Leica would go to the already available 0.85x, though by LCT's calculations that would be overkill. We don't know.)

 

The (I think only) other relevant item that Leica has officially stated is that the digital M will have a crop factor of 1.33 compared to the full-frame cameras. What that means is that you can take each focal length and multiply it by 1.33 to get the 'equivalent focal length' (though some prefer other ways of stating this).

 

We are expecting a new 15mm lens as well (speculation to my knowledge, but Leica has said publicly that if they introduce a new camera they will introduce any lenses needed to make it usable, and that those lenses will work on all current cameras). The lens could turn out to be a 12mm or a 16mm, or to be delayed etc.

 

So working with current focal lengths 21, 24, 28, 35, 50, 75, 90 you can simply multiply each by 4/3 to come up with the focal length equivalents on the smaller sensor.

 

When you do that, you will see that a number of the current focal lengths would produce a field of view similar or identical to other focal lengths on the full-frame cameras. A 21mm lens on a sensor of 32.5mm diagonal would have the same field of view as a 28mm lens on the full frame. A 35mm lens on the digital M sensor would have the field of view of a putative 47mm lens on the full frame--about 5mm away from Leica's standard design focal length for a so-called 50mm as I recall. [That's what those little numbers mean which appear on some lenses engraved at 90 degrees to the rest of the engraving after the 'feet / m' labels. I don't know whether the practice is still current, though I assume it is for technical reasons; the numbers appear only on lenses of 50mm and longer designated focal length. {NOTE: If anyone has a Dual-Range Summicron, send me a private message with these numbers from that lens so I can correct the info posted here.} If you're not familiar with how this works, you might drop me a private message; it is extraneous to the M8 viewfinder topic.] Some people (I am not among them) have felt that 47mm is 'close enough' to the 50mm focal length, so the 50mm set of frame lines might be keyed by the 35mm (remember the 35mm? ). And so on.

 

My contention is that IF the 0.72x finder is used (precluded by LCT's calculations), the M8 finder COULD contain frames for all the lenses listed above, 21mm through 90mm. (I showed how I thought that might work in post #23 this thread, though that was simply meant to spur discussion, as it has. )

 

One more point: The discontinued 135/2.8 will be usable on the new camera; it will key the same frame as the 90's do, because it has a built-in set of goggles that magnify the effective rangefinder base by 1.5x.

 

My apology. I've gone far off-topic.

 

Summary: Multiply all the focal lengths you have by 1.33 to get the equivalent fov on the reduced M8 sensor. When you do, you'll find that some of the resulting numbers are very close to focal lengths already available, while others are not. You can draw your own conclusions, but you're now at the same point all the rest of us were at when we started reading the thread.

 

In any case: Today, there are three pairs of frame sets. A 28mm lens and a 90mm lens both key the same pair of frames (as does a 21mm lens). A 35mm lens and a 135mm lens both key the same pair of frames (as does a 24mm lens). I think most but definitely not all of us believe that the pairings will remain unchanged. That is, on the M8, 28mm lenses and 90mm lenses will still key the same set of frames, though the frames will indicate the reduced fields of view dictated by the M8 sensor instead of the full-frame field of view they show now. The exception would be the 135mm lenses (excepting the 135/2.8), which will still key the same frame as the 35mm lenses, but which will not show a frame corresponding to their field of view.

 

Is that last point clear? Many but not all of us feel that: There will still be three sets of frame lines; the same pairs of lenses will still key the same pairs of frame lines; but the fields of view for those lenses will be shown proportionately smaller due to the smaller M8 sensor.

 

And please, all: let me know of errors here.

 

--HC

[ho_co]

Thanks, Sean. We can only hope. Obviously the folks at Leica would prefer otherwise but I'm sure many of us have a variety of m-mount lenses in our inventories and not all came from Leica.

 

David--As Sean implied, have no fear about obsoleting non-Leica lenses. If that were to happen, many old Leica and Canon screw-mount lenses would also become unusable. There's no way Leica would let that happen.!

 

--HC

[burkey]

Excellent information all. Thanks. I'm actually beginning to see how it works. (I think.) My first DSLR was a Fuji S1 and at the same time I had a number of F-mount lenses from my Nikon F days. It took some getting used to but after a while I found I began to be thinking FoV by experience more than by lens focal length.

[sean_reid]

The table Howard mentioned is actually on the home page of the site and that page is freely available to anyone. I'll resist doing a commercial for the value of the rest of the site. With respect to the field-of-view crop, the long and short of it is that we'll use (for example) a 28 mm lens on the digital M when we want to get close to the usual field of view of a 35 mm lens on an M7, etc. The finer points about how the 28 on the digital M relates to the 35 on the M7 can be discussed and debated in depth but the bottom line is that smaller sensors need shorter lenses to keep equivalent fields of view. That itself is nothing new in the world of photography; think of a 135mm lens on a 135 mm film camera vs. a 4 x 5 view camera.

 

I've had the same experience as David with respect to relearning lenses. When I put a 28 on an R-D1, I'm immediately imagining the field of view I'd see with a 42 on an M7.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[ho_co]

Only recently I have begun really considering the option of an M8.

. . . David

David--

 

By the way--you might also consider the Epson R-D1.

 

From everything I had seen about it, I had no interest at all. Then I got to see and work with one a couple months back, and was very impressed. There has been a lot of good work done with that camera. It has a lot of drawbacks over the digital M, but one major advantage: It's available!

 

--HC

[sean_reid]

David--

 

By the way--you might also consider the Epson R-D1.

 

There has been a lot of good work done with that camera.

--HC

 

Indeed, there has been and that really is the proof in the pudding. I use two of them.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[marknorton]

It's very easy to get hung up on the numbers, for most practical purposes, you'll get a similar image (angle of view, depth of field) by shooting with a lens one step wider and one stop wider open. Similar, I said, NOT identical.

 

Ths issue for M8 users is that going wider or faster or both means going more expensive. The 35mm f1.4 costs alot more than the 50mm f2.

 

Epson were brave to do the R-D1 and it's a good camera. I am thoroughly enjoying using mine and it feels more Leica-like than any camera made by Panasonic with a red dot on it. I expect there will be renewed interest in the R-D1 once the M8 comes out and people contemplate the reality of a 2.5 - 3 x price hike.

 

I daresay Sean will do a comparative review of the two...

 

Incidentally, he must be smiling at all this (pointless since it's been set in stone for a long time) speculation about how the M8 viewfinder will work. I expect he knows but is sworn to secrecy so is not saying. He might even be able to reach for that scruffy M7-looking thing that's lost its wind-on lever with the taped-over logo and something circular missing from the front to refresh his memory...

[sean_reid]

Yes, when I write a review of the digital M it will certainly include comparisons to the R-D1.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[jrc]

A lot of people are interested in the highly technical aspects of the M8 because, I think, a lot of people here either have engineering minds or are engineering-mind-wannabes. ;-) But for those of you drifting towards digital from an M7 or other film-based cameras, I think it's absolutely crucial that instead of obsessing on whether 47mm is as good as 50mm, that you start thinking about software and post-processing. I was fully digital since 2000, until, a couple of weeks ago, I bought an M7; and in the digital realm, the most crucial part -- and the part that's hardest to understand -- is post processing. I think it's safe to say that you will NEVER get what you want from a digital image by sending out to a digital pro-photo place. The thing about digital RAW is that it essentially is a sensor-response file that presents you with a huge range of options, and to get the image you want, you have to do it yourself; you have to select from among the options. This is not your daddy's Kodachrome. Some folks have worked digital workflow down to a simple process -- Michael Reichmann outlines one on Luminous landscape, and Digital Outback Photo has a lot to say about it, too. If that's all you need, that's great -- but you've got to know that that's all you need. Otherwise, you'll spend the next two years lost in the wilds of Photoshop. Us Leica users may righteously be accused of being a tad anal, but really, arguing about POV on the M8 is like arguing about whether the rewind lever on the M7 should be canted, and not caring what kind of film is inside...IMHO, of course.

 

JC

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[marknorton]

That makes sense. Some people have taken the view that the extra in-camera processing made possible by the lens coding is unnecessary because you can fix it in PS. On the other hand, Leica could not have a situation where every image requires or at least benefits from processing - the camera will be judged by the images it creates, not the ones PS creates.

 

I'm not a great fan of post processing. Sure, there are times when I will do it to tweak the exposure, white balance, remove dust, crop and resize but I'm much more interested in having images which look stunning right out of the camera and post processing for me is the exception, not the rule.