Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Share #1 Posted November 11, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) So I put my money where my mouth was and drove in and got my M8 today (in Toronto). First let me cut to the chase: the camera is fabulous. I shot in Toronto tonight and honestly, once the IR / streaking thing is fixed I honestly could not be happier with this camera. I'll post in a second... Anyway, I naturally had to let the battery charge, so I went to a restaurant in the Toronto Eaton Center and they let me charge the thing up... I also bought the neoprene case for the M8. It's quite nice, and I was thinking as I bought it, this is really going to show magenta in tungsten. And, once the battery was charged, I shot it, and sure enough, the black case in tungsten / halogen light shows the magenta drift. So I took it into C1 Pro and began playing with the profile editor. This looks very promising. BUT--I also then switched to the Imacon DMR FlexColor profile and--BINGO--magenta is gone. CAVEATS: This is only one shot, folks, and I'm really tired (getting a cold), and it was anything but ideal conditions... but I couldn't believe my eyes. Here is the difference: First, the M8 generic profile (this is C1 3.75; I haven't had time to upgrade yet) Ok... there is also BLUE NEON light illuminating this shot. You can see it, accurately, on the cell phone. But you can still see that the black neoprene M case is magenta shifted. Especially when I simple change input profiles in C1 to the FlexColor IMACON DMR Default profile. The gamma is a bit off, so I've tried to compensate. But look at the black!!! INTERESTING, no? The whole shot seems de-magentized. I'm so excited, I will shoot some more tomorrow and re-post. NOTE--please try this if you have an M8, a DMR, and FlexColor installed. This is NOT the C1 DMR profile; by rights I shouldn't be doing this at all. But I have PM5 here, and if I'm going to get a raw work-around (no letting Leica off the hook for a real fix), then I'm going to start with this profile and see where it's lacking. I'll also try to shoot the Colour Checker from GMB with studio lights; don't know if I'll get time to do that or not (travelling on Sunday!) Whew! I like so far. BTW--here's a not-so-black sample from the Eaton Center processed with the DMR profile the same way. If you look closely in the bottom right corner, all those equipment grills are magenta-ish in the C1 M8 profile... BTW2--everything Sean said about this camera is true. It's a joy to handle, easy to focus, and I really love it already. This was shot at f4 with the 35 1.4 ASPH, at around ISO 640 at --wait for it--1/22 of a second. Man. I wouldn't have been able to hand hold the DMR (let alone the Canon) at that slow a shutter. The file is sharp enough to cut yourself on! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted November 11, 2006 Posted November 11, 2006 Hi Jamie Roberts, Take a look here Perhaps another workaround for magenta. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
j. borger Posted November 11, 2006 Share #2 Posted November 11, 2006 I do not know what the impact from this is Jamie. but noticed the same simply: the magenta turned to black again as you show by switching the camera profile .. for instance using the generic SRGB profile or some profiles for not Leica cameras from the drop down menu in C1. Does this mean a software fix is still viable?? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
slsman Posted November 11, 2006 Share #3 Posted November 11, 2006 Jamie, That's very encouraging! I'm also in Toronto and have an M8 on order (2d on wait list). I am conflicted over whether I should accept the camera before Leica's "fix" is implemented. A good friend of mine in NYC picked up his M8 a couple of days ago, along with the IR cut filters. He's going to send me some DNGs after the weekend. Thank you for posting your trial process in C1. If there is anything I can do to assist you in your assesment of the camera please let me know. Stephen Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Author Share #4 Posted November 11, 2006 I do not know what the impact from this is Jamie. but noticed the same simply: the magenta turned to black again as you show by switching the camera profile .. for instance using the generic SRGB profile or some profiles for not Leica cameras from the drop down menu in C1. Does this mean a software fix is still viable?? J-- I don't know whether this means a sw fix is viable. But it's intriguing. A RAW workaround like this would save a lot of people filter costs and get us by till Leica fixes the issue for real. I worry that using something like sRGB as the input profile is simply cutting out a lot of colours (not the gamut exactly, but you see what I mean). The interesting thing to me about using the FlexColor profile is that it was made for the previous Kodak / DMR sensor. I'm sure there's a family resemblance there! Anyway, I'm pretty pleased by this, but I won't know what we're missing, really, till we do the colour checker test under controlled conditions. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted November 11, 2006 Share #5 Posted November 11, 2006 Also try Phase One camera profile like the 25 generic.sensor is from kodak Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Author Share #6 Posted November 11, 2006 Jamie, That's very encouraging! I'm also in Toronto and have an M8 on order (2d on wait list). I am conflicted over whether I should accept the camera before Leica's "fix" is implemented. A good friend of mine in NYC picked up his M8 a couple of days ago, along with the IR cut filters. He's going to send me some DNGs after the weekend. Thank you for posting your trial process in C1. If there is anything I can do to assist you in your assesment of the camera please let me know. Stephen Stephen-- Thanks for the offer. I was a bit conflicted too, but I'd been on a waiting list for one of these for a long time, it was there, and since Leica posted today that they *will* fix the issues, that's good enough for me. I wish I had some more DNGs to try this with, but that shouldn't be a problem now So when you get the M8, the more input we have to test a more neutral C1 profile the better. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott kirkpatrick Posted November 11, 2006 Share #7 Posted November 11, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) Anyway, I'm pretty pleased by this, but I won't know what we're missing, really, till we do the colour checker test under controlled conditions. Once you shift the false magentas back to black the problem will be the true colors near magenta that also get blackened. scott Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted November 11, 2006 Share #8 Posted November 11, 2006 The reality is you need to stop the IR light coming in. Software fix really is not the true answer, you affect other colors. But don't stop trying this out , any viable solutions is a welcome one. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Author Share #9 Posted November 11, 2006 Also try Phase One camera profile like the 25 generic.sensor is from kodak Hey Guy-- I tried the Phase 25 generic, and while I like the shadow rendition, it still makes the neoprene Leica case look really magenta. Odd eh? The imacon profiles don't quite have the stuff in the shadows, but they're not clipped, I don't think. Anyway, it's a workaround and I'll have to test more.... Probably not as good as the filters, but we'll see! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guy_mancuso Posted November 11, 2006 Share #10 Posted November 11, 2006 Jamie it is certainly worth the effort. now that you have that in your hands , i bet a dozen donuts right now it would be very hard to give that back. I am really falling for it myself. Need to get out and shoot though been stuck working but been cheating tying to get this straightened out Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Author Share #11 Posted November 11, 2006 Once you shift the false magentas back to black the problem will be the true colors near magenta that also get blackened. scott Scott, for once I'm not sure that's entirely true... I do see a difference in the overall magenta levels, but I think they're too high to begin with in the C1 profiles, and probably have to do with the overall "over-saturation" Sean was seeing. So I'm thinking there might actually be two problems here...or two parts of the same problem. First, the IR is obviously part of the problem, since the filters fix it... But perhaps the problem is a lot more subtle than we're seeing. I think maybe the non-neutrality of the Phase profiles are exacerbating the issue. So a hardware problem *and* a sw problem... Bad Phase profiles wouldn't surprise me at all. Except for the DMR, which they seem to have done pretty well on, I never used the Phase profiles for dSLRs--they always seemed to get blues / saturations wrong...I always like ETC's profiles instead.. But the Phase profile looks out of whack to me too. So tomorrow when I do the CC we'll see what happens to other magentas. You're right, we should lose some sat there--but that might not be a bad thing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Author Share #12 Posted November 11, 2006 Jamie it is certainly worth the effort. now that you have that in your hands , i bet a dozen donuts right now it would be very hard to give that back. I am really falling for it myself. Need to get out and shoot though been stuck working but been cheating tying to get this straightened out Hey Guy--you're right. I love the thing... and when they fix this it will be perfect for me. In the meantime, a RAW workaround is just so much more appealing to me than a Photoshop one! Anyway, anytime you're around--you know--doughnuts and um, libations (not just coffee!) are on me. Ok--gotta sleep now Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter41951 Posted November 11, 2006 Share #13 Posted November 11, 2006 Thanks for discovering this. Can the effect be achieved using the supplied C1 LE, LightRoom or any other converter? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 11, 2006 Author Share #14 Posted November 11, 2006 Thanks for discovering this. Can the effect be achieved using the supplied C1 LE, LightRoom or any other converter? Peter, This should work just fine with C1 LE, or with any RAW converter that lets you access an input profile for the camera. Unfortunately, that's not a lot of RAW converters, IMO. Fortunately, being "stuck" for now with C1 is not exactly a burden for me--it's what I mostly use anyway. I haven't installed LightRoom yet so I don't know. Anyway, folks, if I get a a definitive "good enough" answer by using this, I will post a new profile on my web site. Just an addition--I did do one more round of tests, this time with a magenta book cover, a magenta rubber band, and the black neoprene case. Except for the fact the other objects reflected a bit of magenta onto the slightly reflective neoprene (it has a sheen) the fix worked just fine. As I suspected, the magenta book cover was over-saturated in the C1 M8 photo anyway, so applying the Imacon DMR profile didn't do any harm whatsoever. **I do worry though, that when we're dealing with a very wide range of colors, the proflile, which is not gamma corrected properly (or at least, the same) is doing something dumb with the wonderful colour the M8 can produce** So there you go Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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