adan Posted November 14, 2006 Share #1 Posted November 14, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) I got to borrow a Leica rep's chrome M8 overnight between Leica Days. Quite a few samples will follow. None will show the flaws we all know about already (although they were all there (usually) if I tried hard enough to find them). My own camera should have just landed in NY as I post - with luck I will get it Friday or Monday (depending on Customs). First picture: Ahh, the difference a good color profile makes! Same image processed twice in Camera RAW (I only got the M8 on loan, not C1) - top image with just the CR defaults, bottom image after calibrating the colors from the R/G/B patches. The net difference is: shifting the hue of red towards yellow, shifting the hue of green towards yellow, shifting the hue of blue towards cyan, and cutting the red and blue saturation back ( a lot for blue - minus 25 points). Now the color values are spot on. Second shot: Sidewalk memorial for hit-and-run victims, Denver. 135mm Tele-Elmar. Full-frame plus 100% cropped detail. Framed by pointing the RF patch at the middle of the scene and imagining double the area. One shot - in focus - no chimping. Not bad for a 38-year-old lens. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/9180-18-hours-with-the-m8-pix-and-discoveries/?do=findComment&comment=93048'>More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted November 14, 2006 Posted November 14, 2006 Hi adan, Take a look here 18 hours with the M8 (pix and discoveries). I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
adan Posted November 14, 2006 Author Share #2 Posted November 14, 2006 Next - the 15mm Voigtlander in action: Third shot (counting those above): Cityscape, with 100% crop of the corner. A little wide-angle stretching but no smearing or color fringing. Read those street signs! I'll let any Canon owners comment on how this compares to a 20mm on a 5D or 1Ds. I KNOW it does better than my 21 Elmarit at f/4.5. Fourth shot: just a grab shot of a chess table on the Denver Mall. Note general absence of vignetting. This is WAY beyond what I hoped for. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/9180-18-hours-with-the-m8-pix-and-discoveries/?do=findComment&comment=93054'>More sharing options...
mike prevette Posted November 14, 2006 Share #3 Posted November 14, 2006 GREAT WORK! (for conning a leica rep out of his camera of course) These are great shots. i also found the VC 15mm to be superb. i was actually really surprised how well it rendered on a chip vs film. _mike Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted November 14, 2006 Author Share #4 Posted November 14, 2006 ISO 2500 - I prefer jpegs! Sean Reid showed us the noise in M8 images at ISO 2500 - shot in RAW/DNG. Just messing around the house at night, I tried a few jpegs (photojournalists are going to shoot jpeg anyway for news workflow reasons). There is a very different signature to the noise at the high ISOs when the camera processes the jpegs. The noise is even across all tonalities, and even perhaps LOWER in the shadows than in the midtones and highlights. It is also a very "soft" grainlike noise, rather than the rather angular hatch marks I see in DNG files. In the 100% crops it looks a bit ugly, almost like reticulation. But in a print it looks a LOT like film grain. And it still seems to hold a lot of sharpness, despite the processing. Picture 5: B&W jpeg at 2500 - full-frame, a moderate zoom-in, and a 100% pixel view. Note that the sharpness is high enough that one can clearly see the limits of the DOF as the fine lettering on the bottle goes in and out of focus (50mm lens @ f/2). Note also that the black areas show almost no noise, and the midtones and highlights have a very even texture across them. This is very different from the usual pattern of noisy blacks and smooth - even oversmoothed - midtones and highlights. Very "filmic". Picture 6: (De rigeur cat picture) Even in color, the grittiness of the noise is more evenly distributed, and soft without doing too much damage to the fine details (whiskers). Technically, this was shot at 1250 - but underexposed a stop due to the light kitchen counter. So the final amplification after I brought up the whites from a medium gray in Photoshop was still 2500. This shot was under tungsten home lights - white balance was set manually to 2150 Kelvin. Reds needed a small tweak towards yellow (just as in the RAW profile I created) but otherwise the color was pretty much right on out of the camera. My shots like this in DNG ended up with blue noise that was VERY hard (or impossible) to get out. Leica or Jenoptik or Phase One or somebody came up with a very intelligent technique for working the noise in-camera. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/9180-18-hours-with-the-m8-pix-and-discoveries/?do=findComment&comment=93064'>More sharing options...
adan Posted November 14, 2006 Author Share #5 Posted November 14, 2006 Picture 7: A dusk shot that sails close to the banding threshold (shooting into halogen spotlights) - but showed no signs of banding/blobs/echoes. Some localized flare, though. About what I'd expect from such a bright light. I did get banding in more extreme situations, so it wasn't that my camera was magic. But it did handle this situation without problems. Pictures 8 & 9: I did discover some interesting artifacts processing M8 DNGs in Adobe Camera RAW. I wouldn't call it a bug, yet - since a) ACR does not yet "officially" support the M8, Leica specifically recommends Capture One as preferable, and c) this does not show up in jpegs at all. Reds show de-bayerizing errors in the form of "mazes". The first image shows the most extreme example I encountered (Noctilux-blurred auto tail-lights). The last image shows a subtler version of the same effect in red skin tones (slightly exaggerated). Both images are screen shots at 400%. I tried fiddling with everything - saturation, profile, color spaces, noise reduction - but the green and blue pixels just aren't exchanging information with the neighboring red pixels in warmish reds, in Camera RAW. It's also slightly visible in the 100%-pixel details at the top of this post from DNGs that contain reds - the 15mm motor scooter detail and the reds in the memorial candle. Anyone want to check their Capture One reds? Those I've seen here looked pretty good so far. And I wonder if this is where the "red lines" issue someone mentioned comes from. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/9180-18-hours-with-the-m8-pix-and-discoveries/?do=findComment&comment=93092'>More sharing options...
cbretteville Posted November 14, 2006 Share #6 Posted November 14, 2006 Andy, Thanks for sharing your discoveries. I'm encouraged by your results with the 135T-E, the 'frame' will be on the small size, but doubling the RF patch is easy to remember. The VC15 is defineatly going on my list of lenses to get, very impressive. As is the B&W shot of the single malt bottles (good stuff that). The B&W results popping up from the M8 are amongst the best I've seen from a digital camera - good examples in LFI8/2006. It feels like I want to get ND filters so I can shoot at higher iso values , who would have thought after having the D2 locked at ISO100 for 2 1/2 years. I feel we're building a positive attitude again after last week's feeding frenzy. Leica clearly have work to do, but dosen't feel quite as impossible as it did on Friday. Cheers, - Carl Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
scott kirkpatrick Posted November 14, 2006 Share #7 Posted November 14, 2006 Advertisement (gone after registration) Pictures 8 & 9: I did discover some interesting artifacts processing M8 DNGs in Adobe Camera RAW. I wouldn't call it a bug, yet - since a) ACR does not yet "officially" support the M8, Leica specifically recommends Capture One as preferable, and c) this does not show up in jpegs at all. Reds show de-bayerizing errors in the form of "mazes". The first image shows the most extreme example I encountered (Noctilux-blurred auto tail-lights). The last image shows a subtler version of the same effect in red skin tones (slightly exaggerated). Both images are screen shots at 400%. I tried fiddling with everything - saturation, profile, color spaces, noise reduction - but the green and blue pixels just aren't exchanging information with the neighboring red pixels in warmish reds, in Camera RAW. It's also slightly visible in the 100%-pixel details at the top of this post from DNGs that contain reds - the 15mm motor scooter detail and the reds in the memorial candle. Anyone want to check their Capture One reds? Those I've seen here looked pretty good so far. And I wonder if this is where the "red lines" issue someone mentioned comes from. This looks like the "pattern noise" that occasionally is found in Kodak sensors on the Olympus E-1 and the large area backs. Capture One has a box you can check to take it out. Try that, and let us know if there are side effects like loss of resolution and detail. At any rate, Capture One knows about this. It is pretty rare. scott Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonoslack Posted November 14, 2006 Share #8 Posted November 14, 2006 First picture: Ahh, the difference a good color profile makes! Same image processed twice in Camera RAW (I only got the M8 on loan, not C1) - top image with just the CR defaults, bottom image after calibrating the colors from the R/G/B patches. Hi Andy First of all - great work - I'd be really grateful if you could give precise details of the calibration for your ACR profile. With respect to jpg - I thought they were wonderful - but I've found that you get smeary foliage (grass is the worst culprit) which you just don't get with the .DNG files - sad really as there are lots of circumstances when it's great to shoot jpg. kind regards jono slack Some early m8 shots: MessingM8 - Page 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gumshoecamus Posted November 14, 2006 Share #9 Posted November 14, 2006 This looks like the "pattern noise" that occasionally is found in Kodak sensors on the Olympus E-1 and the large area backs. Capture One has a box you can check to take it out. Try that, and let us know if there are side effects like loss of resolution and detail.At any rate, Capture One knows about this. It is pretty rare. scott scott is right about the pattern noise I have seen this with my CFV back, which also uses a kodak sensor with no AA filter. particularly when photographing brick buildings, where the brick and pattern and maze pattern coincide and crazy psychedelic stuff occurs. problem occurs with flexcolor and raw developer. dave Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted November 14, 2006 Share #10 Posted November 14, 2006 Andy-- Fabulous stuff!! You know I agree with you on the profile side And I'll be buying that CV. Holy heck. As one of those Canon shooters, well, the only thing that came close was bolting an Oly 21 f2 on the EOS. That's even making the 19 Elmarit R look a little ungainly One very surprising thing I've found is that shooting RAW @ ISO 2500 in colour is that it really is all about the light threshold here. If you have enough illumination to make a good exposure, and remember where your eyes cut to black, then the camera really does make a wonderful image. If you're below that threshold, there is absolutely NO reserve at all. Then you get the blue noise stuff even in C1. But I was *really* surprised at stuff like this, which I've applied NO noise reduction to in post. Really dark folks (I couldn't see the floor); used the tweaked profile in C1; added back a little saturation in PS (no color adjustement). Tungsten awfulness. ISO 2500 28 f.28 ASPH. Evidently I held this at 1/4 second. Try that with a DMR Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/9180-18-hours-with-the-m8-pix-and-discoveries/?do=findComment&comment=93353'>More sharing options...
Rona!d Posted November 14, 2006 Share #11 Posted November 14, 2006 folks, please forget the EF 2.8/20 on the 5D. it vignets like hell, even at 5.6. Although it´s sharper than the 16-35 L/17-40L (especially in the deges), the overall picture immpression of the zooms are better (lighter, brighter, less vignetting, unfortunately till 5.6 soft in the edges). I'll let any Canon owners comment on how this compares to a 20mm on a 5D or 1Ds. I KNOW it does better than my 21 Elmarit at f/4.5. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rick_dykstra Posted November 14, 2006 Share #12 Posted November 14, 2006 Thankyou Johnathan. Nice to see someone getting good shots with an M8, which is capable of beautiful photography of course. Eventually (quite soon I think) people will realise this. regards, Rick. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RJames Posted November 15, 2006 Share #13 Posted November 15, 2006 Next - the 15mm Voigtlander in action: Third shot (counting those above): Cityscape, with 100% crop of the corner. A little wide-angle stretching but no smearing or color fringing. Read those street signs! I'll let any Canon owners comment on how this compares to a 20mm on a 5D or 1Ds. I KNOW it does better than my 21 Elmarit at f/4.5. Fourth shot: just a grab shot of a chess table on the Denver Mall. Note general absence of vignetting. This is WAY beyond what I hoped for. Andy, Thanks for all of the prints from the M8... They are superb... Well done... We will be contacting you as soon as we get back from Salt Lake City... Arrived there today... Thanks Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted November 15, 2006 Author Share #14 Posted November 15, 2006 Update and clarification: 1) Adobe Camera RAW v. 3.6 DOES support the M8. Adobe's list of newly supported cameras only includes the Leicasonics - but the list of ALL support cameras for 3.6 includes the M8 DNG as "newly supported". A typo in the short list, obviously 2) ACR 3.6 does include a profile for the M8, which cleans up a lot of the overall magenta cast (but not the infrared-tinted blacks, although it reduces the magenta brightness). It is similar to my own calibration, but a bit less saturated overall. 3) ACR 3.6 also significantly reduces the red "pattern noise mazes" I showed above, except for the most extreme of the extreme areas. All my other shots that showed some red pattern noise no longer do so in ACR 3.6. New sample below 4) For Jono Slack, here are my calibration corrections to the "embedded" M8 DNG calibration: Shadow tint minus-7 (green) Red Hue plus-18 (yellow) Red Sat. minus-14 Green Hue minus-15 (yellow) Green Sat. plus-24 Blue Hue minus-15 (cyan) Blue Sat. minus-29 Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/9180-18-hours-with-the-m8-pix-and-discoveries/?do=findComment&comment=94050'>More sharing options...
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