Some color M8 photos from India

[nryn]

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Thanks to a great dealer and the wonder of overnight shipping, I got my M8 just before a business trip to India. I've been trying to take photos here and there while I'm in Bangalore but the short days and the long work hours are obviously impinging on that endeavor. I did get a chance to walk around a construction site yesterday; here are some of the first real photos (i.e. not photos of my dog or inanimate objects around the house) that I've taken with my M8. These are with a 50mm cron and a 24mm elmarit, all at ISO 160.

 

I should also mention, perhaps as a disclaimer, that it's also the first time I've used Capture One (but not the first time I've shot RAW--I've done so exclusively for the last four years, but have been an ACR guy). I'm getting some strange color shifts going from Capture One to Photoshop; clearly I need to figure out how Capture One fits into my color management system, and I'm kicking myself for not hardware calibrating my laptop again before leaving home. So far I'm not so impressed with Capture One from a usability point of view, but I'm sure it's just a learning curve.

 

While the photos themselves aren't anything special, it's really startling to me how much better these files are straight out of the camera than out of the 1DMkII I've been shooting for the last 2+ years. Obviously that's qualitative and subjective, but there are some shots (not these) which hold detail in dark areas that I know from experience would never have shown up on my other cameras. Accounting for the fact that I'm reacquainting myself to rangefinder photography and getting to know the metering system in the M8, I'm really quite happy with the camera so far. There's some purple fringing here and there and the WB on the .jpgs is generally way off, but the former is probably overexposure on my part and the latter will be fixed eventually (and doesn't affect me because I shoot DNG, but it affects the preview, which is annoying as I'm acclimating). I did see some green blobs and streaking in some home photographs, but I'm more concerned with what happens out and about. So far so good, but like everyone, I'm looking forward to getting fixes to the acknowledged problems.

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

[nryn]

 

 

I've received a question about some of these images: were the people in the photos wearing purple clothes or were they black?

 

Honestly, I don't remember. I spent most of the time taking photos--foremost in my mind was exposure and second most important was eluding the foreman, who came after me early in the stroll through the site for not wearing a hardhat (didn't think to pack it ). I know that a few people were wearing purple, but I doubt all of them were. There's a lot of polyester in the clothing the Indian masses wears, and my understanding is that artificial fabrics exhibit the IR problem much more than natural ones. But I cannot say definitively that they were wearing black, though it does seem rather unlikely they were all wearing purple (and very close to the same shade at that).

 

No IR filter. No filters period.

 

Also, the images seem rather yellow to me. I think that's the C1->Adobe color shift I mentioned earlier, but the light in general was odd due to this yellowish green dust which was floating in the air and covering everything.

[ho_co]

Very nice work! A good break from the magenta issues, and interesting photography as well.

 

--HC

[ddp]

Lighting and content of first shot is quite nice - although there are definitely some color issues going on here.