Sean's Part 4

[marknorton]

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Hopefully, this thread can discuss these new findings without flaming. If you don't like the fact that Sean charges for access, don't read further. My view is that annual dues of 1/4 of a 486 filter (and I need 13 of them) is money well spent.

 

It's clear than a side effect of using the 486's is cyan colour close to the edges which lens coding would allow the camera to clean up. I agree that Leica should provide manually selected generic settings for the wide-angles they have traditionally supplied - 21, 24, 28. I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to pander to the Zeiss 15 and the CV 15 cannot take filters anyway.

 

The lens coding may be able to tell them what lens is mounted but not of course whether there's a 486 on the front. That will need an extra option in the lens recognition menu - Off, On, On + 486, Generic 21, Generic 24, Generic 28.

 

I come back to the idea that every new lens and every coding should include a filter and for the new TE, also the filter adapter, always though it was penny-pinching to charge for it when this lens costs a whopping €3500.

[canlogic]

Exactly.

[sean_reid]

One of the things that I found fascinating is that the R-D1 is quite sensitive to IR as well and yet that never created a scandal that I can recall. I am one of the thousands of owners who have been working with that R-D1 for two years now. I know you are also Mark.

 

I'll be happy to answer questions in this thread if it can miraculously stay on track.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[osera]

Sean-

 

I've never used the RD-1 (just the M8) but in your opinion, how come the IR issue with the RD-1 was not discussed like with the M8? Is the problem sufficiently less severe? Has is not been used in IR sensitive environments like weddings (except for B&W, as in your case)?

[gravastar]

I recently got caught out by the R-D1 when I didn't use a 486 filter. The scene was lit by warm incandescent light. Some band members and the backing singers wore black as were the drapes which were back lit.

 

Bob.

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[adampal]

Sean how about a firmware update that would make it be possible for the user to input the lens type into the camera, then un-coded lenses and those of other manufactures might be compensated for .

 

Adam

[eronald]

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Sean how about a firmware update that would make it be possible for the user to input the lens type into the camera, then un-coded lenses and those of other manufactures might be compensated for .

 

Adam

 

Why bother Sean ? Just decide what you are prepared to live with, and write Leica directly. Two magic words to invoke: "Class action".

 

Edmund

[robsteve]

Sean:

 

I notice that you checked a 28mm leica lens with the coding off and the 486 filter. It gave some cyan at the edges of the frame. Did you try this with the coding on to see if Leica is already correcting for the cyan in the corners? Leica seems to do this on the DMR with coded wides like the 19mm.

[sean_reid]

Sean how about a firmware update that would make it be possible for the user to input the lens type into the camera, then un-coded lenses and those of other manufactures might be compensated for .

 

Adam

 

Hi Adam,

 

That was a suggestion I made very strongly in the article and again with Leica by phone today. It may not make it out in the next firmware release but I'd like to see it done. Others on this forum have made the same point.

 

And, as Ronald said (at least the first part <G>), let Leica know that this feature is important to you as a prospective (or current?) M8 owner.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[sean_reid]

Sean-

 

I've never used the RD-1 (just the M8) but in your opinion, how come the IR issue with the RD-1 was not discussed like with the M8? Is the problem sufficiently less severe? Has is not been used in IR sensitive environments like weddings (except for B&W, as in your case)?

 

It's less intense with the R-D1 but still quite evident if you look for it. Andy Piper, actually, used to complain that his R-D1 had a reddish cast that he couldn't seem to get rid of. To this minute, I'm sure that there are thousands of R-D1 owners who don't realize that the camera is so sensitive to IR.

 

Why has it not been debated or caused a scandal? I think one reason is that it's weaker than that of the M8 but the other is that most R-D1 owners have been mostly focused on making pictures <G>. I think there's also another forum member who put up examples of this issue with the R-D1. I happen to love and own both of these DRFs.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[rvaubel]

Sean-

 

I've never used the RD-1 (just the M8) but in your opinion, how come the IR issue with the RD-1 was not discussed like with the M8? Is the problem sufficiently less severe? Has is not been used in IR sensitive environments like weddings (except for B&W, as in your case)?

 

Sean

 

That's my question to you, Sean, since you used your RD1 for plenty of weddings. I know the purple effect is less on the RD1 (I never noticed it), but with all your wedding work, I would have thought that you would have seen something along the way.

 

Rex

[sean_reid]

Sean:

 

I notice that you checked a 28mm leica lens with the coding off and the 486 filter. It gave some cyan at the edges of the frame. Did you try this with the coding on to see if Leica is already correcting for the cyan in the corners? Leica seems to do this on the DMR with coded wides like the 19mm.

 

Hi Rob,

 

Yes, I saw that post of yours. I haven't done that kind of A/B comparison yet but it's on my list.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[sean_reid]

Sean

 

That's my question to you, Sean, since you used your RD1 for plenty of weddings. I know the purple effect is less on the RD1 (I never noticed it), but with all your wedding work, I would have thought that you would have seen something along the way.

 

Rex

 

Hi Rex,

 

I bet if you and I went through old files looking specifically for this problem we'd start to see it. But no, neither I nor my clients (to my knowledge) ever saw it. With all cameras one sometimes gets color that seems off and so one tweaks it and moves on. I imagine that's what I and thousands of R-D1 photographers have been doing for two years now. I don't think any of us ever nailed it as an IR problem. Maybe someone did and I never saw the discussion.

 

This suggests interesting things about perception. And, again, you and I are not the only people using this camera and I'm not the only one who has shot weddings with it. Yet, have you ever seen a debate about IR and the R-D1? I haven't.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[sean_reid]

The lens coding may be able to tell them what lens is mounted but not of course whether there's a 486 on the front. That will need an extra option in the lens recognition menu - Off, On, On + 486, Generic 21, Generic 24, Generic 28.

.

 

Hi Mark,

 

I think not generic 21, etc. If they do this, I would expect them to design these manual settings for their own (albeit uncoded) lenses. You're the software guy but I think they would just be tapping the same data that would also be brought up automatically when the coding was on.

 

Best,

 

Sean

[aj37]

One of the things that I found fascinating is that the R-D1 is quite sensitive to IR as well and yet that never created a scandal that I can recall

 

Two reasons, I think; no, three reasons. (Monty Python fans may now wish to chant, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!")

 

1) Although the R-D 1 apparently has a fairly high sensitivity to some IR emissions, I suspect its region of sensitivity within the IR spectrum is narrower than that of the M8. What that translates to in real-world photography is that there's a wider selection of scenes and conditions that will cause problems for the M8 than there is for the R-D 1; or, to put it in gamblers' terms, the probability that any given scene conditions will cause an IR problem on the R-D 1 is lower than for the M8.

 

2) When it does manifest itself, the R-D 1's IR response is less blatant. I've used an R-D 1 heavily for stage photography, which should be a prime breeding ground for IR contamination -- lots of IR from the hot stage lights, and lots of dark fabrics of all sorts. Now that the issue has been raised, I can think of a few cases in which I noticed dark areas that seemed redder than they should be -- but I always wrote it off either to metamerisms (the normal phenomenon of colors looking different under different lighting conditions) or to subtle color effects of the stage lights that I just hadn't noticed in the performance.

 

[sean alludes to this in his Part 4 writeup: when looking through a big batch of shots, isolated color "misbehaviors" may be less apparent simply because you don't recall what color the original item was. The R-D1's relatively minor IR errors were easy to miss or write off because the resulting colors looked plausible and didn't attract attention. By contrast, the M8 seems prone to producing comparatively big, implausible effects; seeing a bride with purple hair next to a groom with a purple tux, you'd think, "If those were the real colors, I'd have remembered!"]

 

Another part of this point is that since the R-D1's IR shifts are relatively subtle, they're comparatively easy to correct. Now that I think of it, I remember a number of times when I'd shift the black point of an R-D1 shot slightly to "clean up the blacks," not realizing I was doing this to eliminate an IR-induced color cast.

 

3) I suspect there's a "social engineering" aspect to how cameras get scrutized for flaws. When the R-D 1 came out, everyone was flipping out about rangefinder-calibration issues among early-production units. I remember this era very clearly, and am sure there were quite a number of cameras with perfectly OK rangefinders that were condemned by their users as being "off," simply because everybody was scrutinizing RF calibration so closely that there was a tendency to blame it for every focusing problem (including user error!) With all the "early adopters" (and "early kibitzers") concentrating on that angle, people may have been too distracted to search for image quality issues.

 

With the M8, on the other hand, nobody was worried about mechanical quality, and the focus of scrutiny was immediately on image quality. And let's not forget that the "magenta cast" was not the first, nor the most serious, image-quality issue that people were noticing (although it seems to have gotten the most attention of late.)

 

I think it was the "bleeding" issue (streaks emanating from heavily overexposed areas) and the rare but striking "ghost image" issue (sharply-rendered repetitions of highlights mirrored in a complementary region of the picture) that tipped off people to the fact that all was not well in M8-land in terms of image quality, and once they had been warned, they naturally started scrutinizing their images more carefully and noticed more problems as well.

 

[For the record: in the past I had noticed "bleeding" in R-D1 photos (and Nikon D100 photos as well, for that matter) but again, compared to the same effect on the M8, it seems more rare, harder to invoke, and less obtrusive when it does occur.]

[Guest stevenrk]

Hi Rex,

 

I bet if you and I went through old files looking specifically for this problem we'd start to see it. But no, neither I nor my clients (to my knowledge) ever saw it.

 

This suggests interesting things about perception. And, again, you and I are not the only people using this camera and I'm not the only one who has shot weddings with it. Yet, have you ever seen a debate about IR and the R-D1? I haven't.

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

 

Sean, How about maybe because it was never as serious a problem? did you consider that possible answer? (A different statement from the phrasing you chose in your article that the RD1 has a "weaker" IR issue than the M8.)

 

Both shots below with the 35 Summilux ASPH at f8 through C1. Guess which is with the RD1 and which with the M8? And if you added a shot of the same with a 5d or a D2x, you would see the magenta in the RD1. But which of the two camera IR problems below go from not a real problem to a shot killer?

 

Sean, I would expect more from you than trying to deal with the M8 issues by signing on to distract people by pointing to speculation about other cameras -- especially ones that you made a career with and worked with for years (many very good articles that helped launch your site and apparently happy wedding customers). Do you really believe that the only difference between the M8 and the RD1 is that the RD1 wedding parties (and you in your multitude of reviews and photographing) never noticed in your pictures that the guy in the black suit next to the bride had no black?

 

You spoke of red herrings in another thread. But if this thread isn't one, what in the world is? And is it really helping encourage Leica to produce a camera that will sell beyond a very small circle only slightly larger than the RD1 market?

 

Steven

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[sean_reid]

 

1) Sean, How about maybe because it was never as serious a problem? did you consider that possible answer?

 

Steven

 

You obviously haven't read the article.

 

Sean

[abrewer]

Guys, cut Sean a little slack here.

 

His reviews are not "the law" that you have to follow; they're simply his observations, and nowhere on Reid Reviews is there any claim to omniscience.

 

Please review the rules about flaming and personal attacks before you post.

 

Thanks.

 

Allan

[Guest stevenrk]

You obviously haven't read the article.

 

Sean

 

Sean, I have read the article. And as I say, describing that the RD1 has a "weaker" IR issue is a very careful choice of words. You do a diservice to yourself, if no one else, by suggesting that you spent years using and revewing the RD1 without catching the IR issue if it was anything close to what it is with the M8. It isn't a weaker issue, it is an entierly different one. One that kills shots -- which the RD1 does not.

 

Steven

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[egibaud]

thank you for the best analyse and "home made" solution I have seen so far. I say solution because for what I have seen, it works!