So for now you use a filter. So what?

[peterb]

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I just completed reading (and re-reading) ad nauseum this whole magenta issue (including Sean R's part IV). Wow! Yes it's a problem. No it's not the end of the world. Even for a $5000 camera.

 

Leica has, for now, recommended using a filter to eliminate those nasty elements that turn black things magenta.

 

So?

 

How many of us went out in the world before without a UV filter (with our previously straospherically high-priced Leicas)? Or indoor filter (to use with film designed for outdoors indoors)? And more importantly, why? To compensate for a problem with FILM.

 

Today in digital photography film and camera are no longer separate elements. Today the film IS the camera. And vice versa. So as Puts and Reid have now stated there are bound be compromises. As Sean noted, unless you're looking for it, your eye, the forgiving photographic instrument that it is, will easily gloss over these color alterations without batting so much as an..well you know what I'm talking about. Until you call attention to it. Then the eye and the brain won't give up!

 

Remember the good news about digital if you can't recall is that no one has to pay for film anymore. And the processing and printing can be now be done at home sans darkroom and nasty chemicals. By more people than had done in the past. Getting more involved with this process. Printing more than we ever had in sizes we couldn't previously afford at such high numbers. How cool is that?

 

Are the compromises unsolveable? Who knows? Leica had previously said a digital version of their M's was impossible because of the issue of light hitting the far corners of the sensors at a wrong angle. The solution? Meticulously place lenses to compensate for this silcon issue. Wow! Imagine that. Somebody (Kodak) figured that out. And even more incredibluy actually did it. Making what was previously impossible possible. Wow!

 

Are we mostly P-Oed because for 5G's the camera actually records TOO much light? (Has anyone even considered that?) While a much lesser expensive (and bulkier) camera like Canon's superb 5D has nary a problem in this regard? (This is perhaps the real nagging thorn.)

 

But remember you're not buying Leica primarily for their bodies (although they are sweet). You're buying Leica for its lenses. And both Puts and Reid have stated that even with an IR filter these optics will still be head and shoulders above anything else. (Has anyone re-checked some of those luscious Noctilux shots that were posted?????? My knees still shake at the possibilities.)

 

As it turjed out, in the pursuit of making the impossible to make M8 a reality, Leica (for all the right reasons) chose a super thin protective glass over the sensor that had the side effect of permitting too much IR. Bummer. Outcry! Postings gone wild. Initial solution? A filter. Duh! Hmmm why not? Wunderbar! It werkes! Just like UV filters in the past. Hey wait? In the past? Can't we eliminate that? This is the 21st century for crying out loud? (Truth be told, advances in coatings meant Leica users didn't need the UV filter eventually, but were still urged to put SOMETHING in front to protect the front lens element. This should be seen no differently.)

 

It can. And given the posssibility of a previously impossible camera it will be. No doubt about that.

 

Leica will figure it out. Either through a ultra-thin coating on the ultra thin glass that some other chemical company can develop to block IR or through a change in the lens coatings that deals with IR (as they'd successfully achieved in the past against UV issues).

 

If you bought an M8 use it. Get a filter like you got for M's 3 - 7. If you haven't you can wait or do what these happy souls for the moment will be doing and go out and buy a filter to compensate for the "fillm's" ability to record too much.

 

It worked in the past. It'll work for now.

 

Regards,

 

P

[blakley]

Here's another Noctilux (50/1.2) shot. B&W mode, JPEG fine, 1/45 @ f/1.2, ISO 640, cropped, duotoned, and levelled in Photoshop. No noise reduction or sharpening. Click the picture to see (BIG!!) actual-pixels size on flickr.