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Strange list. NEX-7 may be lusted… but it will disappoint some I'm sure.
Ordered one in Sept or so and of course was put on wait. Had planned to have my wife use the NEX and bought an A77 for myself. The idea of interchangeable bodies and common lenses was strong.
Alas, the A77, while “adequate” is no match for an M9, much less an S2! I don't expect an NEX-7 to be that much better than the A77. So while the NEX-7 may be the “IT” camera now (leveraged by breathless reviews from smug bloggers who Sony sends their newest pieces to) it will excite very few here if I had to guess.
No camera/lens combination I've used can match the depth and bokeh (ther's that stupid word again) of an S2.
However the M9 is second best and far better than almost anything else. If you didn't have the S2 to compare it to you'd think it The Best.
S2 is such a monster, and sadly I don't find its AF all that perfect, even when I set focus to eyes etc. So it isn't perfect. When I left it at home I cannot say I missed it.
However I will say that I'm tempted to try a second IR filter but flare scares me
Great, thanks!
yes, they could
Have heard anecdotes about Aaron being a very good kid at heart. Does lots of charity and Community service. My work has brought me into contact with pro athletes of all the major sports.
Little use for NBA players, very selfish and poorly mannered. Baseball not far behind in many cases. NFL guys are very intense but seem to go out of their way to show gratitude to fans. Hockey players the absolute best gentlemen! Lots of fun to golf with them too, they know how to enjoy life.
I'm thinking the WATE is still fast enough in an M9 to take some very special shots indoors too. Your comments?
Your first image of the suite is one of the most compelling demonstrations of the Mandelbrot equation that I could imagine. Literally nothing more be said…
please see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set for expansion on the technicals
fractals rule!
Jack MacD;1320 wrote: This is a three image merge from a M9 28mm at 500iso 1/125 at f4.8
This was a card stunt shown last night on NFL Monday Night Football.
Go PackI usually shoot this kind of stuff with my S2, but wanted the camera to fit in my pocket.
Thought about bringing my WATE for the shot.I have been using the 28mm on the M a lot as it is so compact.
Beyond the merge, I haven't manipulated this image and in the end, wish I had tried the WATE at 16mm to allow for less distortion than I get from the merge. However then I couldn't see faces in the crowd, and I am not sure the POV of the WATE would allow an image this wide. Had I known that I didn't need the opening of f2.8 I definitely would have tried the WATE. Image is 7GB on this upload.
Well Jack, this was an extremely poignant game for me! Nah, I'm a Bears fan… BUT it was my pick in the knockout pool. Others had already used the Pack in earlier weeks, six survivors and all five took the Eagles (what were they thinking?) against the Cardinals. After the upset, the Vikings game was fate accompli. Won enough to buy a 90mm 2.0 and a 35 ASPH. Imagine, both your home teams made me a winner in one weekend…!
Be sure to tell Aaron thanks for me.
On second though, I already have a 35 2.0 ASPH -cron… that WATE has always interested me… you like yours a bunch?
Obsolescence is a variable event. As some have alluded, at times “new and improved” simply is not anything more than new. And even “improvements” are not necessarily better, especially in the artistic realm.
While I don't doubt that ultimately an S3 will appear, it won't obsolete the divine images that the S2 is currently producing. And the Germans are very savvy at wringing the most out of a design both in the Marketplace as well as in the utilization of the tool. The S2's relatively open architecture ensures that many upgrades are still possible. But don't expect an S3 body to be cheap, and don't expect an S2's value to tank the moment the S3 arrives. Just doesn't work that way with Leica, Nikon or Canon yes, but Leica… not so fast. The main stumbling block to S2 ownership is price, not desire. Count on the demand for S2 bodies to continue when the S3 rears its head. M4's didn't tank when M6's came out.
Great images… 3D with beautiful bokeh (strange word, very strange word) is the hallmark of this camera. I have not dealt with other MF's since my 503 and trappings in the 80's but have dabbled in several formats and a couple digital systems. They cannot touch the S2's striking abilities. I can pick out S2 images in LR thumbnails most of the time! Even from my M9's. So, I won't worry about S3's just yet.
Stephan; if you can use the S2 as an available light, discrete device you are one heck of a photographer! I'd love to employ mine as such, but handhold at less than 1/60 is tough for me with anything but the 70mm and even then, shake is apparent when going 100%. I find the M9 far better suited in my hands. Better high ISO performance would be very nice indeed. But I'll bet you can push an S2 image pretty far in PP and get a very acceptable result. The M9 is quite surprising in this regard and I suspect the S2 will push well too. High ISO with good S/N is the current Holy Grail of digital. I expect Leica to take a run at it, but not until they can eclipse the current crop of manufacturers. It will take some technology breakthroughs to get there I'd imagine.
FWIW, I bought a Sony A77 with a few lenses as a “snapshot” kind of thing, where the S2 is just a bit large to lug but I wanted the SLR's capabilities. The whole thing is going eBay this weekend. The M9 and ESPECIALLY the S2 just make the Sony images seem flat and lifeless. Ahhh well…
Yes lighting is true magic. In pictures, food, in home/office building, anywhere, lighting makes a huge difference in what we see and how we regard it. I don't think Leica will stop at the S2 but lighting experience will definitely raise my game, though it's a lot of work! But a well-lit S2 image will no doubt trump an S3 (or Red, or any other) image with uninspired lighting.
May we all be alive and well when an S3 rolls around!
hikemate;1445 wrote: i used the http://www.blackrapid.com/product/camera-strap/rs-7/ black rapid strap
just saw this tonight
my next strap for sure!
Upstrap looks nice alright but I love my Domke better for a couple reasons;
– Upstrap too long. Face it, the S2 with any lens is quite a bit of mass, once it gets swinging on a long strap that's quite a bit of inertia to control, and can swing into something very expensively. Domke seems just about right to pull up for action easily, but still not swing too far.
– the twin rubber strips on the underside will grip just about any garment. One of my problems is that in the cold weather I wear a few jackets that seem to shed most straps far too easily. The Domke rubber seems to grip just about everything
-when you use the quick disconnect on the Domke the two ends can be latched together to make a nice short carry handle/ wrist strap and you don't have the two loose ends, which just bugs me due to the rather sloppy look on a tripod
whatever…
Not just that
Many of the new smaller format cameras from Sony, Ricoh, Oly, Pana and a couple more now have sufficiently short FFL's and adapters for M-lenses and the net camera blogs are touting the advantages that we long-time Leica uses know; NO ONE makes glass as Leica does.
So a whole new class of camera owners are now Leica lens users…
sadly I quite agree!
my problem is that the flash seems to have a mind of its own and randomly flashes when it feels like it in what I would call “spasms” of flash.
would not mind it so much but;
1) sometimes the flash is recharging when I do want to take an image, and
2) someone will tell me, “…did you know your flash is going off…” as if i didn't know and wasn't already frustrated.
and I can read, and have read the manual. No one seems to be of help and I guess no one else has the problem… i guess
Love my 120. may be my favorite lens of the 3 I own
But
It is a total handful at anything but moderate to high shutter speeds. In a situation like Macro it's really a question mark for hand hold. However it is entirely possible that you're better than I am.
In any case it is a great lens!
jrv;1281 wrote: Remember that “ISO” is different in the digital world than with film. The sensitivity (“ISO”) of a digital sensor is what it is and cannot be changed; changing a digital camera's ISO setting changes the readout strategy or “the way the lab processes the roll of film”.
In both tests in David's experiment the sensor had the same state when the shutter closed since the exposure settings were the same but the readout strategy differed since the ISO setting was changed.
David's result is as I would expect: amplifying the signal in LR means that the readout noise is amplified by the same amount as the signal but changing the camera ISO setting means the camera can amplify the signal with little or no new readout noise added.
well, not exactly
totally agree, the shutter/f-stop were the same, so yes, the exposure is the same. However ISO does not mean the same thing in each camera (digital ones that is). As the references posted, some cameras actually have lower read noise with higher ISO, but some do not (as in the case of the M9 and the new Sony Exmor chip). In the digital world ISO is an amplification factor, and so-called “read-noise” can be expressed differently by different algorithms.
At least that's what has been posted by folks who are paid to figure these things out.
Many factors feed into final image noise though and ISO is but one. Personally I like the fact that I can pretty much ignore the ISO-boosting on the M9 and just ETTR as much as I can and still get great shots. Uncomplicates my simple thoughts while shooting. If I had a new Nikon D3x or Canon 1D would have to fuss with that too…
Stuart Richardson;1253 wrote: Why wouldn't you just take a photo and then delete it? It seems like it would accomplish the same thing, only without any buttons or special features.
As for a true RAW histogram, have you seen any deficiency in the regular histogram that makes this necessary? I am curious to hear about any particular issues, because I have not noticed any problems with using a jpeg RAW…I would guess that chewing through a 70mb raw file to generate a raw histogram would slow down the camera substantially.
very difficult to evaluate DR and detail from a shot on the preview screen.
as far as a function… there are several functions on the current unit that I don't use but that does not mean they should not be there. With such potentially open architecture, why not make it available to those who want it? Certainly the camera's processor could handle it. Many pics I take with mine are not spur of the moment and I have time to consider ideal factors.
But, whatever…
OK, had a chance to view the images on side-by-side color matched monitors
– yes, more noise in the 160 push as processed, but not too evident in full-frame. The pixel-peep makes it more obvious. In a typical 8 x 10 (I know, violation of the 2:3 Golden Rule) would be curious to see if they could be told apart by even experienced eyes.
– color however is more nuanced in the 160. Both images have that unmistakable pop of the reds and greens as well as the rich depth and dimension that we Leica fans love. No other camera I've used can produce the results of the M9 or S2 in this field. But there is no doubt that the subtle reds of the leaves (not the flowers) are better in the 160-push (at least to my eyes)
Very revealing, no? Don't know about you, but this makes me want to explore these options more. Consider the data on DR in the graphs. I wonder how a scene that puts more of a premium on DR would be rendered differently with the two techniques.
If you have the occasion to repeat this with the S2 (every time I go to LR, the S2 shots just jump off the screen with so much depth and life) why don't you just post them without telling us which is which? Take a poll and see what folks think. Probably most here would pick it right, but would be interesting.
Also, three stops is a lot of “apparent” underexposure. But if left at 160 and ETTR-ed, it might be formidable. Further, this may be a way to stretch the DR for those tricky shots where you don't want to clip but want to preserve shadow detail.
Anyway, thanks a lot for following through on this… good stuff!
