@david-farkas
active 1 year, 3 months agoForum Replies Created
Another suggestion for future firmware:
Currently 2 sec self-timer locks up the mirror immediately, then counts down. This is a huge plus for tripod shooting. Unfortunately, the 12 sec self-timer doesn't currently offer any big advantage. Once you press the shutter, the timer counts down from 12, then at the 2 sec mark, the mirror locks up. I would prefer that the mirror lock up immediately for both modes.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiAtanabe;432 wrote: KA7197, welcome to the forum. Small vs large cards are relative to the number of images stored or lost. Yes, those “big” cards of yesteryear are small by today's comparison but did store a good number of images, a 512 mb card would store 93 5.47 mb images from my D1X but only 6 from my S2. So in relative terms, I would have to use a 8 gb card to equal the storage capacity of 100 images.
Wow. From 100 shots to 6 (although you would get around 13 with lossless compressed DNG). Quite a change. And I remember when those 512MB cards cost $300. 😮
So it is more of a risk/reward proposition, just like gambling, do you put down $1000 on Red or $100? The pay off would be the same, even money, but the risk of losing $100 is 1/10th the loss of $1000. By nature, I am a cautious and do not gamble so I am only willing to “bet” 100 images that my card will not fail vs 500 images on a bigger card. My reward for using the bigger card is four less card changes saving some time but at the risk of losing all 500 images. Mind you, I marvel at those individuals who bet large sums of money at the gaming tables – but it is not my comfort level.
Just to play devil's advocate, with smaller cards and more CF card changes, you are putting more wear and tear on the connector pins, both in the camera and in the cards. I doubt with normal use you'd ever see a failure, but statistically…..
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiStuart Richardson;425 wrote: Thanks for the work and the samples Josh. It was nice to see your sharpening technique as well. It's funny how different they can be. For example, with the M9 (and probably eventually the S2) I tend to rely on high masking, minimal radius and detail, but a higher level on the sharpening slider. It's more of an edge sharpening effect than overall sharpening, as the files themselves are already very sharp. Your work with luminance noise reduction has also led me to consider trying it — in the past I have avoided it because I usually feel like the trade off in detail loss is not worth the lower noise, but here it seems to be working very well. I will say too, that the S2 at a virtual 800 looks brilliant.
Stuart,
We arrived at these sharpening settings based on recommendations from a senior developer at Adobe and our own in-house testing. He works in the Lightroom team and is responsible for optimizing processing for the S2 and M9. In Lightroom 3, the sharpening algorithms were revised so. Basically, the new sharpening is a blend of Unsharp Mask (edge sharpening) and Smart Sharpen (deconvolution sharpening). If the detail slider is at 0, the algorithm uses 100% Unsharp Mask. If the detail slider is at 100, 100% Smart Sharpen is used. At a setting of 50, there is a 50/50 split. You get the idea. This is why we use a setting of 60-70 for detail.
I am interested in another situation though — long exposure. You did some very nice long-exposure shots with the 350mm Superachromat. How do you find the S2 does in terms of noise in long exposure? I think the M9 did a rather nice job, but it would be great if the S2 could do it as well. I would be more likely to use the S2 in a long exposure situation than in a low-light handheld situation (though it is nice to have the capability).
What is the upper limit of the S2 now? I know it was recently lengthened…
I'm sure we will be doing some long exposure testing in due course. I have personally had excellent results with shots up to 32 seconds (which is all I ever seem to need).
Long exposure time was increased in a previous firmware update from 32 seconds to 126 seconds.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miamika7197, welcome to Red Dot Forum and thanks for posting.
The omission of the 50 Summarit was a simple oversight on my part when setting up the poll. I've fixed it and added the option.
The Summarit is certainly no slouch of a lens. As I tell people who are new to Leica, there are no bad Leica lenses. In the world of Canon or Nikon, a faster aperture lens is almost always universally a better lens than a slower lens in the same focal length. The fast lenses are the “pro” lenses and the slower lenses are the “entry-level” or “consumer” lenses. This is just not case when talking about Leica lens choices. In some cases, like the new 21 Super-Elmar, the slower lens is actually optically superior to the faster, more expensive Lux. Of course, there is more to choosing an M lens than pure optical perfection and the 21 Lux exudes character – the Noct of wide angles, if you will.
I'm intrigued by your findings that the 50 Summarit offers more DOF than the 50 Lux ASPH at equivalent apertures. Optical physics should dictate that the DOF would be the same on any 50mm lens on the same camera. Looks like Josh and I have some testing to do on Monday. 🙂
Also, interesting that you prefer the 75 APO. It is a stellar lens, no doubt. The 75 APO and 50 Lux ASPH are essentially the same optical design with the 75 dropping one element due to slower aperture requirement and slightly longer focal length. Back at Photokina 2008, I had a very interesting chat with chief optics designer Peter Karbe who explained his design philosophy of these sister lenses, among other things. You can read the highlights here: Photokina 2008: Day 2 – Taking it easy and getting an education
Again, sorry for omitting the 50 Summarit from the poll and thanks for participating.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiStuart Richardson;408 wrote: Now that Leica is offering their own V mount lens adapters, has anyone had a chance to compare them to the Metabones and Kim adapters? While I am sure the Leica has the most precision, I am curious to know how the others compare. Just by looking, the metabones seems to be of good quality, and it is Japanese, which usually means that it is well put together. The Kim one uses an old Hasselblad mount on one end, so it is probably fine as well. Given that the Leica adapter seems to be 500 dollars more than the metabones adapter, it the metabones does the job I would probably go that route….
Anyone have any advice on this? I plan this as a supplement to the S2 lenses, rather than using all the time…Stuart,
I've only handled prototype adapters from Leica back at last year's Photo Plus Expo, so I can't really speak to any real-world differences. I will say that they certainly look much nicer and may be more durable over the long-term.
We've been selling the “Kim-type” adapters (ones made with old Hasselblad extension tubes) for about a year now for $600 (vs. $750 off Ebay) and we test each and every one to make sure the fit is good, both on body and lens side. We do end up sending a few back from each shipment for not meeting our quality criteria.
I haven't tried the Metabones adapter, but I can say that the adapters I've been using for the last year work very well and open up many options for S2 users. All of the samples in Josh's 350 SA article were shot using one of our adapters.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiMark Gowin;383 wrote: Just remembered another feature I would like to see.
– Fix the auto bracketing feature to work like the M9 where it will fire off all shots in the sequence at the first press of the shutter. As it is now, the shutter button must be pressed for eacha ND every shot in the auto bracketing sequence.
– Also, allow auto bracketing be biased plus or minus. As it is now, the auto bracketing sets the shots equally spaced +/- from 0 exposure compensation. Sometimes, I would prefer the bracketing to be from, for example, -3, -1, and +1 for a 3 shot bracket that is 2 stops between each shot.
Mark,
Wow, you beat me to this one! I couldn't agree more.
Josh and I were just out on Sunday afternoon doing some ISO testing/comparisons and we had an M9 and S2 side-by-side. The M9 bracketiing was a piece of cake. Set to 2-sec self timer, bracketing on…. click, click, click, click. Done. Love it. The S2 was also set to 2-sec self timer but each shot had to be triggered by itself and the operator has to count off the number of shots already taken to make sure the sequence is complete.
Also, the M9 allows you to set the order (-/0/+ or +/0/- or 0/-/+). The S2 only shoots +/0/-.
For you last point, perhaps EV comp would do the trick for an offset.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiAre you looking at the 11″ or 13″ MBA?
I was just in the Apple Store and looked at both. If I was in the market for one ;), I'm actually not sure which way I'd go.
The 11″ is barely bigger than my gen 1 iPad and much more functional, but has a pretty small screen. The 13″ has decent screen real estate and might be a capable Portable LR system, but is approaching the size of a “real” laptop with less power.
I like both, but for different reasons. Then I wonder if I'd have much use for an iPad with one of these, especially the 11″.
Anyone else have any thoughts?
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiJack MacD;352 wrote: What's the advantage of the i7 vs i5 David?
Jack,
The biggest difference is that the i7 has hyperthreading while the i5 does not. So, while the speed is essentially the same clock-for-clock, the i7 will have twice the virtual cores, making it superior for heavily multi-threaded applications like image editing.
I'd go the i7.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiMark Gowin;358 wrote: I love this pano David. It is amazing just how good the software is at creating panos now days. I really like the lenticular clouds on top of Mt Ranier. Also, I see some moire in a couple of the high-rise buildings at this resolution. Perhaps it is not there on the full size image.
Thanks, Mark.
The moire isn't there on the full-size file. This is a result of sampling down.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiDavid K;347 wrote: Holy Bat-pano Robin.
Beautiful image David. Curious about your panning technique. I use the RRS pano kit and stitch in PT Gui Pro but it sounds like you're using CS5. I typically try to use as close to normal as I can lens wise. But the 35 cron seems to have done a wonderful job.
Okay, you got me thinking about the lens, so I rechecked my LR catalog. I was pretty sure I shot this pano with the 50mm Summicron, not the 35. My 35 Cron is uncoded, so sometimes I use manual lens selection and forget to change back to auto lens detection after I change lenses. This leads to some incorrect EXIF data and confusion after the fact. Then I started comparing other properly coded shots taken at the same spot to look at relative building size. Well…. it turns out that I'm now 99% sure I shot it not with a 35 or 50, but rather my trusty 90mm Elmarit @ f/8.
As to my technique, I shot the series hand-held and tried to consciously overlap certain visual elements to guarantee I'd have enough coverage to stitch later, while keeping the horizon straight and in the same relative position for each frame (the viewfinder framelines work well for this). I don't touch focus or exposure. In this case, since I was at the Space Needle, I did have to walk around in order to get the full series rather than shooting from a fixed position.
Then, in LR, I adjust one image as my “master”, then sync the settings for all. Selecting the entire series, I right click and select Edit In -> Merge to Panorama in Photoshop…. A couple of minutes later, I end up with a layered Photoshop file, which I inspect at 100% to clean up the various layers' points of overlap using layer masks and a paint brush.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiI'm impressed that Apple put i7 processors in the new MacBook Air.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miamifotografz;281 wrote: I want/need/desire/beg-for … a 1.4XAPO extender for the 180, and a 1:1 Elpro for the 120.
Most important of all, where are the CS lenses? I specifically want the CS versions of the 35mm and 120 which I use the most with strobes for outdoor portraits and commercial applications (the SF58 do NOT cut it for this type of work).
-Marc
I tend to think we will see longer fixed focal length lenses before seeing a 1.4x extender for the S System. The Elpro could be a real possibility though. As you probably know, the 120 S uses a floating element optical design which precludes the use of extension tubes. So, an optical Elpro would be the only solution here.
Another option is to use a Hasselblad CFi 120 with extension tubes on an S2 with an adapter. This would enable you to get greater than 1:1 magnification, although not with the 120 S.
CS lenses should be coming very soon. Last I heard a couple months ago, testing on the prototypes was complete and they were gearing up for production.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiDoug;274 wrote:
The first lens tried was the 100mm f/4 Macro, and I forgot the advice I saw posted to set the Summarit wide open manually before mounting an adapted lens… I think this was in the context of using the 110mm f/2 Hasselblad lens. Anyway, the camera “thought” the Macro lens was f/6.8 and all the exposures were about 1.5 stops over.So for a try with the 45mm f/4 I set the Summarit to f/2.8, with pretty decent results, though somewhat underexposed. At this point I figured that setting the Summarit manually to the actual max aperture of the adapted lens was probably the way to go… This worked well for the next use of the 100mm lens.
Doug, you always want to have an S lens mounted and set the aperture as close to the maximum aperture of the alternative lens before mounting the P67 adapter/lens. This will allow the S2 to meter properly in any exposure mode (M, S, A, P). Of course, S and P will function like A since the camera has no control over aperture.
I also detected a hint of barrel distortion in the 70mm, fixed with 2-3 on the slider control.
In Lightroom 3.4 there are now lens profiles for the 35, 70 and 120 S lenses. I think you'll find better results using the profile rather than just the distortion slider. I've actually enabled this automatic correction in my default LR preset.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiDoug;275 wrote: My experience coincides with Atanabe's… I have the rear button set up to AF while pressed. I have only the one S lens, the 70mm. Sometimes I'm not sure if the AF has adjusted focus or not when shooting a new subject at a somewhat different distance… it's so fast and quiet (but then my hearing is bad anyway). So I'll focus on something quite close, and then on the desired subject to be sure. I am impressed…
Doug,
Instead of moving the camera, focusing on something closer, then moving back to your original subject and refocusing, try just racking the lens. Because the lenses are always ready for manual focus, just turn the focus ring all the way to one side and then tap the rear thumb AF button again. Very quick and easy way to make sure the camera has indeed locked focus where you want it.
David
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiMark Gowin;255 wrote: I agree Jack. I saw this image through sleepy eyes last night on my laptop and was impressed. Today, I tried to view it on my iPad and I was let down that I couldn't see all of the image. Bummer!
The best way to upload images on the site is to just use the standard Insert Image or Manage Attachment options. The site will automatically create a 550px wide/tall thumbnail which links to the full-size image in a new tab. And, 550px wide is perfect for iPad viewing.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miami
