Forum Replies Created
Sorry for being late to answer your question. Yes, you can leave the 1.25× magnifier on the eyepiece when using a 35 mm lens—but it's not recommended. The 35 mm framelines with the magnifier attached will be as hard to see as the 28 mm framelines without. So it's doable but not comfortably so. For extended periods of using the 35 mm lens, you'll want to remove the magnifier. When using the 90 mm lens and switching to the 35 mm lens for just a few shots and then back to 90 mm (or any lens longer than 35 mm, for that matter), you can leave the magnifier on.
For the 90 mm specifically, I'd recommend the 1.4× magnifier even more. However then you'll definitely have to remove it as soon as you switch to a 35 mm lens. For the M9's 0.68× viewfinder, the rule of thumb is—no magnifier for 28 mm and 35 mm lenses; 1.25× magnifier for 50 mm and 75 mm lenses; 1.4× magnifier for 90 mm and 135 mm lenses.
When using magnifiers then always keep the glass surfaces of the camera's eyepiece and the magnifier meticulously clean, or you'll lose contrast which may outweigh the advantage you get from the higher magnification. When using eyepiece diopter correction lenses then you'll have to remove the diopter lens from the camera's eyepiece, attach the magnifier, and then attach the diopter lens to the magnifier's eyepiece. The diopter lens must not go between camera and magnifier, and consequently, cannot.
Josh Lehrer;2083 wrote: Notice the slightly flared-out focusing scale …
Not the focusing scale is flared out but the depth-of-field scale. The difference, so I've been told, is purely mechanical. In the original version, you could block the focusing mechanism just by pressing the rear part of the barrel (where the DOF scale is) real hard with your fingers. With the reinforced, thicker rear barrel of the new version, this cannot happen anymore. That's all. The glass is the same in both. In normal use, no-one would squeeze the rear barrel while focusing so the original version usually is perfectly fine for everyday use. Still, you can always send the original version in to Leica to have it updated to the current version at little or no cost. But maybe you shouldn't as it may become a sought-after collectible in the future due to its rarity.
ka7197;648 wrote: [QUOTE=David Farkas;643]The detail slider under the sharpening settings acts in this way:
0 = 100 % USM
50 = 50/50 USM + deconvolution
100 = 100 % deconvolutionOops—David, I'm afraid now it's you who's being confused. In fact, the Detail slider in ACR's and Lightroom's sharpening group of controls acts like this:
0 = 100 % deconvolution
50 = 50/50 USM + deconvolution
100 = 100 % USM
It seems both of us, David and me, were wrong here. In fact, in Camera Raw's/Lightroom's capture sharpening there is no USM involved at all. David is right as far as the Detail slider's right end (labeled “100”) is concerned—that's 100 % of a deconvolution-based sharpening method. But at the left end there's no USM but another sharpening method applied. I don't know which method exactly but it's smoother and creates less haloes than the deconv-based method at “100” … and definitely is much smoother than USM would be. In comparison, pure USM is a rather coarse sharpening method—that's why I thought it must be the method used at the scale's “100” end.David Farkas;643 wrote: I think you may be confusing Clarity with Detail.
Yes, I think that's what he did. His question about Clarity doesn't make any sense—until we swap Clarity for Detail.
David Farkas;643 wrote: The Detail slider under the sharpening settings acts in this way:
0 = 100 % USM
50 = 50/50 USM + deconvolution
100 = 100 % deconvolutionOops—David, I'm afraid now it's you who's being confused. In fact, the Detail slider in ACR's and Lightroom's sharpening group of controls acts like this:
0 = 100 % deconvolution
50 = 50/50 USM + deconvolution
100 = 100 % USMThis slider is named “Detail” for a reason. In general, it makes sense to push it up to 50 – 100 for high-frequency images (i. e. images containg lots of fine and sharply rendered detail, like landscapes) which have low or no noise. For this kind of images, you'd also use low or no Masking. For low-frequency images (e. g. portraits), you'd pull Detail down to 0 – 30 or thereabouts (and use more Masking).
Things will get tricky when you have lots of detail and lots of noise—then you'll need to find a good combination of Detail and Masking (and noise reduction, too) that works. In this situation it might be tempting to push both Detail and Masking up … but this may end up looking unnatural because it may lead to plasticy areas with over-sharpened edges.
Furthermore, I think that “100 % USM” is a bit of a simplification. In fact it's similar to USM but not exactly the same. Still, for practical intents and purposes it's close enough to think of it as USM.
To find to best settings for capture sharpening, I often apply this workflow in Camera Raw or Lightroom:
- Disable the noise reduction settings, i. e. set both the amounts for luminance smoothing and colour noise reduction to zero. Set the display view size to 200 %.
- In the sharpening group of controls, put the Detail slider at medium setting, Masking at zero, and then boldly push Amount up to 100. You'll see a vastly over-sharpened image preview.
- Grab the Radius slider and move it all the way from 0.0 to 3.0 and back again a few times. The trick is to move the slider at the right speed. It should be as fast as possible but still slow enough for the preview display to follow the slider's motion. Having a fast machine with a powerful graphics adapter helps. This way you will see the sweet spot for the Radius setting; it will really pop out at you.
- Push the Detail slider to 100 and then slowly back until the sharpening halos look reasonable. Do not try to get rid of them altogether but find a good compromise between halos and sharpening effect.
- Now reset Amount to zero and then slowly push it up until the sharpening effect looks good overall. From there, back up again a bit or two, as you usually will overshoot the Amount. Remember, this is capture sharpening, not output sharpening.
- Adjust Masking to taste and apply some fine-adjustment to Detail if required.
- Finally, adjust noise reduction. At maximum view size (400 %), I always pull Color and Color Detail down to zero, then push up Color step by step (in increments of 5 for low-noise images or increments of 10 for high-noise images) until I don't see any further improvement, then adjust Color Detail to where some of the colour noise is just on the brink of re-appearing—which means some serious pixel-peeping.
David Farkas;581 wrote: Any other ideas?
What you said, David. However I'd like the behaviour to be customizable—i. e. switching back to automatic lens detection automatically should be optional. So rather than three lens detection options (Auto, Manual, Off) there should be four. The new option would be the same as Auto for 6-bit-coded lenses and the same as Manual for uncoded lenses; it would always remember the last user's choice from the menu for an uncoded lens (that means “Uncoded” should be added to the lens menu). However I cannot think of a sleek name for that mode … :confused:
Furthermore I'd like a fifth option that would be similar to Off but not quite. It would disable all in-camera lens corrections but keep recording 6-bit lens data (lens id, focal length, max. aperture) in the image file's EXIF data.
Another point that keeps annoying me is the camera trying to save energy when the battery status is low. I do appreciate a “battery low” warning in the display, but I want the camera to keep working normally until it actually shuts off.
Pete Myers;529 wrote: … I took a look at some full size images from this lens over here:
http://www.lenstip.com/1835-news-Leica_Summarit-S_35_mm_f_2.5_ASPH._-_sample_images.htmlI found it astonishing how much chromatic aberration was present in the images presented. I am not sure how to account for it …
Well—I don't have an S2, much less any Summarit-S lenses … but I do own several good lenses including some Leica M lenses, and I'd consider the amount of chromatic aberration seen in the test images from the link given above as normal, even for an expensive high-end lens. Even the best lenses still aren't perfect, and when pixel-peeping then you will always find a minor fault or two.
I downloaded one of the test images from lenstip.com and tried to remove the colour fringes in Camera Raw. I arrived at red/cyan -9 and blue/yellow +4. That's pretty low figures, almost worthy of an apo lens. One of my shots taken with the Summilux-M 35 mm Asph at medium distance can use R/C -3, B/Y +9; a Summilux-M 50 mm Asph (which allegedly has apo correction) image gets near-perfect with R/C -8, B/Y +2 (YMMV). So with regard to the magnitude of the chromatic aberration, they all are in the same ballpark. I'd say for a non-apo wide-angle lens, that's very good performance and nothing to worry about.
Furthermore, for Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop Lightroom there's a very elaborated lens profile for the Leica Summarit-S 35 mm Asph which includes corrections for all combinations of apertures and distances. However you need to shoot in raw format in order to take advantage of it. I wish such profiles were available for the Leica M lenses, too …
Mark Gowin;495 wrote: What do you think? Is this a flawed test or is there back focus?
It's a flawed test. There might be some back focus but you cannot be sure.
The flaw is the target being slanted. The AF sensor has some physical size so there simply is no well-defined distance to focus at when the target is not parallel to the sensor.
For the next test, set up a flat target, e. g. a cardboard box with some fine-print text on it (the finer the better; if it's some product package then use the rear side), so that it's parallel to the sensor and the AF sensor sees nothing but the box's front face. Keep in mind that the actual AF sensor usually is a bit larger than the marker in the viewfinder suggests. Arrange the slanted ruler close to the image center right above or below the box but outside the view of the AF sensor. There might be some field curvature so don't try to assess focus accuracy anywhere near the frame's edges.
Maybe it's better to use not a ruler but something else instead because the point of maximum sharpness is hard to tell when it's falling in-between two numbers, as the ruler's surface is mostly smooth and featureless. A piece of wood might be better … how about a wooden ruler? Or stack two cardboard boxes on one another, one parallel (to focus at) and one slanted (to see where the sharpness is).
Atanabe;432 wrote: 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.
You're pretending the only possible reason for losing digital images was card failure. Maybe I'm just too clumsy but in my experience, other kinds of reasons are much more prevalent in real life.
In six years of shooting digitally, it happened three times that I lost images on a memory card before I could download them to some other media:
- Hardware error on a brand-new 1 GB flash card (as described above).
- Pulling a card from the camera while the red access light was still blinking, as I was in a hurry when the (small) card was full right in the middle of the unfolding action.
- Confusing two cards, being in a hurry again, and inadvertently formatting and re-using the wrong card.
Failures #2 and #3 were my own faults, not the card's—and that's my point: this kind of glitches will occur when you have to change cards in the middle of the job too often. Both failures would not have occurred if my cards had been bigger. I am more afraid of me to make a mistake than of the card to fail. After initial break-in, flash cards are pretty reliable in normal use. Heck, even my 6 GB Microdrive from Hitachi, being more sensitive to shock and vibration than any flash card, has never missed a byte. So—the less cards I have to juggle while shooting, the safer I am from losing images.
When you sell the Elmarit-M 24 mm Asph now then I'm 98 % sure you WILL regret later.
In the long run, your average number of files lost per year due to memory card failure will be the same, no matter whether you're using a large number of small cards or a small number of large cards. With lots of small cards, the average loss per failure will be less but the number of failures will be higher … so it's six of one or half a dozen of the other.
I stopped worrying about the ‘all eggs in one basket' syndrome years ago after realising that today's absurdly big cards are tomorrow's ridiculously small cards. When I bought my first ‘serious' memory card for my first DSLR camera (6 MP) I really considered buying four 256 MB cards rather than one giant 1 GB card. Eventually I got the 1 GB card and guess what? It died on me after taking the first couple of dozen test shots. The replacement then got a lot of use over the years, never missed a byte, and still is going strong today, however hardly gets any use anymore as it is not very useful in my current cameras due to the ridiculously small size …
Memory cards typically die right at the beginning when using them for the first or second time, or they'll last for many years (but not forever). If after the first couple of outings a card has proven reliable then stop worrying and just use that thing … the bigger the better. I very much prefer one or two (or at most three) well-broken-in large cards over a dozen small ones. I do carry my collection of old small cards (1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB) at the bottom of a side-pocket of my bag as spares but hardly use them anymore.
The M body is a bit difficult to hold, in particular with a heavy lens … but the Thumbs Up doesn't appeal to me. I don't like the idea of putting constant torque on the hotshoe, and I also heard from users who have dented their camera's top cap where the Thumb Up's curved part touches the body.
A hand grip would change the shape and the size of the M body, so I was hesitant to acquire one of those, too … until I actually tried one. Since then, the grip has hardly ever been removed from the camera (except for tripod work). It's the original Leica Hand Grip M for me. While for example the RRS grip looks more elegant, I do like the way how the fingertips can slide a tiny bit into the gap between the Leica grip and the body.
I also use the Leica eyepiece magnifiers—1.25× for 50 mm and 75 mm lenses; 1.4× for 90 mm and 135 mm lenses. Please note that the magnifiers bring along a bit of negative diopter correction; they are not optically neutral! The Leica M's eyepiece has a built-in base setting of -0.5 dpt which to the normal-sighted user means the viewfinder elements (framelines, focusing patch, LED elements) will appear at a virtual distance of 2 m. The magnifiers add approx. another -0.5 dpt or so to that. For a younger, normal-sighted person this will hardly make any difference. For a person with a bit of hyperopia or presbyopia, it might strain the eye. For the naked eyepiece, I can get away with no diopter correction but using a +1 dpt correction lens makes focusing a bit easier for me (I am slightly hyperopic). With the 1.25× magnifier, I definitely want to use the +1 dpt diopter lens. With the 1.4× magnifier, I even use a +1.5 dpt correction lens because the built-in negative correction is even slightly greater than in the 1.25× magnifier. So the +1.0 dpt correction lens mostly lives on the 1.25× magnifier, and the +1.5 dpt correction lens always lives on the 1.4× magnifier.
A diopter correction built into the eyepiece and/or the magnifiers would make life much easier … at least, the low-figure positive screw-in correction lenses (+0.5, +1.0, +1.5 dpt) don't take away anything from the viewfinder's field-of-view (don't know about the higher-strength or the negative correction lenses).
David Farkas;420 wrote: 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 distinction between ‘pro' and ‘consumer' lines of lenses emerged together with the advent of autofocus systems. Before that, in the '60s, '70s, and early '80s, lens manufacturers produced their slow lenses to exactly the same optical, mechanical, and manufacturing standards as the faster ones. A slower lens was just slower, but not worse in any way. This changed in the '80s and apparently keeps becoming worse every year. If you want a good lens then you have to get the fastest, even when you don't want the bulk or weight associated. Leica (and I guess Zeiss, too) is one of the few companies who didn't adopt this two-class lens manufacturing.
David Farkas;420 wrote: As I tell people who are new to Leica, there are no bad Leica lenses.
Exactly. Still, the Summarit-M line has a poor reputation. I guess mostly it's due to the pro-vs-consumer dualism found elsewhere. The fact that the Summarits look different than Elmarits, Summicrons, or Summiluxes reinforces the impression of apparently being inferior … and Ken Rockwell's lunacies aren't helpful, either. :rolleyes:
David Farkas;420 wrote: 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.
You may start your research with Leica's own tech specs which you can find on their homepage. There's a PDF document for each lens for download, and these include depth-of-field tables. There you can see that indeed the Summarit-M 50 mm has more DOF than, say, the Summilux-M 50 mm Asph. In actual pictures, the difference in DOF is hard to see—but along with wider DOF comes less background blur, and that is pretty obvious. Also note the varying character of the out-of-focus rendition in the foreground, in the near background, and in the far background at various apertures.
One—widely unknown—factor that affects DOF, besides aperture, focal length, distance, and image format, is pupil magnification. All other parameters being equal, greater pupil magnification means less DOF. However the effect on DOF is significant only at (very) close range. At normal (non-close-up) distances it's insignificant, and at or near infinity the effect is virtually zero. So pupil magnification cannot explain the Summarit's DOF difference. After all, there is hardly any difference in pupil magnification berween Summilux and Summarit to begin with … but as I said, there seems to be a difference in entry and exit pupil sizes, which is strange.
By the way, a similar difference in DOF and background blur also can be found in the pair of Summilux-M 35 mm Asph and Summarit-M 35 mm, albeit to a lesser degree than in the 50 mm lenses. My hypothesis is, the aspherical design somehow amplifies the difference between in-focus and out-of-focus … but that's just a speculation of mine, taken out of thin air.
David Farkas;420 wrote: 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.
Yes, I am aware of that. And if you look at the MTF diagrams in Leica's tech specs then you'll see the the Summilux-M 50 mm Asph's curves, high as they are, take a drop in the farthest corners (even at f/5.6) while the Apo-Summicron-M 75 Asph's don't—the later has an uncannily high level of performance across the whole field including the farthest corners, even at full aperture. And it shows in the pictures … umm, sometimes. Still, the main reason why I often prefer the 75 over the 50 is not corner sharpness but the fact that I simply prefer a slightly narrower field-of-view. Most rangefinder users prefer 35 or 50 mm as their ‘center of gravity' of lens choices—for me it happens to be 75 mm.
I am always astounded (in a negative way) how people pretend the Summarit-M line of lenses just didn't exist. With the limited choice of options, the poll above (or the result thereof) will be pointless and distorted.
Currently I have two 50 mm M lenses; the Summilux-M 50 mm 1:1.4 Asph and the Summarit-M 50 mm 1:2.5. If I was limited to one then I'd keep the Summilux. Still, it's the Summarit that gets more use due to smaller size and weight, unobtrusive appearance (makes the M9 look like daddy's old point-and-shoot), and rendition. In comparison to the Summilux-M Asph, the Summarit-M has nicer foreground bokeh and a more natural rendition of the sharp-unsharp transition at the depth-of-field (DOF) limits. Furthermore, it has more DOF and less blur outside DOF at the same apertures. However the rendition of the far out-of-focus background at full or near-full aperture (f/2.5; f/2.8) is less favourable; it tends to double lines (at f/4, it's as smooth as the Summilux's).
If you want selective focus and narrow DOF then the Summilux is to be preferred. It does not only open wider (1.4 vs. 2.5), at also has less DOF and more blur beyond the DOF area than the Summarit at the same aperture. The difference is equivalent to, say, 2/3 or 3/4 of an f-stop—i. e. not huge but significant. But usually, I want some DOF. I don't subscribe to the currently fashionable mania of minimal DOF at all circumstances—at times, yes … but not always and for everything.
I really wonder where these two lenses' differences in DOF and backbround blur are coming from. Sure, the exact focal lengths are slightly different—Summilux is 51.4 mm; Summarit is 50.1 mm—but that's not enough to explain. When eyeballing the entry pupil's and exit pupil's sizes then they are slightly but significantly wider in the Summilux … but then again: why? The focal length difference is approx. 2.5 %, i. e. insignificant, so it cannot fully explain the phenomenon.
Anyway, I keep using both. Bottom line is, I don't have a favourite. By the way, when I want perfect corner-to-corner sharpness then I'll reach for the Apo-Summicron-M 75 mm Asph. In fact, I am using it more often than both 50 mm lenses. To me, it's a longish standard lens, not a short telephoto. So if you're asking for my favourite standard lens then this is it—even though I don't like the ridiculously short focus throw and the ineffective telescope hood. There is always a fly in the ointment or two … sigh
