The M8-IR: a specialist camera?

[jtdnyc]

Once the problems with using the M8 for general photography have been sorted

out, might the initial samples of the camera become highly sought-after by IR

photographers?

 

Banding and other problems are, of course, flaws that need to be corrected, but

IR sensitivity might be an asset in certain circumstances. I could imagine

that IR photographers might actually prefer a camera with heightened IR

sensitivity and superior resolution, especially when it could be used for

general photography just by plunking an IR cut-off filter in front of the lens.

 

On a related note, if Leica had announced, six months ago, that the M8 would

offer the best resolution and color fidelity of any camera on a 35mm chassis,

but that the trade-off would be the need for IR cut-off filters in front of the

lenses, would the market have accepted this as a reasonable design compromise?

 

In other words, is this a technical disaster...or just a marketing debacle?

 

To be honest, part of me wants to wait to get an M8 until all the kinks are

ironed out, but another part of me wants to get one now and dedicate it to IR.

The M8's IR sensitivity may be a flaw, but it's also a feature.

[gary_ferguson1]

<<but another part of me wants to get one now and dedicate it to IR. The M8's IR sensitivity may be a flaw, but it's also a feature>>

 

It's IR Jonathan, but not as we know it.

 

I wouldn't want to dedicate an expensive camera to producing bizarre, random colour shifts but only under artificial light.

[jtdnyc]

<It's IR Jonathan, but not as we know it.>

 

So then if I were to use the camera with, say, an 093 filter I wouldn't get results that resemble Kodak HIE but with smoother tones and incomparably better resolution?

[dead_metaphor]

Isnt that a little excessive when any digital camera can be dedicated to IR with a simple sensor filter swap (digital sensors are typically sensitive to IR but the IR spectrum is blocked via a sensor filter)?

 

FWIW, I have a d100 dedicated to IR. the conversion costs $250 and creates a dedicated digital IR camera with normal ISO sensitivity and none of the drawbacks of film IR e.g. slow exposures, IR lens filters, lightless handling etc.

 

Go to www.lifepixel.com for more info.

[ray .]

I guess awhile back when someone posted a tongue-in-cheek list of future M8

threads, they couldn't have imagined this one..

[james_lai]

Michael Reichmann has posted a short article on Luminous Landscape about that. He concludes the M8 is not very good for IR unless you're willing to do lots of focus bracketing.

[pico_digoliardi]

<i>It's IR Jonathan, but not as we know it. </i><p>

Okay, I am puzzled. How is IR not simply a frequency? IR is IR, n'est pas?<p>

The focusing issue - good point. With the short lenses used for our format, depth-of-focus (not depth of field) is an issue, but one can mark his lenses for IR once the correct location is found.

[al_kaplan1]

Let's not forget that there are still a lot of photographers out there shooting for the news media who gave up shooting their M Leicas because the demands of the business dictated going digital for reasons of speed in getting the images into print. A lot of these people still have their M cameras for personal work, along with their lenses. Digital artifacts that might make life diffcult for weddings or advertizing photos will be next to meaningless in a typical news photo.

[jtdnyc]

James, I've found the M8 review on Luminous Landscape but not the part about the M8 and IR. Could up post a link? Offhand, I can't think of a reason why the M8 would be more difficult to focus for IR than a film M would be...or, for that matter, any other 35mm camera focused by visible light.

[james_lai]

Jonathan, here's the link:<p><a href=http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/m8-infrared.shtml>http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/m8-infrared.shtml</a><p> Basically, the problem is the lenses are not marked for IR. If you can calibrate your lenses as Pico suggests, then you'd be all set.

[jtdnyc]

Thanks.

[Brad_]

Yeah, that's it... A specialist camera. I can see the magazine ads now...

[vinay_patel]

I'm a firm believer in the old addage "if you're given lemons, make lemonaide". As long as lemonaide costs 25 cents a glass, not $5000.

[james_lai]

Hmm, perhaps Leica should add an IR index on the lens as part of the lens coding service.

[johnny massey]

Ray, my tongue-in-cheek projection of future M8 threads came NOWHERE NEAR the fabulous 'what-if', 'will it, won't it' and 'it don't' selection which lays before us. Johnny. PS I hope it soon does what it says on the box.

[Brad_]

<I>Hmm, perhaps Leica should add an IR index on the lens as part of the lens coding

service.</I><P>

 

Nope, there's no amount of post-processing that will fix that. The sensor (apparently)

misinterprets IR

and translates that to magenta. Software can not differentiate that "fake" magenta from

objects that are genuinely magenta. Once the light is captured by the sensor and then

sampled digitally, there's no way to distinguish the fake from the real. The only way to

reduce that IR misinterpretation is to reduce the IR energy before it is captured by the

sensor - by using an IR-block filter.<P>

 

It's kind of like moire as a consequence of aliasing - you can't distinguish a moire artifact

from a genuine finely detailed pattern (like cloth, etc). That will be the next "issue" in a few

weeks...

[jtdnyc]

Well, Brad, I guess that kills the idea of marketing it as a "specialist camera"....

 

Wait! What about calling it the Alice Walker Edition...you know, "The Color Purple"?!?

 

Seriously, though -- and here I defer to your expertise in this area -- isn't it possible that the sensor could recognize the IR and magenta as distinct sets of wavelengths but the firmware outputs them both as a signal tha's interpreted as the same visible shade?

[Brad_]

<I>... isn't it possible that the sensor could recognize the IR and magenta as distinct sets

of

wavelengths but the firmware outputs them both as a signal tha's interpreted as the same

visible shade?</I><P>

 

Unfortunately, no. The sensor (again apparently) makes in essence a mistake. It "sees" IR

and mistakingly reports (hand-waving) the color as magenta. Once that mistake happens,

there's no way software further down the chain can differentiate if it is getting a real

magenta pixel

from Aunt Betty's magenta-colored hat from a fake magenta pixel generated off Uncle

Bob's black trousers. The "number" for magenta is the same in both cases. When the

image gets displayed on your screen, both the hat and black trousers will be displayed as

magenta. From the hat it is correct, from the trousers it's a mistake.<P>

 

That's why digital cameras (usually) have an IR-block filter of sufficient strength on the

sensor - to prevent that irreversible misinterpretaion from being made in the first place.

[james_lai]

Brad, by "index" I meant the red mark on the focussing scale of most lenses that show you where to adjust the focus for IR. The problem with using Leica lenses for IR is that they don't have such an index.

[jtdnyc]

James, modern Leica lenses don't have an IR focusing mark because different IR materials would need different focusing marks, depending on sensitivity.

 

However, as a practical matter, I have used the right-hand f/5.6 mark on the depth of field scale as an approximate IR focus mark and achieved satisfactory results with Kodak HIE, Ektachrome and Konica.

 

Using small apertures helps, too.

[jtdnyc]

James, modern Leica lenses don't have an IR focusing mark because different IR materials would need different focusing marks, depending on sensitivity.

 

However, as a practical matter, I have used the right-hand f/5.6 mark on the depth of field scale as an approximate IR focus mark and achieved satisfactory results with Kodak HIE, Ektachrome and Konica.

 

Using small apertures helps, too.

[james_lai]

Jonathan, yes, you're right. I'm no IR photgrapher but I do recall reading about the differences between IR films somewhere. Anyways, as the photo in the Luminous Landscape article shows, you can indeed use the M8 for IR. There's no problem with the sensor mistaking the IR for magenta or any other colour because you'd have a filter on the lens to block out the visible spectrum.

 

It seems to me that Brad is talking about the IR sensitivity as a problem for regular (visible light) photography. No doubt it is a serious problem for that, but this thread is supposed to be about IR photography. There's no way you'd be adding an IR-block filter to reduce IR energy if your goal is to take IR photos!

[jtdnyc]

Good point, James. With a visually opaque filter, the image would be pure IR. So that might yet be hope for the M8 in such an application.

 

However, with anything less than an opaque filter, the confusion that Brad wrote about would probably be the case. While that could be a problem for scientific work, I'm not sure what its aesthetic implications would be in, say, landscape photography.

 

The example of M8 IR on Luminous Landscape looked pretty good to me.

[Brad_]

<I>Brad, by "index" I meant the red mark on the focussing scale of most lenses that show

you where to adjust the focus for IR. </I><P>

 

Got it... My mistake - you're looking for an IR cam...

[clayh]

Do you think the extended IR response will allow the camera to see through clothing like that videocam (since recalled) a few years ago? Like I mentioned somewhere else, Leica could market directly to the well-heeled perv market.