mirek_elsner1

March 11, 2014

So what options are there to equal the image quality potential of the Monochrom, if any? I do not want to upgrade to an M240 in any near future, again for cost reasons (I have an M9), but wonder if a Sony A7r can provide B&W image quality similar to a Monochrom? Apparently the difference in IQ between an 18 MP Bayer filtered sensor and a 36 MP Bayer filtered sensor is a mere square root of 2, or about 1.4X difference. Not much. Does the 18MP non Bayer sensor of the Monochrom provide superior IQ results to the 36MP Bayer sensor of the 24 MP Leica M240? I am interested in quality up to about 800 ISO only.

</blockquote>

I don't have either, but have seen some well done b&w comparisons between MM and D800. The Nikon seemed more detailed. The MM was closer to 24MP Bayer than 36MP. So I think any of the 36MP cameras might be interesting alternatives. Actually, I think the Bayer is an advantage for b&w shooting. You can dial in almost any color filter non-destructively and after the shooting, with preview on your monitor. And LiveView is a nice feature for landscape...

January 9, 2014

I use AF with my canon lenses but The zeiss lenses are manual focus only. The focus confirmation works but I have heard it can be slightly inaccurate shooting wide open...

</blockquote>

Most of all, it is not very user friendly. At least not with 5D2. It will blink when you are in focus, not stay on. So it is hard to say if you are spot on or if you passed the best focus. Focus on the screen is more accurate and more user friendly.

January 9, 2014

I would not bother with the focusing screen swap on a camera that does not support it and with f/2 lenses:

<ol>

<li>The Canon manual focusing screens without split screen and micro raster show more realistic DOF preview with fast lenses, while the stock screen does not show any difference for ~f/2.5 and wider. With f/2 lenses, you will barely see a difference</li>

<li>Screens with split screen can throw off metering and obscure the view a little</li>

<li>With MF, it is important that the screen is in the right position. I believe Canon can shim the screen if it is not accurate for MF, but I would be surprised if they were willing to do that in warranty with 5D3 that does not support interchangeable screens</li>

<li>I recall post on another forum from an experienced MF lens user who had 5D2 with MF screen and upgraded to 5D3 with stock screen. He reported that he likes focusing with 5D3 better than 5D2 and MF screen</li>

</ol>

December 10, 2013

You can get NEC PA242W-BK-SV 24" with dedicated hardware calibration solution for couple hundred more than your indicated budget. In return you get possibly the best 24" solution currently available.

The bundled calibrator won't be able to make printer profiles, but I would not worry about it before you get a printer.

Posted December 9, 2013 · December 9, 2013

Over the years, I have had two outside services create icc printer profiles for my printer and the papers I use. But they are both out of business now. In my experience, the profiles I have had custom made have yielded better results than the profiles provided by the paper manufacturers. So, I now would like to buy one of the calibrating packages that will calibrate my monitor AND enable me to create icc profiles for my printer/paper combinations.

</blockquote>

I have been using 3880 and mostly papers from Hahnemuhle, Epson and Ilford. I also have the ColorMunki. I found that the profiles provided by manufacturers for the particular papers I use are very good and I can't create any better with the ColorMunki. If you are considering this printer, it might be a good idea to try manufacturer profiles before getting ColorMunki or similar device. If you find that you don't need to create printer profiles on your own, getting a dedicated display calibrator like the i1 Display Pro might give more accurate results.

May 20, 2013

I assume you have one of the digital Ms, coding does not help on other cameras. The coding allows the camera to add lens specific data to DNG files to remove vignetting. The coding is specific for Leica lenses, but it apparently works well for non-Leica lenses as well. The results are most apparent on wide angle lenses.

http://www.l-camera-forum.com/leica-news/leica-lens-codes/

I never used Leica with Zeiss lenses, but it it my understanding that you can preview the effect if you use a non-coded lens and select specific Leica lens manually in the camera menu. Coding will do the same thing, but automatically.

November 20, 2012

The 100L is a great macro lens, but the nice looking background blur, relatively fast AF (with limiter), weather sealing, robust but light build and IS make it very capable for other types of photography including portrait and landscape. With less expensive lens you will most likely have to give up some features and which lens is the best alternative depends on your priorities and style.

If you don't need the IS and don't like the Canon 100mm Macro, you may want to look at 90mm Tamron. I don't have any personal experience with it, but it has pretty good reputation.

November 17, 2012

Dont know why but the look of the background is different.

</blockquote>

Provided that you used the same focal length and f-stop, the look of the background depends on design of the lens. For example, the level of correction of some optical aberrations has impact on look of the out of focus areas. Another factor is the number and shape of aperture blades. I believe the 85L employs some other design tricks to achieve shallow depth of field and smooth background blur. Some lenses will therefore show smoother background blur than others.

November 17, 2012

Which lens is best depends on your style. Do you want the children to be part of the process, or do you want to be unnoticed? Do you use flash indoors? My favorites were:

35L for indoors. At 1/60s I did not have to worry about camera blur and it was usually enough for slow action like painting or playing with toys. F/1.4 provides some background separation if needed. And the focal length is not too short to introduce distortion and at the same time short enough to evoke the feeling that the viewer is part of the action.

85L was a good counterpart when longer focal length was practical. I think 85/1.8 might be actually even better, due to its faster AF and shorter MFD. The 85L has MFD that is too far for portraits of babies.

50L is in between and I used it often, too. It was my favorite lens for the first weeks or months.

As the kids grow, they become more mobile and zoom with fast AF becomes very practical for outdoor photography. I liked 16-35 and perhaps the 24-70 would be even better.

This weekend i was taking photos of children at a birthday party (friends party and i was just a guest playing with my camera) and found that i like the separation of the 100 mm macro, but the speed of focus was not enough. I took out my 24-70 and found the focus OK but the separation wasn't there. I also felt that the 100 mm was just a tad too long for the space i had at the party.

</blockquote>

If you are looking for a lens with similar focal length, great separation and very fast AF, look at 135L. If you don't mind the size and weight, 70-200 IS will do more or less the same service (except the smooth bokeh) and more.

November 16, 2012

Second, perhaps like me, you actually know and occasionally work with some of the folks who are among those acknowledged to be the "best" and most admired and successful photographers in various genres. And perhaps you have noticed that quite a few of them - most, actually - do not use the so-called classic and unusual sorts of gear that some here want to promote.

</blockquote>

As wise man once said, the difference between professional photographer and amateur photographer is that the professional takes photographs to make money and the amateur makes money to take photographs.

Professional photographer makes their equipment choices based on different criteria. Some examples:

<ul>

<li>Professional cares about return of investment. If there is a $399 50/1.4 lens with 4 star performance and $3990 50/1.4 lens with 5 star performance, the professional most likely picks the cheaper lens for better ROI</li>

<li>Professional cares about reputation. Wedding photographer needs to provide good quality photographs from all important moments of the wedding. He/she can't fail. Pro landscape photographer may have obligations to their editors etc. Fast AF, ability to zoom or weather sealing may be of far better value for professionals than improvement in bokeh or clarity an esotheric alt lens provides</li>

<li>Professional photographer has whole day, every day, to improve and profile their personal style (yet they often only copy the successful ones). Amateur with children has few hours a week and obviously looks for alternative ways how to distinguish their work from the crowd within their possibilities</li>

</ul>

Some analogies with cars were given, I will add one too. My taxi driver is a professional and definitely a great driver. He drives Prius. He said it is reliable and has low consumption. It has good ROI and the ride is acceptable. It is all he needs. My neighbor has a Lotus. He drives it for fun. Should he drive a Prius instead? It is used by professionals, right?

I am utterly confident that we could hang work done with Leica, Canon, Nikon, and a range of other gear in an exhibit and no one would be able to categorize the work based on the brand or model of lens used. Of all the things that have relevance to photography and the power of photographs, this business is close to the very least important.

</blockquote>

There were two blind tests made on another forum with statistically interesting results. People were able to recognize which pictures were taken with Zeiss lenses.

October 27, 2012

Is it possible to there are another reasons the 85mm 1.8 to looks visibly brighter - I have to use +2/3 Flash Exposure Compensation on the 70-200 in order to match both exposures at f 2.8? And the zoom pictures are "darker" not only in the image corners?

</blockquote>

The t-stop is important only if you use manual exposure and compare lenses with the same manual exposure. If you shoot on automatic, the exposure is measured through the lens and there should be no differences in brightness. Did you use AE or manual?

If I look at thumbnails my catalog in Lightroom with shots from different lenses displayed side by side, those from 70-200 do not look any darker than others. I never had the 85/1.8 though, so I can't compare them directly.

October 27, 2012

I seriously doubt the t value of the zoom is as much as -1/3 of a stop difference compared to the 85. I suspect that it is negligible in real life terms.

</blockquote>

After reading your post, I did a Google search. I found that DxO measures T-stop in their lens tests. I found they tested the lens in question and their measurement indicates <a href="http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Lenses/Camera-Lens-Database/Canon/Canon-EF70-200mm-f28L-IS-II-USM/(camera)/436">T-stop of 3.3+, a difference of more than 0.5 EV</a>.

October 27, 2012

Isn't it STRANGE 85 1.8 to be BRIGHTER with clear 1/3 stop at the image center and about 1/2 stop at the corners in comparison with 70-200 2.8 IS II ? (at 85mm , f .2.8, shutter speeds 1/100sec for the prime against 1/80 sec for the zoom, Canon 5d II). I have in mind that 70-200 has more vignetting wide open.

What do you think may be the reason for the difference in exposures? :)

</blockquote>

The number f/2.8 is not corrected for the light loss in the lens. I believe the differences between f-stop and t-stop are most apparent when the lens is wide open. In your comparison the zoom was wide open and the prime stopped down. So the prime was brighter.

October 27, 2012

Here is a shot from the zoom at f/2.8 and 100mm on 5D2. These are actual 100% pixels with default Lightroom sharpening. Focused on text on the top.

As far as resolution goes, I do not see much difference between this lens, 135L, 85L or 100mm Zeiss Makro-Planar and I think the limit here is the AA filter and the sensor. I dont have 85/1.8 and can't comment on that, but I would be surprised if it was resolving notably more details than the zoom or had better general image quality. The prime may have better bokeh, the zoom most likely has less CA.

Possible reasons for the unsharpness might be miscalibration or taking the shot before the IS fully stabilized the image. Did you try to compare them on a tripod and focused with live view to rule out user error?

September 15, 2012

I have been using third party manual focus lenses, but only new ones with native mount for my FF camera. I don't have any personal experience using R lenses on a DSLR body.

That said, my impression is that Canon is the most popular DSLR system to use with Leica R lenses due to its favorable mirror clearance. You can find good compatibility info, discussion on adapters and interesting links <a href="http://www.pebbleplace.com/Personal/Leica_db.html">here</a>.

September 14, 2012

The second is that I cannot use the nikon lenses at wide apertures (the main reason I wanted to use them). There is a lot of ghosting that I have not experienced on my old nikon body with the same lenses. At 2.8 the ghosting is reduced, but I don't have that "effect" using 2.8 Canon lenses.

</blockquote>

Is the adapter black?

September 14, 2012

The first one is that the camera always focuses closer than what I focus on the visor. If I focus using live view there is no problem, since I'm watching the image directly from the sensor and I can focus accordingly. But using the visor is impossible. I don't seem to have this problem using canon lenses.

</blockquote>

Are you talking about actual image on the focusing screen, or about the focus indicator?

The focusing screen can show different focus than what you get on the sensor if it is misaligned. Canon service might be able to fix that. I believe some people do it on their own putting some special shims under the focusing screen. If that is your case, you should see the same problem with manually focused lenses from both Canon and Nikon, though.

If you are using your camera for manual focusing, consider getting focusing screen designed for fast lenses and MF. I believe the name of the screen for 5D2 is EE-s or something like that. The default screen is optimized for brightness and does not show any difference in depth of field under f/2.8 or so and achieving proper focus with wide open fast lenses may be challenging. The specialized MF focusing screen may not fix all your problems, but is great for manual focusing and better preview of DOF on fast lenses, is inexpensive and replacement on 5D2 takes a minute or two.

September 14, 2012

<ul>

<li>Check your histogram to see if color channels are not clipped. This has already been described in previous posts</li>

<li>Verify on other people's computers that this is not a problem specific to your computer only. I looked at some of your pictures from 2012 and I like the colors, but it does not mean anything - you may be more demanding or have another idea what the colors should look like. </li>

<li>Make sure your yellows and reds are not out of gamut. The colors as captured by your camera and tweaked in post processing may not be achievable on your monitor, your printer or in the working color space you selected (sRGB?). This results in inaccurate color and lack of details in such over saturated areas. </li>

<li>Consider using ColorChecker Passport or similar product along with raw developer that supports custom profiles. This is available with Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop and perhaps with other developers. These programs also have tools to fine tune individual colors and their attributes. For example, you can modify only hue of oranges or saturation of yellows and at the same time leave all other colors alone. </li>

<li>Test a couple of raw developers to see if one does the yellows and reds better than the others. I think I would start with DxO, Capture One, Lightroom and DPC. This may be time consuming, because the default settings may not give the best results</li>

</ul>

August 20, 2012

Will switching to FF and primes make me a better photographer?

</blockquote>

It could encourage you to try new things like using narrow depth of field, wider angles, taking photographs in lower light or making larger prints. It could make you feel more confident. If it broaden your horizons, makes you more creative or more likely to use your camera, it can actually improve your photography.

If you have the budget and feel you want a change, try it. You can always sell the equipment if it does not do anything for you.

August 19, 2012

My question is this, how much difference am I going to see (on a full frame) between the 135 f/2 L and the regular ole 100mm f/2.8 macro, say stopped down to f/4?

</blockquote>

The strength of the 135 is that you can shoot at f/2 and achieve special subject isolation and background blur without compromising the image quality. I can't comment on image quality at f/4 compared to the regular macro, I only compared it to the 100L: The 135 is a bit sharper at identical f-stops, but the difference is not dramatic. The 135 has very fast AF, which is probably the most significant difference when shooting stopped down.

April 12, 2011

I would start with determining how much memory you really need and if you really need any super fast scratch disks. I upgraded my PC to 12GB and disks for PS became almost irrelevant. Now I use a MacBook with 8GB and it is plenty for my needs (I work with RAWs from 21MP camera). If you constantly work with huge files, long history and many layers, your needs may be different. Having that said, I tried SSDs, RAID10 with cached hardware controller and 15k SAS drives and found SSDs most practical while their capacity is enough.

January 9, 2011

I do not shoot weddings and in general prefer primes. But primes have one type of flexibility and miss another. Questions I would ask in this particular situation myself are:

<ul>

<li>Do I have a good flash?</li>

<li>Do I know how to work with flash?</li>

<li>Will I be able to handle different color temperatures and control quality of the light with that flash? </li>

<li>Is flash allowed?</li>

<li>How much light will be there in the worst case scenario?</li>

<li>Is flipping primes possible without missing important moments?</li>

</ul>

January 4, 2011

If you have 5 liters that you will be using over extended period of time, you should not mix unused and used baths, at least developers. So I would recommend getting set of smaller bottles for one batch, use it for as many films as the capacity allows, dumping the old baths and refilling the bottles with fresh stock. You should also keep the original developers without oxygen the same way as B&W chemicals.

I don't know how automatic is CP-E2, but make sure you keep the temperatures and processing times carefully, especially first developer.

Kodak used to have some interesting PDFs with processing info on their web site. Even though the Tetenal chemicals can be a bit different, it is good reading.

January 4, 2011

I'm not sure I'll have room for a second digital camera. Can anyone recommend the tiniest one they can think of? Tiny including the battery size, charger, etc. Ideally perhaps one with throwaway batteries that I can buy and dispose of as needed. Carrying a charger is unnecessary bulk. I'm taking a 50L pack (traditional that's considered a weekend pack, not a long-trip pack) for the entire year. I'm traveling ultralight (e.g. two pairs of boxers, three pairs of socks, one t-shirt, etc). I want to keep it simple. If it means I lose out on pictures, so be it.

</blockquote>

If you take second camera, you don't have to take so many films with you. 5 less films and you have room for the digital camera... One disadvantage of film, unless you shoot several rolls a day is that you can't change the speed in the middle of the roll (not easily, anyways). So you will have ISO 100 film in your camera and you will need to shoot something that requires really high ISO. Or you will have an ISO 400 film that is shot to be pushed to 1600 because you needed it yesterday and now you need really clean picture. This is where the digital camera may become handy, especially if it has good high ISO performance. Some digital cameras like the Sony NEX can even take Leica M lenses.

January 4, 2011

I'm not sure I'll have room for a second digital camera. Can anyone recommend the tiniest one they can think of? Tiny including the battery size, charger, etc. Ideally perhaps one with throwaway batteries that I can buy and dispose of as needed. Carrying a charger is unnecessary bulk. I'm taking a 50L pack (traditional that's considered a weekend pack, not a long-trip pack) for the entire year. I'm traveling ultralight (e.g. two pairs of boxers, three pairs of socks, one t-shirt, etc). I want to keep it simple. If it means I lose out on pictures, so be it.

</blockquote>

If you take second camera, you don't have to take so many films with you. 5 less films and you have room for the digital camera... One disadvantage of film, unless you shoot several rolls a day is that you can't change the speed in the middle of the roll (not easily, anyways). So you will have ISO 100 film in your camera and you will need to shoot something that requires really high ISO. Or you will have an ISO 400 film that is shot to be pushed to 1600 because you needed it yesterday and now you need really clean picture. This is where the digital camera may become handy, especially if it has good high ISO performance. Some digital cameras like the Sony NEX can even take Leica M lenses.

Sign In

Profiles

Forums

Blogs

Events

Downloads

Gallery

Store

Posts posted by mirek_elsner1