rschenker
Newbie
I have a new to me M 262--my first digital Leica. I've owned a pair of M2 film Leicas for over 40 years and a Canon 19 super wide angle lens for even longer--absolutely my favorite lens. I'd read a discussion on this site that this lens won't work with full frame Leicas because it produces red tinting at the extremes of the frame. As soon as I got the camera I tried my 19 (a rangefinder version, not the slr version) and indeed it resulted in strong red tint at the left and right sides of the frame (horizontal). From what I'd read, the supposition was that this was due to the extreme angle of image projection onto the sensor because of the non-retrofocus lens design. So I bought a Voigtlander 21mm, which appears to be retrofocus, as the rear element is much farther from the film plane. Surprise! It also produces similar red tinting. Not quite as bad, but otherwise very similar. Not sure I can live without at least a 21. Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Could it be that any super wide will do this? Maybe a Leica coded lens will have software correction. Not sure I want to or could afford to own one. Comments or advice?
edge100
Well-known
I've got my Voigtlander 21/4 manually coded as the Leica 21/2.8. No shading whatsoever on my M-E.
Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Color shading and corner artifacts are the rule rather than the exception when you're using a near-symmetrical lens design ultra wide on large digital sensors. It's a matter of the geometries involved ... the geometry of the light path through the lens and the geometry of the sensor light path through the sensor stack.
Leica's lens profiles help to correct these problems and restore the lenses to their on-film rendering qualities. But of course, they are targeted to Leica lenses, not third party lenses, and the adjustments they entail can be very subtle and pernicious in their action. The M9/M-E sensor is quite different from the M typ 240 and M typ 262 sensors, so success with a third party lens and a given lens profile cannot be assumed to migrate across the sensor families successfully all the time.
That said, you can try several different lens profiles on the M typ 262 to find the best match to your Voigtländer 21mm f/4; there's no cost to it other than the time involved. I personally didn't find as good a match on the M typ 240 as I did on the M9, but in other cases I found better matches... and I replaced the lenses that had poor matches with lenses from Leica for which they'd supplied a perfect lens profile.
The Tri-Elmar-M 16-18-21mm (aka WATE), in particular, is one of the best performing ultra wides on the digital Ms there can be. It's an expensive lens but worth every penny if you love ultra-wide photography. The Voigtländer Heliar 15mm f/4.5 type III is another brilliant performer on the M typ 240/262 (and also on the SL). Both these lenses have a very different lens design compared to the Color Skopar 21/4: the CS21 is a very traditional near-symmetric design where both the WATE and the Heliar are fairly pronounced retrofocus designs.
If you have the time to work with it, CornerFix is certainly an option. It's not a plug-in, it's an application that takes a reference frame for a particular lens, analyzes the color shift and corner shading, and can take the raw files produced by that lens and re-write them having processed out the artifacts. It adds another step to whatever raw workflow you use by requiring the generation of new raw files that have been corrected, but it does an excellent job.
I went the somewhat expensive route of selling my Color Skopar 21mm and acquiring the WATE because it suits my photography and workflow best, but between finding the best match in lens profile and using CornerFix, the situation with the Color Skopar 21mm is far from hopeless.
G
Leica's lens profiles help to correct these problems and restore the lenses to their on-film rendering qualities. But of course, they are targeted to Leica lenses, not third party lenses, and the adjustments they entail can be very subtle and pernicious in their action. The M9/M-E sensor is quite different from the M typ 240 and M typ 262 sensors, so success with a third party lens and a given lens profile cannot be assumed to migrate across the sensor families successfully all the time.
That said, you can try several different lens profiles on the M typ 262 to find the best match to your Voigtländer 21mm f/4; there's no cost to it other than the time involved. I personally didn't find as good a match on the M typ 240 as I did on the M9, but in other cases I found better matches... and I replaced the lenses that had poor matches with lenses from Leica for which they'd supplied a perfect lens profile.
The Tri-Elmar-M 16-18-21mm (aka WATE), in particular, is one of the best performing ultra wides on the digital Ms there can be. It's an expensive lens but worth every penny if you love ultra-wide photography. The Voigtländer Heliar 15mm f/4.5 type III is another brilliant performer on the M typ 240/262 (and also on the SL). Both these lenses have a very different lens design compared to the Color Skopar 21/4: the CS21 is a very traditional near-symmetric design where both the WATE and the Heliar are fairly pronounced retrofocus designs.
If you have the time to work with it, CornerFix is certainly an option. It's not a plug-in, it's an application that takes a reference frame for a particular lens, analyzes the color shift and corner shading, and can take the raw files produced by that lens and re-write them having processed out the artifacts. It adds another step to whatever raw workflow you use by requiring the generation of new raw files that have been corrected, but it does an excellent job.
I went the somewhat expensive route of selling my Color Skopar 21mm and acquiring the WATE because it suits my photography and workflow best, but between finding the best match in lens profile and using CornerFix, the situation with the Color Skopar 21mm is far from hopeless.
G
rschenker
Newbie
Can you manually code a lens with an M type bayonet mount? I know how it works with LTM and M adaptors. If you know of an article on this you could point me to it rather than re-explain.
rschenker
Newbie
I got Cornerfix. Haven't had time to figure out how it works yet. This looks to be a possible way to use the Canon 19, maybe? I actually started trying to work out remedial measures in Photoshop, but there are some obstacles there.
Anyway, thanks very much to all the respondents. I'll report back.
Anyway, thanks very much to all the respondents. I'll report back.
Godfrey
somewhat colored
jaapv
RFF Sponsoring Member.
Jim Evidon
Jim
There was a wonderful article in LFI magazine a while back concerning edge color on the M's which the magazine (published by Leica) called the Italian Flag syndrome. It consists of the sensor producing red shading on one side and greenish shading on the other. There is really nothing you can do in-camera about it. It is a phenomenon with the M sensor catching the light at extreme angles on the edge of the sensor with wide angle lenses. Think of light going through a prism and producing a rainbow effect at the other end. That is what it is doing with the individual "lenses" in front of the pixels at the periphery of the sensor. Some readers will criticize my inelegant way of describing it and reading the article would be more accurate. In any case, the only remedy is post processing software such as corner fix and others. It's a small price to pay for what is otherwise a fine camera.