Interesting/fun comparison shot

wlewisiii

wlewisiii

Just another hotel clerk
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I recently traded in some gear with the intention of getting a Nikon Z. Well, it didn't work that way and I ended up with a new to me Pentax K-5 APS-C DSLR instead with the very highly regarded Pentax HD DA 20-40mm Limited zoom and a F 35-70 plus the M42 lenses I already owned. Sometimes, things go in a different direction than your original plan. Swinging past one of my "usual suspects" this morning gave me what I thought was an interesting comparison:

The first is from the Pentax. Auto-ISO of 3200, 38mm on the zoom, F4, 1/60:

p009.jpg

This one is from my M 240 using my favored Zeiss 50/2 collapsible Sonnar. ISO200, F/2, 1/12:

57.jpg

Does this tell me anything beyond the fact that one lens is 80+ years old and one is only a teenager? Not really. I just enjoyed seeing the same scene this way with such very different "eyes" and look forward to doing so more widely with this reminder of the differences between modern and classic lenses.
 
I would say the top photo feels as if you are there, whereas the bottom looks like viewing the scene through a window (not in a bad way). Is your Sonnar uncoated or a bit hazy?

Without pixel peeping these, the top photo also feels a bit oversharpened and grainy (ISO3200 Im guessing), while the bottom is super smooth and everything I love about Sonnars.
 
Uncoated sonnar. Bit of a classic bloom but no haze - I got it from Sonnar Brian.

The Pentax shot was RAW, no extra sharpening in post. I use ART, just used the DCP file for the K5, applied tone curve and saved as jpg because I like that better than SOOC. I only got the K5 on Thursday so I've been letting the AutoISO do it's thing to see how it handles things until I decide how I want to use it. On the M 240 I almost only use 200 in day light/outdoors & 6400 night/low light indoors after getting used to it's sensor. I expect I'll learn my personal defaults with the K5 similarly.

Thanks!
 
Personally, out of these two, I'm taking the rendering of the Sonnar/M240 combo. It could do with a bit of a levels/contrast adjustment, but other than that, it looks good.

wlewisiii said:
On the M 240 I almost only use 200 in day light/outdoors & 6400 night/low light indoors after getting used to it's sensor.
Click to expand...
Bit of a sidetrack, but I just picked up the M240 - what's the secret to shooting at 6400 ISO on that thing? My test shots around the house start to look messy once you hit 1600 ISO, so I've been using 1250 ISO as the cap for the last week.
 
Don't really have a "secret" other than the fact that I'm generally nowhere near as fussy about things as many people here. I accept "messy" and "smeary" quite a bit more than most do. I will shoot wide open, use a reasonably fast sonnar, but I don't demand perfection...

(not sure if these links are going to work...)





 
Yeah, those links work. I can immediately see you're getting the same horizontal lines I get at those ISOs, so I guess it's just something to do with the M240 itself.

Which, for the record, is fine; I'm basically treating the M240 as a film camera with a digital sensor, as that's exactly what I wanted. If I hadn't had the X-Pro 2 for so long (which is amazingly clean & useable at 6400 ISO), I wouldn't even think twice about it.
 
Ok had to run another errand this afternoon anyway so that made an excellent excuse.

Both images are shot as RAW DNG at ISO400, F4, 1/15, which was good on the top of the scene but had the highlights a bit hot on the bottom, both were about the same so both were given the same adjustments in post using ART and Tone Equalizer. Post consisted of using each cameras DCP, tone curve, tone equalizer and then saved as jpg.

Pentax:

e3.jpg

Leica:

e4.jpg
 
Self portraits of a sort reflected in the glass of a museum display at Pancake Rocks/ Punakaiki, NZ. First pic is 1983 with Canon FTBn and Tamron 28-105 lens, probably on Kodak film. Second pic is from 2009 with a Sony compact digital

 
Like my last post, not quite the same framing, but similar at a distance of 25 years. Yeah, that is me in the first pic, Canon FTBn with Tamron 28-105.

2009 version with a Contax II and 5cm Sonnar. Different times of day , different weather and definately different cameas and lenses.
 
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This morning I stopped by the same location but with my Nikon 50/2 LTM lens on the Leica instead. The light was lower since I actually got off of work on time (heh) so the ISO was 1600 on both cameras. F4 & 1/15 on both as well, RAW DNG, applied the DCP file In ART and Tone curve then saved as jpg.

Amazing the difference a decade and a half and a war makes ... 😉

Pentax:

e5.jpg

Leica:

e6.jpg
 
DCP is a description file, of the color profile of a camera. "Camera Profiles define how a raw image is rendered by image processing software. Specifically, they contain a definition of exactly what the color of a particular pixel should be, relative to the raw data in the original image. Previous generations are Adobe’s image processing software (Photoshop/Camera Raw and Lightroom), had camera profiles for a wide variety of camera embedded within them. The latest generation of this software however has separated out theses profiles into DNG Camera Profiles. Although called DNG Camera Profiles, actually they apply to any raw file that an Adobe product loads." DCP FIles

Tone curve is one of the ways it is shown with in ART or "Another Rawtherapee" the postprocessing sofware I use, version 1.23.1.

Hope that helps a bit.
 
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