Just a simple question about M8.2 ISO capabilities

[Mudman]

Thank you Range. I also use older low contrast lenses, which allows me to bump the contrast up in post. It gives me more latitude to deal with noise.

EDIT:

Kermaier; I used LR 3's noise reduction, usually 50% or less. I don't see any additional noise reduction, only smearing of detail above that.

 

[KM-25]

Ahhhhhh!

Please stop using the term ISO alone as to always just refer to high ISO, that is NOT what it means!!! It is like asking how are the inches in something, it is a NUMERICAL SCALE that could be 1 to 1,000,000!

If you mean high ISO then SAY that!!!!!!!!

 

[presspass]

I know you don't want to hear this, but ISO 160 with a -3 exposure compensation works well if you shoot RAW files. It's the only consistent way I've found to get decent high ISO exposures with the M8. Until I found this trick in the Leica users group, I had consigned this camera to fair weather photography and used Canon DSLRs for high ISO work. The M8 isn't up to a 7D Mark II, but it will work in low light with this trick.

 

[jarski]

great samples how to do it right. had this camera some years ago and did the error of attempting fix exposure in post, thus, after bad experiences limiting myself to 640 and 800 on emergency.

 

[KM-25]

Women say that inches aren't important, but we all know they're lying

It just drives me nuts, it's like saying "How is the aperture on the Noctilux" or "I have a question about the shutter speed on the M9".

More web born BS.....

 

[rpavich]

Ahhhhhh!

Please stop using the term ISO alone as to always just refer to high ISO, that is NOT what it means!!! It is like asking how are the inches in something, it is a NUMERICAL SCALE that could be 1 to 1,000,000!

If you mean high ISO then SAY that!!!!!!!!

I asked about what I wanted to know, and got good answers that helped me make a decision.

If you don't like that...well...who cares?

 

[rpavich]

It just drives me nuts, it's like saying "How is the aperture on the Noctilux" or "I have a question about the shutter speed on the M9".

More web born BS.....

But I did want to know about ISO in general...and so I asked. I was sure to explain what I needed to know about specifically and why.

I guess the other folks on the thread were smart enough to understand what I wanted to know because they did a fine job of answering my questions.

Now go take a chill pill.

 

[willie_901]

Ahhhhhh!

Please stop using the term ISO alone as to always just refer to high ISO, that is NOT what it means!!! It is like asking how are the inches in something, it is a NUMERICAL SCALE that could be 1 to 1,000,000!

If you mean high ISO then SAY that!!!!!!!!

Better yet, use signal-to-noise ratio because yhen people will start thinking about both factors that determine technical IQ and analog dynamic range when the shutter is open.

High ISO = low SNR because high ISO brightens the image to compensate for underexposure.

Ignoring on-camera image review, for ISO-invariant cameras the ISO parameter's only role is to make the light meter look good.

For ISO-varient cameras, there are a subset of ISO setting that produce the optimum signal-to-noise ratio. These ISO settings are brand dependent and even differ for different models from the same brand.

For all cameras increasing ISO decreases the analog dynamic range (when one does what the meter tell one to do).

 

[gunston]

i guess this is a repeated thread.

iso640 for color
iso 1250 for bw

with a fast lens like 35lux, making this M8.2 becomes capable in low light.

 

[jaapv]

That was for older versions of Lightroom/Photoshop. Newer versions have considerable better noise control. You can go to 1250/1600 nowadays.

This is a copy from a post I made in the LUF FAQ:

There is a vital difference between the M/8/9 and all other high-end digital cameras. They have virtually no in-camera noise reduction at high ISO, resulting in more detail, but also more visible noise. To avoid this noise, there are two steps to be taken, but first consider the type of photograph:
Low contrast diffuse light or high contrast with specular highlights.
The first trick is to gather as many photons on the sensor as possible to improve Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) without overexposing. That means: use the histogram. And go manual.

It is easiest with the flat image - just bunch the peak up to the right and flatten the lefthand side of the histogram.

The high contrast image will need clipping of the specular highlights. So move them off the righthand side of the histogram, and you will see the signal coming up on all other light levels. There is your optimum SNR which you must try to preserve whilst taking photographs by manually adjusting the exposure to the amount of real light, i.e. disregarding the bright spotlights that are trying to fool you into underexposing.
This presupposes that you are on manual and are spending some time “ shooting the histogram in” before starting to shoot in earnest.

Note that at ISOs below about 1250 you have enough SNR leeway to start trying to preserve highlights - a whole different game than avoiding noise!

Now we come to the second step: the capture sharpening and noise reduction in Adobe Camera raw and Lightroom. I will describe the procedure for ACR, Lightroom users will be able to translate this easily, as it is basically the same.

First make sure the program is set to the newest Process Version. You will find the setting under the Camera Calibration menu.

If an exclamation mark appears on the lower righthand side of your preview it means you have an image that has been processed in an old Version. Click the exclamation mark to reset the Process Version.

With the image open (make sure your output parameters are set to 16 bits!) adjust the color balance and exposure to taste, and switch to the detail panel and hit alt-option(command)-0 to go to 100% view.

We will use the sliders from top to bottom( more or less), bearing in mind that ACR is non-destructive and, with a subsequent adjustment made it is wise to got back to the previous steps for finetuning. It takes some experience to “ play” all settings to their optimum.

Sharpening slider.
Set for the optimum detail separation (normally between about 10 and 40), never mind that you seem to increase the noise, in conjunction with the next

Radius slider
Use the range of 0.5 to 1.5, never more. 0.5 is for high-frequency detail images like wooded landscapes, 1.5 for low-frequency detail images like glamour portraits.
Once set, bearing in mind that visible halos and artefacts introduced here will get you in trouble later, skip the next

Detail slider
for the time being.
And go to the

Masking Slider.
Then drag it with the alt key held down and you will see an edge mask being created on the fly. This will only be visible with the image at 100% or larger. It shows ( in white) what areas are being sharpened and (in black) which ones are being protected.
So drag it until only the edges you want sharpened are showing. Never mind the small detail. For that you have the

Detail slider.
Alt-drag that one until you have your fine detail back without enhancing too much noise.

Now go to the noise-reduction group.

First go to

Color.
Normally the default setting of 25 will be fine to suppress the color noise completely, but by all means play with the slider to find the optimum setting. If you get some color bleeding on color edges you can move the

Color Detail slider
from its default of 50, but be careful not to go too far left as it will make the image digitally smooth.
( the same for the Luminance Detail slider)
Normally you won’t be using those two.

The most important slider of the group is the

Luminance slider
Pull it right to see the noise disappear. When you are happy, go back to the sharpening group and tweak if needed, back to luminance, etc. (*)

And you are done, go back to the adjustments panel. Now if you have a mixed frequency image, you can correct by using the adjustment brush and tweak the sharpening, both to more sharp ( for instance the eyes in a portrait) or softer ( for instance the skin of somebody in a landscape) (**). Then go on and open the image.

Now this is a long instruction manual, but with a bit of practice it gets really quick and easy, and you can of course make a few presets for image types you commonly shoot.


(*)This is a most interesting slider. At a setting between 0 and 10 it will act as an extra sharpening slider for low-noise images, as it seems to add a bit of fine random structure, which enhances the impression of sharpness

(**) Of course, for the more Photoshop-minded the elegant way to do this is to optimize for one frequency, open as a Smart Object, copy and redo for the other frequency, create a layer mask in PS and paint in the effect, but on the whole I find that a bit of overkill for routine use.

 

[rpavich]

That was for older versions of Lightroom/Photoshop. Newer versions have considerable better noise control. You can go to 1250/1600 nowadays.

This is a copy from a post I made in the LUF FAQ:

Thanks for that. I also found that in a search.

 

[willie_901]

The only way to determine when raw files "have virtually no in-camera noise reduction at high ISO" is to evaluate the data using spatial Fourier transform analysis.

"We know that a Fourier transform of purely random, Gaussian, noise will show a smooth variation of pixels throughout the FFT with one bright pixel at the center."

Here is another reference to using the FFT to assess raw data noise filtering. You have to scroll about half-way down the page.

"The Fourier transform (FT) is a representation of the image data by spatial scale rather by spatial position on the sensor (which is of course the way the sensor records it). In a Fourier transform plot, the effect of noise reduction will be a decrease in the noise amplitude on the smallest scales."

So FT analysis will reveal inhomogeneous noise distributions when raw data is filtered. The noise in flittered data is no longer Gaussian. Analysis of the inhomogeneity can tell us something about the filtering.

The point being, unless one has FT data for "all other high-end digital cameras" one can not know Leica M8/M9/240 are the only products that do not apply raw noise filtering at high ISOs (1,250).

In fact Fujifilm Xtrans raw is not filtered at high ISOs (link1, link2) The Nikon D800 applies raw noise filtering beginning at ISO 12,500. The Canon 5D2 and a 5D3 don't employ raw noise filtering until ISO 102,400. The Canon EOS 100D does not filter raw data up to ISO 1600.

Recent advancements in CMOS data streams have made raw data filtering counter productive. Data streams with near ISO-invarience do not benefit from noise filtering at high ISO amplifications.

However data filtering (raw compression) used by some state-of-the art brands is useful when using still cameras for video. So some brands with state-of-the-art data streams compress their raw data.

In-camera JPEG noise filtering is entirely different. I have no knowledge of digital M JPEGs, but I do know Fujifilm and many other brands filter data during in-camera JPEG compression.

 

[LCT]

I find 1250 perfectly usable with modern raw converters. Here with C1 v8, default settings, no additional noise reduction: http://tinyurl.com/pmyc8gd (9 MB file).