M-E dull DNG.

[Ko.Fe.]

Many knows, I'm using M4-2 by S16. Examples are in my sig.

I took around 25K images in full auto mode. With Canon. I know the light and exposure.
But.. If camera has AE mode it must work. And I also know how to use it. And if it doesn't work, camera design is defective, wrong. We could push many words around it and make it looks like aura, but it just defect and nothing else.

Leica is not guitar for me, it is violin to fiddle. Manual M4-2 is. But digital M isn't. Just look and their shutter speed dials.

If I'll decide to sell M-E/Ultron, it will be in RFF classifields. But just to let you know in advance, sending to UK is pricey from here.

Salute!

 

[shawn]

Download RawDigger and you can see how underexposed the DNG file is. That much sky is going to underexpose.

Next time point the camera at the ground near your subject, half pressure and hold the shutter button, then focus/compose and take the shot. You will get a far better exposure.

Shawn

 

[Richard G]

Kostya I use an M9 and Monochrom. With 28 and wider I have to seriously take into account the sky and meter pointing downwards and lock it with a half-press if I have the shutter speed dial set to A. With 35 and 50 it's not nearly such a problem. The likelihood that there is something different in the way your ME works is not high.

Whether there is something particular about that fast Ultron I don't know. Same for how you code it.

Today in Melbourne it's raining with low cloud and mist and all the people crossing roads in front of me were silhouetted in a very photographic way and I'd have loved to have stopped the car and photographed a few. I reckon the automatic metering in that diffuse light would have given me major underexposure with any lens and especially a 28, but it would have worked well enough and left me with a rescuable file and no blown highlights. Very often I use manual exposure with the M9 and Monochrom, maybe starting with an exposure on A. I think you have to do that a lot with these digital Leicas which do have rather simple metering. I am impressed with the M6 meter though, which I can more slavishly follow. With your experience of the M4-2 I reckon the best thing is a combination of automatic and manual exposure and the conditions, overcast, and the lens, wide, should steer you back to your long-term manual exposure skills.

 

[peterm1]

Ko Fe if you are having trouble nailing correct exposure with your ME perhaps try a technique I used when shooting my M3 when I had it.

Of course the M3 had no exposure meter but I got around this by taking with me on photo walks a hand held meter. But I did not meter every shot. I quickly found that all I had to do at the start of the photo walk was to meter any suitable subject once to assess ambient lighting then stick to that base exposure for the rest of the day. All camera meters are calibrated to an 18% grey - this being the amount of light reflected from an "average" photo. As it so happens a footpath or a road surface is not a bad approximation of an 18% grey so if you meter off a footpath or road surface as long as it is getting full sunlight, your future shots (taken in the same light) should be pretty well exposed - no need to worry about backlighting or anything of that sort. Just shoot away at that ISO/Shutter speed/Aperture value all day.

In your case you do not even have to use a hand held meter. Use your camera's meter having first set the ISO to whatever you plan to use that day. ie do not use auto ISO set it manually. If the resulting reading from an 18% grey surface like a road surface, is say 1/250th of a second at f8 and ISO 160 just use full manual settings on your camera and stick to that base exposure and forget about any further metering for individual shots (unless the lighting changes). But also remember, if you walk into a shaded area and wish to make a photo in the shade you will need to open the aperture up a stop or stop and a half (or make a corresponding adjustment to shutter speed) and when you walk back into full sunlight set your camera back to its base setting that you planned to use that day. Experience will quickly tell you how much you need to compensate when you go from sun into shade in your part of the world and depending on other ambient conditions etc. It is much easier than perhaps it sounds - unless ambient lighting changes there is usually little difference between exposures shot to shot.

I have in the past taken literally hundreds of photos this way with good results and found it enjoyable and liberating as I could then basically stop worrying about exposure for every shot and instead concentrate on correct focusing and composition. This "trick" worked best with print film due its exposure latitude but worked less well with CCD sensors like that of the M8. But it should work very well with an ME which I believe has a CMOS sensor and of course these have better exposure latitude than CCD. Having said that I would still counsel shooting in RAW plus JPG. If you are happy with the JPG image's exposure - use that with no editing. If not happy make your edits on the RAW copy to take advantage of the RAW file's better latitude.

if you are not happy with this then perhaps Leica M is not for you and you need an all singing all dancing Canon or Nikon or whatever.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Thank you, Peter. This is how I use M4-2 for some years now.
But film has superior exposure latitude to digital. And the whole idea of digital to me is for convenience. No developing and no switching to light and shadow manually.

To sum up, I have two issues with M-E.
Inaccurate metering if bright and dark parts of the scene are present, plus odd metering with wide lenses.
Colors (sometimes) which are not something I like.

Solution for exposures seems to be with narrower lenses (to be closer to spot metering of M-E). Nokton 40 1.2 seems to be good for it and for limited M-E high ISO range.
Also update it to M240 (which we discussed in another thread I have opened earlier on).

Solution for not so cool colors I'm getting with M-E from time to time is to just take it as is or convert it to BW 🙂.

BWT, it is M9, original M-E sub forum. I have M-E original, type 220. 🙂

 

[shawn]

The M240's meter (in classic metering mode) would be fooled the same way as your M9. Just like every other center weighted meter out there. Lock exposure with less sky and you will be fine.

Shawn

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Thank you, Shawn. It is just like with Bessa R series cameras, it seems. Took me a while to understand while metering was very different within same frame 🙂.
I'm still going to be fooled by it on the street, if I'll forget to pre-meter.

If I switch to LV or use EVF with 240, is metering better?

 

[Henry]

I haven't used the matrix-style metering on the 240 much, partially because of the slight lag and battery drain associated with using LV frequently.

I do what a lot of people here have suggested, point the camera at the ground to fix the metering and then shoot my subject. It's annoying and my spouse makes fun of me for the "Leica head bob" when shooting, but it does work pretty well.

 

[Godfrey]

...
But film has superior exposure latitude to digital. And the whole idea of digital to me is for convenience. No developing and no switching to light and shadow manually.

To sum up, I have two issues with M-E.
Inaccurate metering if bright and dark parts of the scene are present, plus odd metering with wide lenses.
Colors (sometimes) which are not something I like.
...

What I read in the bolded above is two errors: a fallacy and a mistake in intent and understanding.

- Film does not have superior exposure latitude to digital, at least not in the simplistic way you've stated. Film capture is a chemical process, digital capture of images is a mathematical process that sits on top of the chemistry and physics of the underlying mechanicals. Even a relatively low end image processing chip today can respond to light levels that run well beyond the orthodox 10 zones of the Zone System, and all the magic happens in what the camera/image processing workflow does with the signal presented by that response.

- The mistake is to consider digital imaging as a "convenience". If you accept that dogma and believe in it, you immediately bar your thinking from all the good stuff you can do that you already do with film and have no access to the advantage and malleability of digital capture over film.

The solution to your problem is to revise your thinking. And that is possibly the hardest thing in the world to do: No one can do it for you, no magical pressing of buttons on a camera will make it happen. If you accept the notion that a digital sensor has a great deal of capability and that digital imaging is at least as viable and capable as any film can ever be, and the implied logic of that acceptance is that you need to learn how to extract that capability by learning how to expose and process using digital capture properly, then you will be successful in a larger sense than simply finding some workaround that gets the small effect that you want at the moment. Because then you will start to see that there is much more to be had if you choose to try for it.

G

 

[shawn]

Thank you, Shawn. It is just like with Bessa R series cameras, it seems. Took me a while to understand while metering was very different within same frame 🙂.
I'm still going to be fooled by it on the street, if I'll forget to pre-meter.

If I switch to LV or use EVF with 240, is metering better?

Just like it since they both are using a reflection off the shutter blades for metering.

On the M240 you actually don't have the use LV or EVF to use more advanced metering. The classic metering is the standard reflection off the shutter blades. There is an advanced metering mode where the camera keeps the shutter open (as in LV) and uses the sensor to meter directly, you can use the OVF with this mode too. It has a matrix metering mode when doing that but I honestly have almost never used it. Battery life drops and there is considerably more shutter lag as the camera has to shut the shutter and then fire it. It happens slower than on a mirrorless camera.

Either pre-meter, meter at the start on the ground and shoot manually or dial in a stop or two of exposure compensation.

Shawn

 

[airfrogusmc]

Ko I don't shoot in any auto modes. I usually meter before I get started and I do a test shot and check to make sure I am holding important highlights before I start. You can do it with an incident meter or with the reflective meter in camera. If I am shooting street I usually meter the bright side of the street then the shadow side and remember those two settings. Take a test shot on the bright side to make sure I am keeping the highlights and the shadow side for the same reason.

Shooting with an MM or any M Leica is in my opinion not much different than shooting with transparency film. Like with say Kodachrome 25 is you blow the highlights then they are gone. The film is clear with no information. Just make sure the important highlights are not going off the scale. With digital your test shot will show you that.

Ko as you know I have an M-E, MM, M 262 (same sensor as M 240) and M 10 and all of the DNGs files from all of the cameras I work on in post. I only shoot raw/DNG but to get the files to look like my files they all need a little sump'm. Just like the way I would process my negatives. You know the type of developer with the type of film I was shooting with, agitation, development times (controlling contrast) and then printing to get exactly the photograph I need. In fact my digital DNGs out of camera some would not like because I expose to print for the way I want my final images to look.

I would also argue most transparency films don't have better DR than many current digital cameras. Also to really get full advantage of B&W you need to shoot large format and learn the zone system. Most of the street shooters weren't worried about the zone system though. Winogrand, Eisenstadt and many others didn't even use a meter. In fact many street photographers pushed film (under exposing and over developing) which results in more contrast. That contrasty look is what many prefer in street candid work.

But there are many digital cameras today that have great DR if you expose properly. Knowing that Leica M digitals are like shooting transparencies and don't have a lot of room in the shoulder(highlights) is key in my opinion.With most M digitals the toe has a lot of info. If you were to plot it on a graph it would come up as more of the straight line than a toe curve (in other words not a lot of blocking up in the shadows. Kind of like t max 400 in Rodinal 1:50 or Tri-x 320 professional in HC 110 in what Adams called dilution C IIRC.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Thank you for finding time and providing very detailed comment!

I was using positive only film for years. Then I look at bright day, colorful scene taken with M-E, it reminds my positive film scans. Just same limited DR. Can't say I like it. Where are some indoors shoots taken with M9 in "M9 still alive thread" which fascinates me by tonal range.

But it is not something I'm into. I would like to use M-E instead of M4-2 before and after work. But it seems with M-E, just as with M4-2 I have to keep on measuring light or keep on thinking about it. Most tricky situation is now, with dim light to full light quick change coming at work and full light diminishing going on the streets after work. This is why I prefer daylight for DIY or Bessa R like measuring. One for shadow, one for light.
Now I don't have daylight photography opportunities as I had them before.
I'm more after P&S experience for now 🙂.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Hey Ko

Many times the meter is changing but the light isn't changing. Bright yellow reflects light differently than say deep red. If you are shooting on auto the exposure is going to change when it really shouldn't. Grays will be rendered as 18% if you rely on the meter. So that means if you are shooting auto dark gray will be exposed the same as light gray. White and black the same because the meter sees the world as med gray or zone V. Also the M-E would not be my choice of shooting in low light. If you preset exposure and focus then you are in a true point and shoot situation.

 

[Richard G]

Post 51: pure gold. It should be a sticky.

 

[jsrockit]

In fact many street photographers pushed film (under exposing and over developing) which results in more contrast. That contrasty look is what many prefer in street candid work.

I think the contrast was a by-product, but the real reason was to have that fast shutter speed to stop the camera shake when bringing your camera quickly to your eye to catch a fleeting moment.

 

[airfrogusmc]

I think the contrast was a by-product, but the real reason was to have that fast shutter speed to stop the camera shake when bringing your camera quickly to your eye to catch a fleeting moment.

Agree. I thought the reason was obvious. But the result is important because that is the look many still usually associate with street images.

The reason I really like digital for me, and the way I want my work to look is the ability to shoot at high ISO and still have really good DR instead of blocked shadows and not a lot of separation in the mid tones. And To be able to stop down and shoot at fast shutter speeds But thats me. Some really like that harsh contrasty look. For some it looks really good when done right.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Today is S16, no haze day. I was using M-E somewhat between S16 and Bessa R for metering. And I was also using custom WB.

I used Summicron 50 III. I'm satisfied with results. Not as easy to get as similar results with Olympus E-PL1 or Canon, but better resolution, clearness is present.
M-E seems to be kind of no AE, better to use custom WB camera.



Today, inside. Have no idea why M-E was doing it in auto WB:

 

[airfrogusmc]

But you can adjust the color balance when converting from raw/dng to whatever you save as. Last looks a little cyan on monitor but an easy fix as the contrast can be.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

M-E is only camera I have used so far which troughs WB all over within same light, place. Even M8 was better. Maybe it needs IR cut filter as well?

 

[Henry]

M9 WB was always garbage. The 240 is loads better in that regard.

The m9 bad auto WB is a big part of why I just started shooting at 5600k all the time. I can change it in post if I want, and otherwise I sort of treat it like my version of film simulation: a shortcut to a look I like.