Must one use an IR filter and coded lenses on the M8?

[Tuolumne]

We've seen the thread on whether one must shoot the M8 in RAW mode. Well, who cares. It costs nothing to do so. BUT...must one use coded lenses and an IR filter on the M8? That costs lots of money and is very inconvenient to boot if you have to get existing lenses coded. Well, do people here go full bore with those two options or not? If not, do your results really suffer? Thanks!

/T

 

[Gid]

I don't have any coded lenses. 35mm and longer it isn't really necessary from a vignetting point of view and the coding just gets you lens data in the exif. I occasionally use my 21 on the M8 and haven't noticed any problems and such that may exist on wide lenses using an IR cut filter can be fixed pretty well by "cornerfix". If you want accurate colours then IR cut filters are a necessity although you can reduce the "magenta" problem in post processing - Jamie Roberts made some M8 profiles to counteract this issue before the IR cut filters were readily available. If you only shoot B&W then filters are unnecessary.

 

[rardinger]

Nothing is manditory.

Your results will be different with coded lenses and IR filters.

The magenta/black rendition without the filters is very real and may be an issue for you. The IR filters are blue and in the corners of the image that blueness can be seen with some lenses and the coding tells the camera to add lens specific information the image processor (camera or computer) will need to correct for that.

Obviously if the IR filters are not used the lens coding is less of an issue (I think it still adjusts the file information for light falloff). If your output is likely to be a converted B&W image then the IR filter itself is not as important.

I used my M8 initially with an uncoded 35mm lens. In "real world" images I am not seeing too much difference from the early images verses the ones I am making now after the lens was coded. (I can easily see the differences if I set up test shots).

 

[Roger Hicks]

In "real world" images I am not seeing too much difference from the early images verses the ones I am making now after the lens was coded. (I can easily see the differences if I set up test shots).

This, I am sure, goes to the heart of the matter. I have used the M8 with around 30 lenses, coded and uncoded. Like you, in the real world apart from the black fabric/IR issue, it seldom matters which lens I use. Again like you, I can set up test shots that show the differences, but they rarely matter in real pics.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Ben Z]

After many months of useing my M8:

- Without IR-cut filters, many things come out with weird colors all the time, not just "synthetic black fabrics occasionally" as Leica claims. Green foliage outdoors comes out anywhere from pale yellow-green to orange-pink. Black items that come out magenta are too many to list. I could be stubborn and insist on not useing the filters but it would just make tons of work in post processing, involving "lasso-ing" the offending item(s) and applying corrections. Global color corrections cause other colors to go sour.

-With IR-cut filters, there is noticable greenish color cast in the corners with lenses from 35mm and wider, getting progressively worse the wider the lens. Cornerfix or Panotools can correct it very well in post processing, but it's time-consuming compared to the coding that does it automatically. I have all my lenses 35mm and wider coded, except the 12mm which has to use Cornerfix. I coded mine myself, permanently milling wells and filling them with auto touchup paint. With lenses longer than 35mm I haven't bothered to code them, however since I leave "Lens Recognition + UV/IR" on all the time, I had to fill a screw on my 50's with white paint so the code reader wouldn't mistake it for a 90.