New to M 240, focus/blur problems

[Manuel Patino]

I've been shooting with my new (to me) M 240 using a variety of lenses. I've used a 50mm Planar, CV 40f1.4, CV 25f4 and a few shots with an OM 24f2.8 and a Canon FD 100f2.8, I am finding it difficult to get properly focused shots or perhaps /also camera blur..

The sharpest shots I've gotten so far were with the FD100 and with the CV25f4.. I think that my problems arise from my technique. I've become spoiled by the M43 Olympus cameras with the A/F and IBIS and I'm having trouble shooting as I would like with the RF cameras.

I would appreciate any tips on how to shoot to minimize blur and how to focus with a greater degree of success.. Perhaps there are some courses or some training available? Your input will be welcome.

 

[xavoy]

Forgive me if these are too obvious but:

- use a faster shutter speed (using larger apertures to correct exposure)
- exhale, and hold your breath as you release the shutter
- make sure you're just moving your finger and not your whole hand
- hold the camera firmly against your eye when you release the shutter
- don't walk and shoot, stop completely before releasing the shutter, and make sure you're steady
- lean against a door frame or wall if using slower shutter speeds
- or rest your elbows on a table or chair arm if you're sitting down
- longer lenses will be harder to steady than shorter ones, and harder to focus too. Use faster shutter speeds to compensate and if possible smaller apertures (and faster film, or more light, to correct exposure)
- if all else fails, use a flash. If the flash is your main light source on your subject, it will effectively become your shutter speed.

 

[xavoy]

And for focus: (likewise, apologies if this is too obvious)

- focusing on high contrast areas will be far, far easier than low contrast areas.
- if you are recomposing after focusing, consider how the shift might effect focus on your subject.
- I personally find it much harder to focus in portrait orientation, so I get rough focus in landscape then rotate the camera and adjust if necessary.
- compensate for subject movement (ie, is it moving towards or away from you) by prefocusing and wait until the subject hits your focus point (rather than playing catchup by doing it the other way around)
- I find focus tabs help a lot!
- the smaller the aperture (check the barrel of your lenses, that's what all those marks are suggesting), the easier it will be to achieve acceptable focus, but you will have to compensate by using a higher iso, or a slower shutter speed. Slow shutter speeds can mean camera shake, and higher iso can mean more digital noise and therefor less apparent sharpness.

Final note, if you're viewing your images at 100%, you might be judging too harshly. View them as large as you're likely to print or view and no larger. 24 megapixels or whatever the m240 is is a huge image, and looking at your images at 100% on your monitor is kind of like pushing a large print up against your nose.

 

[Pioneer]

I am not a great example but I hold the camera firmly against my face. Bring my elbows into my body to help steady them. Press the shutter button steadily with the ball of my finger, not the tip.

I have some old books on Leica and Contax rangefinders that give some great tips, some of which have already been listed above by xavoy.

Finally, if I shoot handheld without some form of stabilization below 1/125 with my 35mm or 50mm lenses I expect to get some blur. My 90 is rarely shot below 1/250 without stabilization.

Of course, if I only intend to show on the net, or print 4x6, then I can shoot at amazingly low shutter speeds. 😀

 

[neonart]

I found that owning an Oly EM5 spoiled me big time. I got used to shooting while walking, moving the camera, you name it. Very sloppy. Says a lot for the wonderful IS tech in the Oly bodies, but makes us lazy and less careful.

After the EM5 all my bodies have had no IS, so I've had to force myself to slow down and think of the shot. This has reduced the number of shots I take, but increased the number of shots I keep.

Try doing some fair weather tests. Make sure that there's nothing really wrong. If you can get sharp shots at 1/500 or 1/1000 and you can accurately focus most your RF lenses, then it's a technique thing.

 

[Huss]

You first need to figure out if it is a focus issue, or a camera shake issue.

Put the camera on a tripod, and focus on a target. Take a shot at the shutter speeds that you were using. If the images are sharp, then your focus is ok, and so it must be a camera shake issue.
If your photos are not sharp, then it is a focus issue and the rangefinder may need adjusting on the camera.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Crank up the ISO, stop down, faster shutter speeds and use the DoF scales on the lens.

 

[peterm1]

The fundamental question for me is that of whether you are focusing using the rangefinder or the electronic finder / LCD. I suspect the former from your comments. Focusing using the RF can be somewhat tricky. Especially if your eyes are not up to it. Do you normally wear eye glasses? If so you may need to buy a viewfinder diopter adjustment lens to correct your vision when using the viewfinder. I cut my teeth on film Ms but put them aside for some years before coming back to a leica digital M, an M8 in my case. I struggled. My eyes had deteriorated and also the M8 (not sure about the M240) only has a viewfinder magnification of 0.68. This makes for a small image that can make it difficult to see details and is considerably harder to focus. It also reduces the effective baseline length of the rangefinder which affects focusing accuracy. Hence more focusing issues with shots. People do not discuss this issue much but this is the first thing I noticed when I got my digital M as the tiny image by comparison with my old M3 means that digital M's have nowhere near the much praised finder of the older cameras. Leica Ms are beautiful cameras but can be an absolute P.I.T.A. till you have worked out how to use them well.

 

[lukitas]

The rule used to be one over the focal length as the minimum shutter speed to use.
So one would shoot at at least at 1/60th with a 50 mm lens, 1/125th with a 90 mm.
I try to shoot at double that speed. Not sure I can keep my camera steady enough at 1/60th, had too many slightly blurred negatives.
There are two sides to this issue : subject movement and camera movement. Camera movement can be minimised using the aforementioned rule, subject movement is another kettle of fish.
At 1/60th, a person walking briskly across your frame will be quite blurry, especially the legs.
Also, I suspect Tri-X is a lot more forgiving than the M sensor.

cheers

 

[segedi]

Could you post a couple of shots?
Once you get the hang of it, rangefinder focusing is quite nice. I like it better than manually focusing SLRs.

 

[airfrogusmc]

Could you post a couple of shots?
Once you get the hang of it, rangefinder focusing is quite nice. I like it better than manually focusing SLRs.

I agree...

 

[Pioneer]

I like rangefinder focusing, but I don't find it any better or worse than focusing my SLRs. It really depends on what you are used to working with. I prefer manual focus on both types of cameras, and I am a moderately young man 🙂D) who wears glasses.

Trying to manually focus a lens on a digital SLR is already a losing cause to start with. The viewfinders were not designed for manual focus. But using an older film SLR is actually quite easy.

 

[Manuel Patino]

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful replies. I think my issues are a mix of all the subjects discussed. Firstly, the (relatively) fast, Pro grade glass I have for the M43 bodies and the IBIS, make for some astonishingly sharp and beautiful images even when shot hand held at 1/2 second or even slower... Obviously, this is not possible with the Leica M system.

After that, I think my technique is not good enough for slow shutter speeds. Even faster shutter speeds suffer when I move the camera. The focus Issues appear to be more of a technique problem than a hardware problem. I have gotten some decent shots when using the sunlight or even daylight shrouded in heavy clouds. So I definitely need to pay attention at what I am doing and remember that I don't have the crutch of the IBIS and A/F..

Here are a couple of shots taken from the car while briefly stopped.

 

[Manuel Patino]

Of course, under low light, my best efforts are not as good... As someone in another thread said, my biggest task is going to be "managing expectations" 😉

 

[Scheelings]

This looks purely like a shutter speed issue and not a focusing issue (because the backgrounds in your photos are not blurred). This also suggests that the lens can be opened up - but I'm not sure how wide the FOV is...

Are you shooting in Aperture priority mode? Because I suspect the camera is forcing the shutter speed to a speed too low. Once again - maximum aperture under these conditions - although then you may have to choose between multiple subjects.

 

[Ronald M]

An archaic tool loved by only a few, Leica M. My Nikons get more use.

I have read a review that the RF is better focus finder, then switch to live view for composition.

Your eyesight must accommodate to the RF, either from glasses,diopter or naturally.

Lenses must be set up to focus properly. old lenses like the 40 are suspect. Do a focus bracket. Zeiss has stated their lenses are not set for digital, they are for film which is slightly different.

 

[ssmc]

The M240 has almost a third more pixels along the long axis so it's going to be a bit less tolerant of shake/blur than a (say) 16MP 4/3 sensor. Also, the apparent depth of field of a 135-format camera is going to be about half that of 4/3 for a given field of view. If you're viewing at 100% then it'll look even less (more pixels = smaller CoC). Given that you may have to open up more to compensate for the lack of IBIS you may well end up having to live with a shallow DOF look to your pics that is going to be different to what you're used to.

Having said that... a few observations from your sample pics:

- the girl crossing the road pic is sharp, just not where you wanted it to be; she is blurry because she's in motion. IS won't help with this, and it's a difficult case for MF because she's moving away from you (especially being in a temporarily stopped vehicle)

- as for the portraits, it's kind of hard to tell at this size but the blurring looks quite directional; the first one appears mostly vertical (relative to the subject), while the second is mostly horizontal, but in both cases it looks like there is a lot more movement at the top of the frame than the bottom. This is surely related to how you're holding the camera while in portrait orientation

- the dancers look like the lens was stopped down quite a bit (not much blur in the background but high ISO by the look of the noise); opening the lens up ought to get you a higher shutter speed in situations like this

- the restaurant/pub looks ok - subject movement is going to do you in in shots like this without flash or crazy-high ISO but again it looks like the lens is stopped down (sunstars & pretty deep DOF). Again I would recommend opening up a bit, and maybe bracing the camera more effectively.

The fact that you're getting the best results from an FD-mount tele, that you have to focus through the monitor (or EVF, so more like manually focusing a 4/3 body) and a 25mm f/4 (short FL + small aperture = lots of DOF)sugests that there is still some getting used to the traditional optical RF, though.

HTH,
Scott

 

[Rob-F]

I like the one of the girl crossing the street. Her left foot is completely off the ground, and the right foot is only touching at the toe-tip, not enough to support her. She's basically airborne! So she must be running, and that would explain the unsharpness--which is really minimal by the way--she must have been running!

I think the plane of focus looks like it's on the Fedex truck.

 

[willie_901]

A simple check would be to take a few photos using a tripod.

When you see sharp, well-focused results doing this, you will know the issue has most likely due to camera shake and, or errors caused by shallow DOF.

 

[Manuel Patino]

The M240 has almost a third more pixels along the long axis so it's going to be a bit less tolerant of shake/blur than a (say) 16MP 4/3 sensor. Also, the apparent depth of field of a 135-format camera is going to be about half that of 4/3 for a given field of view. If you're viewing at 100% then it'll look even less (more pixels = smaller CoC). Given that you may have to open up more to compensate for the lack of IBIS you may well end up having to live with a shallow DOF look to your pics that is going to be different to what you're used to.

Having said that... a few observations from your sample pics:

- the girl crossing the road pic is sharp, just not where you wanted it to be; she is blurry because she's in motion. IS won't help with this, and it's a difficult case for MF because she's moving away from you (especially being in a temporarily stopped vehicle)

- as for the portraits, it's kind of hard to tell at this size but the blurring looks quite directional; the first one appears mostly vertical (relative to the subject), while the second is mostly horizontal, but in both cases it looks like there is a lot more movement at the top of the frame than the bottom. This is surely related to how you're holding the camera while in portrait orientation

- the dancers look like the lens was stopped down quite a bit (not much blur in the background but high ISO by the look of the noise); opening the lens up ought to get you a higher shutter speed in situations like this

- the restaurant/pub looks ok - subject movement is going to do you in in shots like this without flash or crazy-high ISO but again it looks like the lens is stopped down (sunstars & pretty deep DOF). Again I would recommend opening up a bit, and maybe bracing the camera more effectively.

The fact that you're getting the best results from an FD-mount tele, that you have to focus through the monitor (or EVF, so more like manually focusing a 4/3 body) and a 25mm f/4 (short FL + small aperture = lots of DOF)sugests that there is still some getting used to the traditional optical RF, though.

HTH,
Scott

I like the one of the girl crossing the street. Her left foot is completely off the ground, and the right foot is only touching at the toe-tip, not enough to support her. She's basically airborne! So she must be running, and that would explain the unsharpness--which is really minimal by the way--she must have been running!

I think the plane of focus looks like it's on the Fedex truck.

A simple check would be to take a few photos using a tripod.

When you see sharp, well-focused results doing this, you will know the issue has most likely due to camera shake and, or errors caused by shallow DOF.

Thanks for the input. I am happier with the results I'm getting as I become more familiar with the camera. The shots out of the car were actually quite good IMHO. The girl started to run just as I had acquired focus!

I did some test shots with the camera on a flat steady surface. Cant use my tripods with the RRS bracket yet 😉, and I was too lazy to change the bottom plate and mount the adapters required. Anyway, the photos are pretty sharp and I think the focusing is not a mechanical problem, at least with the lenses I tried.

I tried playing a bit with aperture settings and manual shutter speeds, as well as trying hard not to move the camera... I think my efforts with shooting in low light have gotten much better.. Here are some shots taken at the Christmas eve gathering. Low light and quite active subjects 😀