Questions and Comments

[TJV]

Kia Ora / Hello,

After a week with my M8 and months of reading news / rumours on this site I've finally registered to say my bit.

Firstly, up until six months ago I boldly stated that I wouldn't go digital for at least another few (read ten, maybe more...) years. I love shooting film and always will. My M7 is a beautiful tool, especially for street work, and I plan to one day give it to my grandchildren (I'm 26.) But times have changed. Here in New Zealand, the average wage is approx $8US and a roll of Astia costs $18 off the shelf. Processing E6 costs another $10 per roll. Add to that that there is only three labs in the country still developing with E6 chemicals and it's easy to see why I've splashed out on a digital body. Up until recently I shot almost exclusively B/W, HP5+ and developed everything myself at my studio. For my last book I found I spent just as much time at a computer scanning and correcting during pre-press than I did in the darkroom or out on the street with the camera. After printing 60 12x18" prints and a 2x3m wall print for a show, I'll die before spending any more time under dim yellow lights. Anyway, I'm over B/W. And I'm over talking about and fussing over trivial issues like film vs digital or b/w vs colour. If it's a good photos, It'll work. You can't pollish a turd.

Things I don't like about the M8 vs my M7/6/3:

The crappy slippery fake leather.
The less than sturdy frame line selector.
Battery life.
Noise (although not such an issue.)
The light metre isn't as convenient, owing I think to it being read over the length of the frame and only off the middle shutter blade.
Talking about it's faults / design tradeoffs is pointless because as far as everything goes, this is the best camera in existance for me and it takes ultra good photographs.

Some questions:

I've been using Camera Raw to convert my DNG's. I find it fits best with my workflow and gives me the results I want as I'm most familiar with its controls. But I've noticed that after opening them and converting them to TIFFs, the size of the original 10.8meg DNG shrinks to approx 7mb. Anyone know why this might be and if it's compressing / degrading the "neg"? I can't seem to find any options regarding compression etc in the programme itself. Any ideas?

What is the part number of the B+W IR/UV cut filter e39? B&H need it as they don't seem to know what I'm asking for.

How is eveyone finding the exposure going off the internal light meter? I've read somewhere that it's a little off and I should set to under expose by a third of a stop. Is this correct?

Is anyone using a 1.25x magnifier on their M8? Is the 28mm frameline easy to see when using it?

All your help and comments are appreciated.

Here's a shot from today.

Cheers,

Tim

 

[jaapv]

I don't know the exact B&W number, but the filter type is 486
The Heliopan order number is glass 8025 and mount 1039

Yes I use the magnifier and I can see the 28 framelines perfectly, although I have to wiggle my eye slightly.

On the RAW cobnverter, I'm perfectly happy with C1LE and Jamie Roberts' profiles installed. I would hazard that the workflow is not much different from Camera RAW.

 

[MP Guy]

I am still using camera raw since it is integrated into PS. Maybe I just need a pointer or 2 for using C1.

 

[jaapv]

C1 I found totally intuitive and easy to use, but that is just me; on the other hand there are plenty of supposedly simple programs I still struggle with. I've only just mastered the basics of MSWord, the finer points I leave to my secretary....🙁

 

[Jim Watts]

Kia Ora /

Some questions:

I've been using Camera Raw to convert my DNG's. I find it fits best with my workflow and gives me the results I want as I'm most familiar with its controls. But I've noticed that after opening them and converting them to TIFFs, the size of the original 10.8meg DNG shrinks to approx 7mb. Anyone know why this might be and if it's compressing / degrading the "neg"? I can't seem to find any options regarding compression etc in the programme itself. Any ideas?


All your help and comments are appreciated.

Here's a shot from today.

Cheers,

Tim

Are you saving as a Tiff with LZW compression? You only see the option (second screen) when saving from within Photoshop. This will reduce the file size, but is lossless so has no harm. Camera Raw adds a sidecar file to the DNG (with your default or or adjusted raw settings). When saved as a Tiff this is discarded so even without LZW compression the file can be smaller than the DNG. Again no effect on quality.

 

[TJV]

The actual size of the DNG, not the final TIFF, shrinks. It's rather disturbing to me because I can't figure out why or how a "raw" file could shrink and if it's killing detail present in the original file.

 

[Jim Watts]

The actual size of the DNG, not the final TIFF, shrinks. It's rather disturbing to me because I can't figure out why or how a "raw" file could shrink and if it's killing detail present in the original file.

Sorry I misread your earlier post.
What I think maybe happening, but I can't be sure as I don't have the M8 (YET😉 ), is that the Leica version of DNG is converted to the standard Adobe version of DNG (probably with some lossless compression) when saving your Tiff.

If I take an .erf file (raw), from my R-D1, into Camera Raw it starts as off as an a 9.52mb (raw .erf file). If I save it as a Tiff the Tiff file size then = 17.23mb and the original .erf stays at 9.52mb.

If I save as a DNG the resulting DNG (still raw) file is only 5.42mb, much smaller than the original .erf. at 9.52mb. If I now take this DNG (of 5.42mb) and save it as a Tiff the file size of the Tiff = 17.23mb, the same as straight from the .erf. This reassures me that there is no loss, just more effiecient (lossless) compression with Adobe DNG compared to ERF.

I assume this would be true for the Adobe DNG compared to the Leica M8 version DNG. I am not sure why it does it automatically and does not give you the option of keeping it in the original Leica DNG version though, unless this is a hidden option somewhere.

 

[jaapv]

I save my DNG files in a folder which I only read them and on a CD; all saving goes in other folders. I think it is rather risky to "save and replace" Too much chance of error. The CD's I keep in another place as well.