Robert White's Imprimatur

[Gabriel M.A.]

I'm with you! Don't buy Tri-X but desaturate!! Levels sliders of the world unite!!!😀 😀 😀

No room for the 257th tone, or beyond! Tri-X 😛pft: how quaint :angel:

 

[jaapv]

Would you keep a Porsche which is limited to max 80 mph due to new tire technology? Especialy when nobody told you so until the first owners blew a tire at 120?

I can except a couple of flawed circuit boards which are replaced, but a severe lack in image quality, and the magenta cast is one, is a bit too much.

If they'd comunicated that
a) due to compromises made in favour of edge to edge sharpness the camera may need an additional IR block filter
and
b) the camera may not work as expected with third party and uncoded Leica lenses

this would have been fair.

After all a lot of Leicas customers are used to digital cameras by now and have expectations which are met by other digital cameras.

That is reasonable, but I do not agree the magenta cast is a severe lack in image quality. To call it that will disqualify a number of other digital camera's and more specifically a number of high-level MF digital backs from being good photographic tools. I see it as an inherent quirk of digital photography, related to the choices made regarding edge contrast, dynamic range and filter type and thickness, especially in the rangefinder situation, which turnes out to be easily compensated for. But I agree, Leica completly misjudged the impact it would make on the Internet. In the real world the reaction is milder by several magnitudes.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Would you keep a Porsche which is limited to max 80 mph due to new tire technology? Especialy when nobody told you so until the first owners blew a tire at 120?

Porsche, another flawed product: you can't fit the whole family in there *and* grandma at the same time. I mean, come on! If I'm going to spend $50,000 I want to put all I can put in there just like I can put on that less expensive Chevy Suburban.

What do you mean I have to buy an extra whatchamathing to haul with my Porsche?!? I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars already!

 

[varjag]

They turned around at the whisper of "orthochromatic" and "panchromatic" from air control 😱

You can't get color with either. Sorry, they're still onto you 🙂

 

[Socke]

Porsche, another flawed product: you can't fit the whole family in there *and* grandma at the same time. I mean, come on! If I'm going to spend $50,000 I want to put all I can put in there just like I can put on that less expensive Chevy Suburban.

What do you mean I have to buy an extra whatchamathing to haul with my Porsche?!? I'm paying tens of thousands of dollars already!

IMHO totaly understandable with a 1.5 ton 4wd car 🙂

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

You can't get color with either.

That's why this uninformed (let's leave it at that) consumer says that B&W film is fundamentally flawed with its lack of color rendition 🙄

 

[varjag]

Gabriel, that's an excellent example of why you can't prove anything with an analogy. They're always flawed, and for every nice analogy you make I can find just as nice one but to the opposite point.

I could make a short break up of this particular one using propositional logic and show you exactly where the flaw is, but am not sure it would be worth my effort or your time. Difference in opinions is unavoidable as are discussions, let's just resort from trivializing each other's opinion to the point of ridicule. Peace 🙂

 

[ywenz]

That is reasonable, but I do not agree the magenta cast is a severe lack in image quality. To call it that will disqualify a number of other digital camera's and more specifically a number of high-level MF digital backs from being good photographic tools. I see it as an inherent quirk of digital photography, related to the choices made regarding edge contrast, dynamic range and filter type and thickness,

Wow japp, you're equating the magenta cast to be a property of digital photography as much as dynamic range is? I know you love your M8... but wow.. well, hey more the power to ya man!

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

Difference in opinions is unavoidable as are discussions, let's just resort from trivializing each other's opinion to the point of ridicule. Peace 🙂

Couldn't agree with you more. There are more legs to a cat than the eye can see.

Oh, darn. :angel:

 

[Harry Lime]

Therein lies the problem - you need another camera to make good on the M8's defficiencies.

No, you don't. You need to buy a $50 filter and maybe adjust the white balance in your RAW processor. Maybe get your lens encoded. You are talking like these are problems that can't be rectified, when in fact there are solutions readily available.

I gather from the photographer that the magenta cast is not readilly seen in ambient daylight and up until the event -early November- the issue was unknown to him. Anyway the filters are not yet available.

First off I'm surprised that this photographer would depend on a brand new, untried camera for a shoot. As a professional I would NEVER go on a non repeatable shoot with a camera that I was not familiar with or had tested. That's just plain foolish.

Second, you can buy B+W IR filters from many stores, today. Anyone who is aware of the IR problem and continues to shoot while waiting till February to get a free filter from Leica has only himself to blame.

But let me ask you this. Do you honestly believe there would have been any less furvor or hand wringging if Leica had told everyone upfront that they are going to need to use an IR filter and have their lenses encoded, because there is no other way to make the camera work? Not because Leica is a bunch of hacks or they didn't do their home work, but because it is physically impossible, unless they come up with a way to change the laws of physics?

I highly doubt so and the camera would have been DOA, because there is no way they would have been able to break through all of the noise on the internet.

HL

 

[Socke]

But let me ask you this. Do you honestly believe there would have been any less furvor or hand wringging if Leica had told everyone upfront that they are going to need to use an IR filter and have their lenses encoded, because there is no other way to make the camera work? Not because Leica is a bunch of hacks or they didn't do their home work, but because it is physically impossible, unless they come up with a way to change the laws of physics?

It would have been nice to those who use M bodies with non encodeable lenses now and expected to use those lenses on a digital M.

On the other hand, usualy I don't expect any company to advertise its products as what they are and try before I buy 🙂

In germany we have a proverb "Die Katze nicht im Sack kaufen" "Don't buy the cat in a bag"

 

[Rhodie]

Cat is well & truly out

Cat is well & truly out

Maybe you have cottoned on to the internal M8 marketing strategy.

However, thanks to this site & others, the cat is well and truly out of the bag and those who do a little online investigation can now make a reasonably informed choice on whether they can live with its "idiosyncrasies".😡

I look forward to further Leica evolution.

 

[rxmd]

Would you keep a Porsche which is limited to max 80 mph due to new tire technology? Especialy when nobody told you so until the first owners blew a tire at 120?

After Porsche offered to give me a set of free tires and a 30% discount on fuel? Certainly... and hooray to flawed analogies 😉

Philipp

 

[fgianni]

Not because Leica is a bunch of hacks or they didn't do their home work, but because it is physically impossible, unless they come up with a way to change the laws of physics?

Exactly with physical law stops them putting a slightly thicker IR filter in front of the sensor?

The R-D1 has its IR sensitivity well under control, maybe Leica shound ask Epson how they did manage to break the laws of physics? 😀

 

[mfunnell]

Exactly with physical law stops them putting a slightly thicker IR filter in front of the sensor?

The R-D1 has its IR sensitivity well under control, maybe Leica shound ask Epson how they did manage to break the laws of physics? 😀

They didn't - partly they side-stepped them with a smaller sensor which allowed them to use a thicker IR filter. Then they used a proportionally thicker filter (wrt sensor size) than the M8, thus trading more colour fringing for less magenta cast. And even then it has some purple blacks - just not blatant enough to draw a lot of attention.

Different trade-offs is all.

...Mike

 

[fgianni]

They didn't - partly they side-stepped them with a smaller sensor which allowed them to use a thicker IR filter. Then they used a proportionally thicker filter (wrt sensor size) than the M8, thus trading more colour fringing for less magenta cast. And even then it has some purple blacks - just not blatant enough to draw a lot of attention.

Different trade-offs is all.

...Mike

Actually a thicker filter reducing infrared sensitivity would have reduced purple fringing, since stray infrared light is one of the causes.

Still the main cause of purple fringing is optical aberrations (lateral whan you have a purple fringe on one edge and a green fringe on the other, or axial if you have a purple fringe on both sides of a bright object), and even from this point is difficult to believe that a thicker IR filter sensor side is going to upset the light path more than an additional glass to air surface, that is not part of the original design, stuck in front of the lens.

At the sensor level there is again the possibility of fringing caused by the microlenses, not by the IR filter.

I don't know the design rationale that led Leica to choose such a thin filter, but purple fringing has nothing to do with it.

 

[jaapv]

Wow japp, you're equating the magenta cast to be a property of digital photography as much as dynamic range is? I know you love your M8... but wow.. well, hey more the power to ya man!

Thanks!🙂 But it really is- all sensors are highly IR sensitive and the whole issue is indeed filtering - where and how much. Some choose a lot of filtering in front of the sensor, which you can get away with on a DSLR or a small sensor, albeit at the cost of some image quality. Leica chose differently - a larger sensor - better microcontrast, finer detail. Tradeoff, magenta blacks or a filter on the lens. Take your pick.

 

[jaapv]

Exactly with physical law stops them putting a slightly thicker IR filter in front of the sensor?

The R-D1 has its IR sensitivity well under control, maybe Leica shound ask Epson how they did manage to break the laws of physics? 😀

The laws of interference. IR filters, unless you choose thick absorption filters, which is undesirable for obvious reasons, are dichroitic interference filters.Those are senstive to incidence angle. On a RF (it alsways comes down to the same thing) a steep angle of incidence will lead to a blocking of visible red light, hence a cyan shift hence cyan vignetting. A sensor filter would change its vignetting according to focus distance, less so to focal length, as opposed to a filter in front of the lens. This makes a filter in front of the sensor very difficult to correct in software.

 

[fgianni]

A sensor filter would change its vignetting according to focus distance, less so to focal length, as opposed to a filter in front of the lens. This makes a filter in front of the sensor very difficult to correct in software.

I'd rather have consistent increased vignetting (easy to fix in software) than an umpredictable, unless you can judge with your naked eye the IR reflectivity of every dark object, response to black.
Expecially since the filtering is not that far off from being sufficient, so a 10-20%increase would have probably been enought, and the increase in vignetting barely noticeable.

Essentially what they have got is

Vignetting : Excellent
IR sensitivity: dreadful

A more sensible choice would be

Vignetting: good
IR Sensitivity : good

So yes it is a matter of compromise, but IMHO they made an umbalanced choice.

 

[fgianni]

BTW Jaap your is the first convincing explanation I have read that somehow justifies the reduced filtering of the hot mirror, thanks for taking the time to explain.