Sean's information from Leica on IR issues

[SteveRD1]

Ill still buy one

Ill still buy one

I had the original D2h which had the same problem. BUT i never saw it in my photos unless I was doing a test. It was not a big deal to me. I also PP every one of my digital images as this is how you get the very best results.

I shot with a 5D for a while and always used PP
I shot with a D200, they all needed PP
My E1, while needing the least, still needed PP

Every digital file needs PP to look their best. NO digital camera is perfect and this is a camera everyone begged Leica to make for years. Almost all early cameras have problems. I'll buy an M8, but not for a while as I am enjoying my M7 and MP, BUT if I needed one I wouldnt hesistate to buy one now as I know the camera is capable of amazing quality.

Shoot raw, and adjust. Yes, its a $4795 camera BUT when I 1st bought the original Canon 1ds it was $7995 and had horrible high ISO performance, very muted color, and the AWB was so so and the camera was a BEAST. Every shot had to be adjusted in PS to look their best.

http://www.stevem7.zenfolio.com

 

[ampguy]

Hi Steve

Hi Steve

Possibly you're buying the wrong cameras, but I buy digital cameras that when used properly give great results without pp. Heck, I don't even own photoshop.

If the camera has a JPG mode, with white balance and iso settings, and is advertised and designed to support JPG out of the camera photos, it should do it well without pp, imho.

I had the original D2h which had the same problem. BUT i never saw it in my photos unless I was doing a test. It was not a big deal to me. I also PP every one of my digital images as this is how you get the very best results.

I shot with a 5D for a while and always used PP
I shot with a D200, they all needed PP
My E1, while needing the least, still needed PP

Every digital file needs PP to look their best. NO digital camera is perfect and this is a camera everyone begged Leica to make for years. Almost all early cameras have problems. I'll buy an M8, but not for a while as I am enjoying my M7 and MP, BUT if I needed one I wouldnt hesistate to buy one now as I know the camera is capable of amazing quality.

Shoot raw, and adjust. Yes, its a $4795 camera BUT when I 1st bought the original Canon 1ds it was $7995 and had horrible high ISO performance, very muted color, and the AWB was so so and the camera was a BEAST. Every shot had to be adjusted in PS to look their best.

http://www.stevem7.zenfolio.com

 

[ywenz]

SteveRD1 you are clearly missing the point. If it was simply a WB issue, then the M8 can be a very viable solution. The IR issue means within the same image, some black surfaces will be magenta, and some will not. How can you compare this problem to any of the issues experienced by the aforementioned DSLRs?

 

[sreidvt]

It seems some people who were upset with him over the Ascender/Seal saga went over to FM and complained about his plugging his site - he got banned from FM. There's someone on the Leica forum at photo.net bashing him as well over not discussing the M8's flaws in his initial reviews. So now it seems he feels most welcome at the Leica User forum.

Actually Fred banned me because I publically questioned the way he enforced his rules, which is very inconsistent. Others questioned him as well and were either banned or warned by PM to close their mouths. My wife was banned as well. Fred deleted the thread where I questioned him....etc., etc. He banned Jorge too and he seems to ban anyone who challenges him. He then deletes their posts and rewrites history.

Dunno about Photo.net, don't spend much time there.

Sean

 

[sreidvt]

makes you wonder doesn't it? equipment manufactures and equipment reviewers make strange bed fellows. I guess we'll never know.

I'm not sure I understand your post. What are you suggesting exactly?

 

[ywenz]

I'm not sure I understand your post. What are you suggesting exactly?

Why none of the earlier reviewers saw the magenta blacks. It took no time for the actual owners to spot these issues.

I saw your review again since the story broke and I see magenta blacks in all your coloured pictures.

20/20 hindsight this is easy to spot, but does your review procedure skip over this part of the image analysis?

 

[sreidvt]

Why none of the earlier reviewers saw the magenta blacks. It took no time for the actual owners to spot these issues.

I saw your review again since the story broke and I see magenta blacks in all your coloured pictures.

20/20 hindsight this is easy to spot, but does your review procedure skip over this part of the image analysis?

Actually, there are not magenta blacks in several of the pictures, including the fruit series. Let me ask you a question, if that color cast was so obvious in those pictures, why did the several thousand people who read the article not notice them either? The fact is, the magenta cast was not at all obvious in the pictures I took but I wasn't doing product pictures with black velvet backgrounds, etc.. In hindsight, some of the jackets seen in the pictures might have a cast, one man's hat, etc. But it wasn't very obvious to me initially nor, apparently, was it very obvious to readers. It's easy for us now to look at those pictures and say "Aha, this seems to have cast, this doesn't, etc." because we're all looking for the artifact now. But when I photograph at an event with thousands of people, I don't remember what everyone was wearing. To evaluate the color I looked most closely at the fruit series (as discussed in the article). Fruit and vegetables, however, don't seem show much of the IR effect.

By the way, an alternate conspiracy theory suggests that I purposely published only pictures with no cast....hmmm...people's imaginations run wild.

Did Tom Abrahamsson mention a magenta cast in his review? Did Ed Schwartzreich or any number of other people who posted informal reviews on the web? Either we're all in a conspiracy together or it really wasn't that obvious.

Unless one shoots a certain kind of work, it isn't all that obvious until one goes looking for it.

BTW, you must have seen those magenta casts in my pictures the very first time you read that review. Why didn't you e-mail me? I mean, they're obvious...right? How could anyone have missed them. Those pictures were up long before this controversy began.

Food for thought.

Sean

 

[foxwhelp]

Probably because more people were using it in more situations once there were thousands out there than when there were dozens.

I've always been staggeringly unimpressed by the suggestion that reviewers review to order by the camera companies. I've no doubt it's true that many, many people take the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" approach (for lots of reasons, many or even most of which, have nothing to do with attempts to curry favor among camera companies). But the idea that people like Reid or Reichmann would say favorable things about a camera that they did not like just to curry favor with a manufacturer seems silly. I've seen lots of bad reviews. Lots of them -- bad reviews of just about every type of product under the sun and from most manufacturers. It's just an empirical reality that, notwithstanding all the alleged incentives to produce good reviews, people do produce bad ones. Which ought to lead you to question whether the analysis that suggests these incentives exist is really as solid as it may seem.

Reviewers -- all reviewers -- trade on reputation. People read their reviews because they've given good advice in the past. Camera companies work with reviewers because they know the reviewers have audiences. If reviewers give bad advice, those audiences will go away and the value of the reviewer to the manufacturer will as well.

Any company that believes in its product will happily cooperate with a reviewer who has an audience and a reputation for calling things as he sees them, good or bad. Any company that does not believe in its product will hide it from pretty much everyone but its own PR department until release time.

I find it not very hard at all to believe that the problems before release just weren't as apparent as they became after the relase. A few bad shots here and there and mostly people missed the significance of them. It happens -- that's why collective experience is, in the end, so very often more valuable than individual expertise.

 

[ywenz]

BTW, you must have seen those magenta casts in my pictures the very first time you read that review. Why didn't you e-mail me? I mean, they're obvious...right? How could anyone have missed them. Those pictures were up long before this controversy began.

I wasn't looking at the pictures with an objective eye because i had already read your review where you said the colors were accurate. Thus, I wasn't peeping around for any color artifacts. I'll learn from this experience and be more careful onward.

 

[KM-25]

I think it is time we stopped taking Sean's realy so serious.

I think it was a hasty mistake on Leica's part to have given Sean the reply they did. It did lots of damage and I am almost willing to bet someone's arse got chewed for it. It was just too half cocked, incomplete in areas like who would pay for this? Too many things were unanswered in that unofficial post.

Let's wait for an official answer...

 

[madmaxmedia]

I wasn't looking at the pictures with an objective eye because i had already read your review where you said the colors were accurate. Thus, I wasn't peeping around for any color artifacts. I'll learn from this experience and be more careful onward.

Yes, but Sean likely drew that conclusion AFTER doing his color tests with the fruit, which in most cases is probably a good test.

After that, he likely had the same frame of reference as someone reading his review (good color reproduction), and thus not really noticing any magenta cast in certain objects in his photos.

This IR flaw, while very obvious when it does show up, does not show up in many circumstances. So if someone does detailed testing under conditions in which the magenta cast does not manifest itself, they're not going to notice the problem and will thus draw certain conclusions about the camera's image quality. And thus are not going to look for a specific issue in other general shots (which may display the problem.) As you mention, now that we all know about the flaw, it is easy to pick out.

I would imagine that if he taken a shot of the pianist or the old lady in the LUG thread, he probably would have noticed. Or perhaps have totally forgotten that she really was wearing black.

EDIT- your post doesn't really say anything derogatory to Sean, just that you'll be more careful in the future which is obviously a good thing. So I guess I'm just making a general comment...

 

[ampguy]

Sean

Sean

No one has time, or even should be reporting bad web images unless the images are the actual raw or full-size JPEGs on a calibrated monitor. Did you provide those to your readers??

I am not into conspiracy theories, but it was a mistake for any reviewer, especially someone who sells his reviews, to not catch this.

re:

> Did Tom Abrahamsson mention a magenta cast in his review? Did Ed Schwartzreich or any number of other people who posted informal reviews on the web? Either we're all in a conspiracy together or it really wasn't that obvious.

Note to self: don't read reviews by these guys.

Actually, there are not magenta blacks in several of the pictures, including the fruit series. Let me ask you a question, if that color cast was so obvious in those pictures, why did the several thousand people who read the article not notice them either? The fact is, the magenta cast was not at all obvious in the pictures I took but I wasn't doing product pictures with black velvet backgrounds, etc.. In hindsight, some of the jackets seen in the pictures might have a cast, one man's hat, etc. But it wasn't very obvious to me initially nor, apparently, was it very obvious to readers. It's easy for us now to look at those pictures and say "Aha, this seems to have cast, this doesn't, etc." because we're all looking for the artifact now. But when I photograph at an event with thousands of people, I don't remember what everyone was wearing. To evaluate the color I looked most closely at the fruit series (as discussed in the article). Fruit and vegetables, however, don't seem show much of the IR effect.

By the way, an alternate conspiracy theory suggests that I purposely published only pictures with no cast....hmmm...people's imaginations run wild.

Did Tom Abrahamsson mention a magenta cast in his review? Did Ed Schwartzreich or any number of other people who posted informal reviews on the web? Either we're all in a conspiracy together or it really wasn't that obvious.

Unless one shoots a certain kind of work, it isn't all that obvious until one goes looking for it.

BTW, you must have seen those magenta casts in my pictures the very first time you read that review. Why didn't you e-mail me? I mean, they're obvious...right? How could anyone have missed them. Those pictures were up long before this controversy began.

Food for thought.

Sean

 

[Toby]

Sean's Review

Sean's Review

I think it's a bit unfair to overly criticise Sean for not noticing this problem. I've had my Eos 20d for six months and my Bessa R for 7 years. I'm still discovering new things about both. I know that reviewers have to stay on good terms with camera manufacturers to get pre release loan cameras, but I don't believe Sean would be under the same duress as a magazine that depends heavily on display advertising. In certain english magazines I saw film vs. digital articles in the very early days of digital where reviewers were saying 3mp cameras equalled the quality of 100 iso slide film. They then showed badly PS'd images that even in their own magazines showed the exact opposite. The point is these type of reviews are not a definitive scientific test. They're like the car review where the author says "You know, I know car X is faster but I like driving car Y so much more". Photographers often have an artistic sensiblity where the feel of a device is as important as the specs on paper. We don't have many "scientific" reviewers of cameras because that's not how most of us use cameras. Who regularly puts an M camera on a tripod? Not many I guess eventhough that is the only way to extract all the quality from an M lens. The magenta issue with the M8 is real but I've never tested a cameras ability to render blacks - it's never occured to me - I'm interested in sharpness, colour and general image quality, I guess I'm in the majority. It may be from now on every reviewer does a blacks test; but that's the benefit of hindsight. We can all be terribly clever now - but who even considered this problem in the endless " filters over the sensor are unnecessary and I don't know why Canon do it" threads. Shock horror Canon put filters over their sensors for a reason and not just to gratuitously ruin all the pictures that come out of their cameras. When Zeiss were designing their ZM lenses they had a eye on digital. Is this why their lenses are all of a larger, more retrofocal design, to allow space for the sensor filter they know they will need? Leica stated that it would be impossible to produce a decent digital RF camera ... until the arrival of the Epson RD-1. Now it looks like the M8 will unfortunately prove them right.

 

[PRJ]

I have to say that almost every review I have read is usually off base. I think that most reviewers do not have a clue as to the real world in photography. It does not surprise me that no one caught this glitch, but I wonder if it was caught by a real photographer during the beta testing. If it is indeed an infrared problem, then the cameras are going to have to go back to be fitted with an appropriate filter. Leica screwed the pooch big time on this one.

 

[sreidvt]

I think it is time we stopped taking Sean's realy so serious.

I think it was a hasty mistake on Leica's part to have given Sean the reply they did. It did lots of damage and I am almost willing to bet someone's arse got chewed for it. It was just too half cocked, incomplete in areas like who would pay for this? Too many things were unanswered in that unofficial post.

Let's wait for an official answer...

It wasn't hasty and it was official. You know, it would take me forever to reply to every insult, innuendo, ignorant comment, etc. and it's really a much better use of my time to stick to threads where people are really interested in constructively discussing photography, cameras and lenses. There will always be someone waiting to troll or bait....it's just not worth the time.

Sean

 

[aad]

Now, I will not likely buy an M8 anytime soon, but the note I read with all the information about IR issues says a firmware update will be released at the market launch, at the end of November.

So how come so many people have them already?

 

[Kim Coxon]

In the first post, Jorge asked Sean to post his details here or allow them to be reposted. Sean has agreed to this. If you wish to discuss the impact of those comments, please go ahead. However if the discussion continues about personalities rather than facts or views, it is time it was closed.

Kim

 

[Matthew Runkel]

I think KM-25 was just giving Leica the benefit of the doubt about what they told Sean, which does not seem like a well-considered statement or one that will stand up for long as the company's last word on the subject. As official statements go it is on par for absurdity with Merck announcing that because Vioxx is so effective it must henceforth be taken together with a new pill so that people don't have heart attacks in "certain applications" like exercising.

I don't understand how any firmware or software fix is possible for a problem like this. The sensor is providing wrong information to the camera, not across the board but according to what subjects are made out of. It seems to me this is fundamentally a "garbage in, garbage out" problem for which the only fix is to correct the faulty input device.

 

[ampguy]

the facts

the facts

The .5mm coating with microlenses over this new generation CCD sensor was designed to allow for control of vignetting with wide angle lenses, and eliminate purple fringing and astigmatistm, probably in conjunction with coded lenes and special firmware.

The increased sensitivity of IR allowed to pass through that thin filter coating will cause certain black textures to be rendered purple, and that can be fixed by an IR filter on the front of the lens.

There are reportedly advantages to having these filters on your lenses.

Everything is good, plus the M8 is going to be one awesome digicam for IR use.

I think KM-25 was just giving Leica the benefit of the doubt about what they told Sean, which does not seem like a well-considered statement or one that will stand up for long as the company's last word on the subject. As official statements go it is on par for absurdity with Merck announcing that because Vioxx is so effective it must henceforth be taken together with a new pill so that people don't have heart attacks in "certain applications" like exercising.

I don't understand how any firmware or software fix is possible for a problem like this. The sensor is providing wrong information to the camera, not across the board but according to what subjects are made out of. It seems to me this is fundamentally a "garbage in, garbage out" problem for which the only fix is to correct the faulty input device.

 

[willie_901]

I think it's a bit unfair to overly criticise Sean for not noticing this problem.

I respectfully disagree.

People paid money to read these reviews.

Some read for entertainment and enlightenment. They got their money's worth.

Others used the review(s) as some of their prior information about a very important (expensive) decision.

For some, spending $5K on a defective/inferior camera is no a big deal. But others may have sold perfectly fine gear to fund a M8 based (at least in part ) on these review(s). That gear is gone.


When a reviewer is paid, he or she is a professional reviewer. Professionals have more responsibilities than amateurs. One of those responsibilities is to look for well-known problems in previous digital cameras (banding, WB and IR sensitivity). For instance, Nikon had a banding disaster 13 months ago. A few product generations ago Nikon and others had IR problems with earlier DSLR models.

Decisions based on incomplete prior knowledge are more likely to result in regret than those that aren't.

We all make mistakes. The important thing is to acknowledge them, learn from them, and do better the next time. Sean has stated (here or on the LUG) something to the effect that he learned a very valuable lesson about testing digital cameras. A applaud him for admitting his mistake. I also admire his attitude and commitment to improve. At the same time, Sean's education as a reviewer was funded by his customers. What a great deal for Sean.

When Sean refunds some of the subscription income, then it will be unfair to criticize him.

willie

disclosure: I am not a subscriber