Tag: Leica

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Southwold Pier

Southwold Pier with Caroline & Timmy

So here we are having fun on the end of Southwold Pier.  In the end I packed very light.  Two Leica bodies, an M4 and a M8, and two lens, an Elmar 24mm and a Summilux 50mm together with spare memory cards, two spare rolls of Kodak Tri-X and the iPad.

The above shot was taken with the M8 and the 24mm.  All processed in Lightroom Mobile on the iPad.  The colour looks a little odd as I used different contrast curves for the red and blue channel plus a little desaturation.  An interesting look I hope you agree.

So far most of my photography today has been with the M4, the light was overcast and constant which made using an old camera without a built in meter very easy.

 

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Post Processing for Print

Lightroom processing for print

With all the adjustments available to us in modern software I decided to do an experiment with the above photo.

First I did a very minimal development.  No lens correction, no noise correction, some sharpening and a slight adjustment for blown highlights and deep shadow, hardly surprising with the high contrast subject matter.

Then a tweak of extra clarity (+15 from what ever I set for the screen), then off to soft proof and print.

Lightroom processing for print-2

The second version was much more aggressive, full lens and perspective correction, heavy noise reduction and then a little slight grain added to make the noise reduction look more natural.  A touch more sharpening then off to soft proof, again extra clarity for the print.

I now had two prints but which was best.  Well time to ask a few people what they thought.

I’ll let you know the results tomorrow.

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Leica M-D Released

Leica M-D

Today Leica took the brave (or some would say foolish) step of releasing a Leica Digital M with no rear screen.  This is a mainstream model and not a special edition.

Like I said when the rumours started to appear, I like the concept.  For my personal work that involves wandering around the streets of Lincoln, shooting street, it would be a fun and simple camera, just concentrating on the important things.  With this type of photography you generally only get one chance of capturing the moment anyway so not being able to chimp at the screen is not an issue.

The problem is it could not be my main Leica rangefinder.  As I use the rangefinder for portrait work and need to get the image right, checking the histogram is important to me.  With Leica M’s being the price they are I can only really afford one digital M, so its hard to justify this one.

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Leica 35mm Summilux T Lens

This lens designed for the Leica T has a field of view of about 50mm.  As reviews start to appear it’s made quite a impact.

The T lens do produce great results but many users were upset that Leica had software correction to improve the results and to over come some issues.

Leica built quite a reputation with their M and R lens. Back when we shot film post lens correction was not possible.  Film was more forgiving and people forget that with digital sensors some type of correction is generally required.

So no matter what lens you use there will be some correction going on.

For those who do not like software correction then possibly manufacturers could put options  in their cameras to turn off and to control the strength. Even better go back to real RAW files without correction and have the correction controllable in your RAW processing software.