@david-farkas
active 1 year, 4 months agoForum Replies Created
GMB;3828 wrote: Does anyone know when these two lenses will be available and, more importantly, have a link to a “test”. I thought they should have been delivered in November but may be wrong.
The two new lenses were/are slated to be released in December. With the Holidays coming up, I'm assuming that means early January.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miamierlingmm;3796 wrote: I contacted Leica Norway, and they advised me to try M, but could not give a detailed answer. But if you have one SF58 you can test if it fires in TTL mode? Mine does not.
This is correct. The SF 58 won't fire in TTL on the S2, only TTL-HSS.
Have you tried A mode yet? I'm not sure if each flash will self-meter, but it might be worth a shot.
In the past, when I've triggered the flash off-camera using a PocketWizard Flex I used the flash in M mode.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiLeica Guy;3765 wrote: What's the S2's longest exposure time with the current firmware update?
125 Seconds.
Set the shutter speed dial to B, then depress the thumb wheel. All the times will show on the screen.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miamistephan;3719 wrote: sorry to say that, but in my opinion this is the worst of both worlds (exept you have still some R-glas and didn't find another way to use them).
If I see some (limited) use using longer R-lenses on the M, I really doubt if this makes a sense for wide angle and zooms (again, the longer zooms may be an option).
The M is all about being compact.
Stephan,
For me, the beauty of the new M is that I can have the best of both worlds. Take everything off, put on a 35 Cron and you've got a classically compact and discreet M. Put on the grip, finder, and an R lens and you have what amounts to a DSLR. As I originally wrote in my M coverage from Photokina, the EVF is really, really good, especially when combined with focus peaking. The flexibility of being able to use R zooms, telephotos and macro on the M is really awesome. For walk-around photography, I think it'll be really handy to just carry the M with a 28-90 or 35-70 zoom. DSLR/zoom convenience with true Leica quality.
I agree that wide angles will see less use on M bodies. The latest M wide angle lenses (18, 21 SE, 21 Lux, 24 E, 24 Lux, 28 C, 35 FLE, etc) are just phenomenal lenses and very compact. I'd see very little reason to use a 19mm R over an 18mm M, unless you have a 19mm R collecting dust.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiMark,
I saw you over there chatting up the models, stealing shots by window light. Your results are pretty amazing given the brief amounts of time and light you were dealing with.
I have to echo what Jack said. Go and shoot more people in studio! With some decent lighting, you'll find it'll be easier to focus on posing and composition than fighting slow shutter speeds and limited DOF.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiRoger;3709 wrote: David
I separate the work flow issues from the display . My focus is on the display as my work flow can be adjusted to a desktop environment with a large screen that displays near 100% RGB etc .
The retina display is how photographers will view my work . As I understand it the retina displays use 4 individual sites for every pixel displayed (I may be off in my understanding of the technology ) . The quality and depth in the images has nothing to do with the maximum pixels displayed . The NEC display has far more pixels than the MacBook retina and doesn t hold a candle to the amount of detail or the impression of a quality image .
Please read diglloyds description and view the NYT on a iPad thru the iPad application …this is far more effective than my rambling . If you are viewing something on a retina that wasn t designed for it ..you aren t seeing the retina display potential . Diglloyd has before and afters on his free blog . Toggle back and forth .
Roger,
I don't disagree with you that images optimized for a Retina display look fantastic on a Retina display. No argument there.
But….. again, as a content creator, I have some reservations:
1) What do you do with all the backlog of content that is optimized to 1:1 pixel screens? Redo all of it? Some online magazines, blogs, etc. go back ten years or more.
2) What do you do when the content management system doesn't support such 4x downscaling in HTML? Perhaps the software designers could add an option for Retina scaling automatically, but it would require major upgrades (which are an enormous pain with custom CSS and templates which are very common).
3) Should you quadruple the bandwidth requirements and load times for everyone, even those not using a Retina display? Again, in my own articles I use A LOT of images. If I were to optimize them for Retina display, even users on DSL would have load times measured in minutes per article. This is a fundamental Internet no-no.
4) Retina-optimized images don't always look great on non-Retina displays. With most users in the non-Retina category, why make most of your users suffer?
All of these issues are specific to Retina technology. With the new push to full 1080 screen resolution in 10″ tablets and 13″ ultrabooks in the Windows 8 universe, which represents 90% of all laptop users, is it pragmatic to cater to a relatively small sub-segment of users? The increased screen resolution of these 1:1 non-scaling (non-Retina) displays sort of makes the sharper images a moot point, does it not? I viewed some images from Red Dot Forum on one of the new 13″ 1080 IPS displays and it looks phenomenal with the increased pixel density and no scaling.
Please don't interpret my arguments here as anti-Apple. I own several Apple devices – 3 iPads, a 27″ iMac, a 15″ MBP (pre-Retina) – and probably would have gotten the rMBP if it had a regular hi-res anti-glare screen.
I checked out Digilloyd's comments on Retina-optimized images (http://diglloyd.com/retinapref.html) and his concerns echo my own.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiYes, the lenses exist and sync perfectly at 1/1000th. They haven't started shipping yet, but are expected to by December.
We are still trying to determine how Leica will carry out the upgrade program given the delays. I'm sorry we haven't been able to get a definitive answer yet.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiNice stuff Mark! I feel like I've seen these before…. 😉
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiRoger;3705 wrote: David
While I understand the issue ….the results I have seen on any retina aware application are nothing short of amazing and frankly blow away the NEC display . (for rendering of fine detail ..but I get the RGB issue ).
I have the NEC display you speak of ,the new MBP retina and the iPad retina . Each requires a different file specification to be optimized . I have always been surprised by the lack of attention to output for the web . We capture using the best equipment ,process with great attention to detail and then push out 600×400 files for display ? The NYT application for the iPad is optimized and if you go back to the Olympics ..you can find images that exceed anything I ve seen on a screen .
Go to diglloyd s website and see his display of test images . You make a selection of what type of screen you are using . If nothing else you can see the difference in the result. He also has several articles on using the retina display and speaks to the issues you raise .
Some of the software is already Retina enabled ..Aperture ,DxO and Adobe is in process. But clearly most display software is not there yet and may never get there .
I think it will be a while before we will see Retina screens used for critical color managed work flows (I looked for this at the PhotoPlus Show ) ..so the NEC is here to stay . But for viewing web content I look at the iPad and the MBP retina as both the standard and the future .
Roger,
I was in NYC for PhotoPlus as well, and had a chance to go to the Microsoft Store in Times Square to check out the new Surface and some other Windows 8 devices on display. While the Surface RT has a 1366×768 display (more usable screen real estate than an iPad), the upcoming Surface Pro will have a 10.6″ 1920×1080 display, which will be a 1:1 pixel display. I'll be able to run Lightroom (hopefully) on it and have decent screen real estate. For me, this is far more useful than the Retina technology. I'm all for pixel density. I just want to actually use it for more productivity and be able to work on my images at 1:1, uninterpolated
At the store, they also had an Acer ultrabook. I'm not the biggest Acer fan, but this 2.9 lb laptop had a 13″ 1920×1080 IPS touchscreen, 6 hr battery life and a dual core i5 with 128GB SSD… for only $1200. The display looked gorgeous. For comparison, the new 13″ Retina MBP native usable screen real estate is just 1280×800. The 13″ MBA even has more display area at 1440×900. Personally, I'm just not sold on sacrificing pixel real estate for smoother text, or using non-integer interpolation to gain more screen area.
I think with the advent of third generation Intel chips and the big Windows 8 push, Apple is going to see some serious competition, both in the tablet and laptop space, as PC vendors roll out their offerings over the next few month, especially as hardware manufacturers standardize on 1080 IPS displays.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiAs a follow-up to this thread, I recently found myself in need of a new laptop. Mine had a little fall while traveling to Photokina and the lower left hand corner of my screen now has a very strong red cast. 🙁
So, I visited the Apple store upon my return home and played with a rMBP for a good hour plus. Unfortunately, my concerns over pixel scaling that I had when the new screen was announced proved to be deal breakers for me. Every review of the rMBP I've read usually starts out gushing about how awesome the Retina display is. No one (except Anand, who've I've referenced above) seems to even discuss the impact on photo rendering. Ironically, my main reason for not getting the rMBP was the screen. When I brought up Red Dot Forum in Safari (which is Retina-aware), all the graphics looked fuzzy and pixelated. The text looked sharp, sure, but I care about photos and images. Even the logo at the top of the screen looked terrible. I clicked on some 100% crops I'd done for the Monochrom article. Terrible. I mean, really terrible. And, these same images look crisp and beautiful on a 27″ NEC Spectraview.
I struggled to make it work. The best option I found was setting the scaling to 1920×1200, which worked fairly well if you didn't sit too close to the screen. Upon close inspection, the scaling artifacts were still there.
Other concerns were related to the lack of upgradability. You can't up the RAM or the SSD after the fact and if you want 16GB, Apple makes you pay for the 768GB SSD whether you want it or not. The last nail in the coffin (for me) was that the LCD, as beautiful as it is, only shows 72% Adobe RGB.
To get back to the screen for a second, there is a broader issue. As a content creator and webmaster, I have serious concerns with Apple's strategy. In order for graphics and images to look nice on the new Retina display, Apple recommends increasing the resolution of the files by 4x then using HTML code to display at 1x. Here's an example: Let's say I want to display an image that is 600×400 pixels on a web page. Apple is recommending that I upload a 1200×800 pixel image then use an HTML
tag to display it at 600×400. Not such a big deal, right? Wrong. First, I use database-driven content management software, which doesn't support this kind of functionality site-wide. I'd have to hand code everything, which isn't ideal and users who upload images in the forum wouldn't be able to access this functionality. Secondly, load times, storage requirements and bandwidth usage will all quadruple. Some of my articles have 50 images in them. The load time would be measured in minutes even on the fastest connections. This is unacceptable.
I don't think that the Retina display is going away anytime soon. I just hope that Apple comes up with a better way to scale graphics, or to expose the full pixel resolution for images.
If the MBP had a high-res 1920×1200 anti-glare IPS screen, I probably would have bought one. The design is gorgeous, it's fast, light and has great battery life. But…..
Sorry for the long rant. Just been on the brain for a while and I was curious if anyone else has noticed the pixel scaling issue.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiGiven Leica's drive to deliver the absolute best image quality through the entire imaging chain from lens to file, it is not surprising that they would go the extra kilometer to have the most advanced sensor on the market. They've really come a long way in the last few years, with almost all digital R&D being brought in-house.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiManilaman2001;3374 wrote: Well 4 months after i asked this questioned, got your replies, and now have sold the 3 R lenses, Leica comes out with the R to M adapter. :(:(:( Nothing lost, i got better and equivalent focal length glass for the M. I could have just kept them for the Canon bodies. 🙁
Sadly, no one knew when Leica would provide a solution to use R lenses or what that solution would ultimately look like. You can always buy some R lenses back…. 😉
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiGPLeica;3383 wrote: David,
Here's a basic question. How do you think the lens hood will function on the new zoom….is it really only functional for use at the 30mm focal length?
Geoffrey
Good question. Honestly, I don't know. The answer will have to wait until I get a chance to test the lens.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store MiamiThe S2 doesn't officially support SDXC cards. The new S camera will, so I assume this is something that can be updated via firmware, seeing as how both cameras have the same Maestro processor.
My suggestion would be to hold off using the new 64GB card until it is officially supported via firmware. It might work now, but I would be wary of losing images.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miamirmviet;3193 wrote: HI, David,
best report on the Leica M so far.
Why did they keep that big red dot on the front of the camera, the M9-P is soo elegant without it?… I regret the absence of the illuminating frame which ix part of the smart design of all Ms so far.
And they did not mind keeping the thickness of previous digital Ms. The MP and M7 are so much more pleasant to handle…
The R ring is a very good thing but there are other rings on the market for other makes and the M could become host to so many good lenses…
Keep up the good work…
RichardJust as a follow-up, I put both base plates (M and M-E) on top of each other. The M plate is maybe a mm thicker. Overall, when comparing cameras, the M is slightly thinner when measuring from the lens mount to the surface of the rear LCD.
David Farkas
Red Dot Forum
Leica Store Miami
