As a long time M-user and someone who recently posted how good the M9 works for me I am starting to get annoyed with slight focus problems.
This seems to turn into a neverending story and I am questiong somewhat if the rangefindermetering is really suited well for high resolution digital photography.
For example one ofmy most used lenses - the 50asph/1.4.
Backfocused on my M8 when I boght the lens new, sent it in and then it worked fine on the M8. When I got my M9 and had to send it in for a repair (together with the 50) I got it back and for some reason the 50 seems backfocus slightly specially at infinity. This is enough to make an image "not sharp".
So I send the M9 together with 5 lenses in another time , it comes back, looks fine at short to medium distance but stil not correct at long distance.
Then I buy a new 35/1.4asph, and it backfocuses slightly from everything longer than 1m distance.
My 75 Summarit however seems to work fine (even if I take into account the larger DOF I can see where the focus point is).
My 75Lux, which also had been calibrated by Leica also seemed to be very slightly off and I finally gave up and sold it. I am sure the lens was fine but I just couldnt focus it allsways 100% and I believe it might suffer very slightly from focus shift.(but focus shift is a different problem eliminated step by step by Leica with newer designs)
I have to mention here that I also struggeled with AFaccurancy from some cameras in the past. The Canon 7D, and also lately the K5 (I dont know yet how much is caused by lens problem and how much camera AF-system).
Slight focus errors do destroy each and avery advantage of a fast good lens IMO. A 200 Euro zoom focused propperly will lead to an sharper image than a slightly OOF 50/1.4asph.
Nikon works very fine here (in my experience), and the S2 also seems to work very accurate except maybe in certain special situations.
I think I will give it another try and send it all in another time. But its the first time I really having thoughts to eventually sell my Leica M stuff and stay just with S2, a DSLR and a X1 (or X100).
I am question the rangefinder system for high resolution digital photography with fast lenses. Also talked to Leica about this and they said they allready to a lot to calibrate lenses before they leave the company but that it is quite tricky to get everything perfect.
If I wouldnt like the sensor and the user interface and the lenses of the M-system so much I would have given up long time ago.
I am quite happy that at least the S2 seems to work for me quite well-specially for a MF camera.
This seems to turn into a neverending story and I am questiong somewhat if the rangefindermetering is really suited well for high resolution digital photography.
For example one ofmy most used lenses - the 50asph/1.4.
Backfocused on my M8 when I boght the lens new, sent it in and then it worked fine on the M8. When I got my M9 and had to send it in for a repair (together with the 50) I got it back and for some reason the 50 seems backfocus slightly specially at infinity. This is enough to make an image "not sharp".
So I send the M9 together with 5 lenses in another time , it comes back, looks fine at short to medium distance but stil not correct at long distance.
Then I buy a new 35/1.4asph, and it backfocuses slightly from everything longer than 1m distance.
My 75 Summarit however seems to work fine (even if I take into account the larger DOF I can see where the focus point is).
My 75Lux, which also had been calibrated by Leica also seemed to be very slightly off and I finally gave up and sold it. I am sure the lens was fine but I just couldnt focus it allsways 100% and I believe it might suffer very slightly from focus shift.(but focus shift is a different problem eliminated step by step by Leica with newer designs)
I have to mention here that I also struggeled with AFaccurancy from some cameras in the past. The Canon 7D, and also lately the K5 (I dont know yet how much is caused by lens problem and how much camera AF-system).
Slight focus errors do destroy each and avery advantage of a fast good lens IMO. A 200 Euro zoom focused propperly will lead to an sharper image than a slightly OOF 50/1.4asph.
Nikon works very fine here (in my experience), and the S2 also seems to work very accurate except maybe in certain special situations.
I think I will give it another try and send it all in another time. But its the first time I really having thoughts to eventually sell my Leica M stuff and stay just with S2, a DSLR and a X1 (or X100).
I am question the rangefinder system for high resolution digital photography with fast lenses. Also talked to Leica about this and they said they allready to a lot to calibrate lenses before they leave the company but that it is quite tricky to get everything perfect.
If I wouldnt like the sensor and the user interface and the lenses of the M-system so much I would have given up long time ago.
I am quite happy that at least the S2 seems to work for me quite well-specially for a MF camera.