M9 - using the histogram

[D&A]

Without repeating much of what has been said, when using the M9 at low ISO, I generally follow the logic and protocol of Chuck & John. When the ISO is raised beyond 1250, Jaap's suggestions are warranted and good advice, in my opinion.

At low ISO, I preserve most highlights and avoid blowing them out, because its often difficult (and sometimes impossible to recover what's essentually lost. At low ISO's, especially baseline (160), noise levels are extremely low and so it's possible to open up the shadows with much deleterious effect. As the ISO range is increased due to low light, the histogram becomes more important to watch and although I try to expose more for shadow detail, to avoid excessive noise. I will though watch for exposing the highlights (those specifically below spectral levels), in order that as much highlight detail is preserved, but not at the expense of losing shadow detail due to rising noise levels A balanced approach is carefully followed for both ends of the histogram in this case.

Dave (D&A)

 

[robsteve]

When I refer to the clipping indicators, I am not actually over exposing highlights. I don't know about the M9, but on the DMR and M8, the clipping indicator comes on well before the area is clipped. If you just have a few small pin points of red flashing, you should not have anything that is over exposed when the raw conversion is made. It may take some searching, but I thought the clipping was at 235 or 240 in the firmware.

Robert

 

[jaapv]

230 I think, that being the clipping point of most printers.

 

[jaapv]

Just FYI: I have just added a FAQ on high - ISO shooting in the M9 FAQ on LUF.:lecture:
To make it perfect I would like to request comments from experts - and non experts from this forum as well Please comment in PM's, not in the thread, as it takes the mods so much work to clean it up. Any comments are welcome and will be taken into consideration.

THREAD

 

[jonoslack]

My gut feel is that the M9 overexposes by as much as a stop at ISO 160. Meaning from the exposure point there is more dynamic range to the black point than to the white clip. In other words it preserves too much shadow at the expense of highlights. I keep my M9 at -2/3 permanently with some adjustments to the default LR settings.

Hi Jan
You need to be quite careful with this kind of statement - I'm not for a second doubting that you're right with your M9.
I have two, one which is kept at -1/3 in good light and 0 in bad, the other which is kept at 0 in good light and +1/3 in bad.
I think that they probably vary quite a lot (my feeling with mine is that the difference is more like 1/2 stop).

But where I quite agree with you, is that it tends to preserve too much shadow at the expense of the highlights - and that it's much better to set your camera up to avoid clipping the highlights (slightly too dark shadows don't look too bad - blown out highlights look horrid).

all the best

 

[woodleica]

Hi guys,

Just catching up with this thread again after originally posting it. Wow, there's so much info here to digest, play with and think about since then. Thanks to all of you!!

In particular, it's good to know that the M9 captures more info than shown by the histogram. I'm not completely sure yet, but from reading all this feedback, and what I saw that prompted me to post this originally, it seems that more info is at the lower end than the higher end. To summarize, it seems that if you are shooting in daylight, you don't want to lose highlights ( as jonathan just said above and Chuck and John debated earlier ) and optimizing for that ( possibly by dialing in -1/3rd ) seems to make sense. Shooting at high ISO's you typically want most of the information at the lower end and thus letting specular highlights go as described by Jaap may be best.

After 3 weeks with the M9, all I can say is that it is the best camera I've owned and I look forward to playing with some of these techniques above to figure some of these things out

-Vinay

 

[ashwinrao1]

Vinay, just seeing this post now. Not much to add other than what's already been said, primarily that each image needs its own exposure, as JAAP said, and that the histogram can be pessimistic, which is a great way to put it.

Also agree with Chuck's post to keep ISO as low as allowable, as dynamic range does constrict, to my eyes, at ISO 640 and beyond.

Vinay's is a great guy and just developing his Leica set up. He has a lot of great questions! Welcome here, Vinay!

 

[woodleica]

Thanks Ashwin