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The Leica S2 System and Image Quality
- Thread starter carstenw
- Start date
Giorgio
Member
Thanks for the review David, I found it very informative.
BJP reports many copies of the camera will be available next month.
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=870832
BJP reports many copies of the camera will be available next month.
http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=870832
stephengilbert
Active member
I think the S2's lack of dorkiness is a mixed blessing: how will its cool owners be able to photograph it with an ordinary, dorky camera? The really cool kids will have to buy two, one to use, and another to photograph just how special the first one is.
and processing. I honestly don't like what I see in the examples.
Still no raw files
But - extensive review; a lot of work. So many thanks for sharing!
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Yeah, I guess right now that leaves me hopelessly relegated to dorkdom instead of where I thought I was in cooldom... :ROTFL:
Agreed, more review is needed; the good news it will be forthcoming! I need to see how the file responds color and tonality wise once in the raw converter. Any 6 micron sensor behind good glass is going to deliver detail, but color and tonal gradations (and to a lesser degree, dynamic range) are another story and that still remains to be seen.and processing. I honestly don't like what I see in the examples.
Still no raw files
But - extensive review; a lot of work. So many thanks for sharing!
One great thing about this camera is for folks who never seriously shot MF before because the MF bodies were too big or clumsy (or dorky), a whole new world has possibly opened up for them!
Cheers,
Guy Mancuso
Administrator, Instructor
When Jack and i have our shot at this there will be plenty of raw files and REAL world tests against other backs and standing on it's own. Don't worry folks we know what to do and how to run these kinds of test. Davids is very nice but leaves us a little short on some of the output versus other systems and hard core pixel peeping. His review is more support on how the system and functions work which did a great job. Pixel and file level will be forthcoming from us for sure.
actually we should sit side by side in front of the monitor to really explain it. There is an artificial look. Most of it possibly just due to the sharpening; many files are not sharp, only sharpened. Maybe it's just the wrong radius for the sharpening. I don't know, really hard to tell and hard to describe. Too, the scenes are all quite contrasty, so again hard to tell. Colors have no "style" or "look"... all looks somehow ordinary.
But that's just an impression. I still don't want to judge the camera or the files. Not without shooting the camera and processing files by myself or at least without having well exposed, shake free RAW files.
Exactly.
carstenw
Active member
thomas, I think I don't know what you mean with "not sharp but sharpened" but I guess we will see more when the release date comes closer and more raws become available.
As far as the colour go, I am pretty sure that this is intentional, like Sinar also delivers a neutral file. Would you want it to be more biased for skin, like the Leafs are apparently, or something else? I would have thought that a neutral file would be the best starting point, unless you always want a specific look.
Where in Germany are you, by the way?
As far as the colour go, I am pretty sure that this is intentional, like Sinar also delivers a neutral file. Would you want it to be more biased for skin, like the Leafs are apparently, or something else? I would have thought that a neutral file would be the best starting point, unless you always want a specific look.
Where in Germany are you, by the way?
many captures are not really sharp (pixel wise). But you clearly see that sharpening is applied.
Again: maybe just "wrong" adjustments.
depends on what you call "neutral". I am finding literally all camera files I've seen in Capture One quite neutral in the default settings. Still the neutral look in C1 is much more pleasent.
IMO it's all about balance and tonality (more regarding the response of the gray axis than the colors. The adjustment of colors is mostly quite easy).
Cologne.
There was obvious camera motion -- or at least some kind of motion -- in many of the crops David posted. FWIW, the motion looked more like mirror slap vibration to me, but I suspect that's due to the small sensor sites rendering motion that way. Regardless, even at high shutter speeds, high resolution sensors will capture/render camera motion. When working such a file, the typical response is to increase sharpening radius to make it look crisper, but in actually that decreases micro detail in the file. Best practice here requires a very sturdy tripod and head, along with mirror up and a cable release or timer delay release even when shutter speeds are short. Of course when testing for the real-world, one needs to work with the mirror operational since that's a critical part of the total imaging system too, so a solid test will show results for captures both ways...
My take on this is not that the color was neutral, but many of the colors looked flat -- like the green fern and lawns were all a single uniform hue of green. Now it may have been that way in real life, but my experience is you usually have a subtle gradation of shifting hues within a typical patch of "green" vegetation. Again, processing can wipe this out especially if WB got pushed significantly during raw conversion, as can conversion for web output, so I would not read too much into this yet.
FWIW Guy and I will be shooting the pocket Macabeth card, which is not the end all for color critique, but at least gives a good intro...
dougpeterson
Workshop Member
I think we are ALL looking forward to Jack and Guy's test. Even those of us doing our own testing as well.
Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
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Doug Peterson (e-mail Me)
__________________
Head of Technical Services, Capture Integration
Phase One, Leaf, Cambo, Canon, Apple, Profoto, Eizo & More
National: 877.217.9870 *| *Cell: 740.707.2183
Newsletter: Read Latest or Sign Up
RSS Feed: Subscribe
Buy Capture One at 10% off
There still seems to be one other issue that may not get resolved for a bit more time, and that is RAW processing. As it stands now, Leica does not have its own software for doing this work (except in camera). They are working with Adobe to provide profiles. Great. Adobe is in the middle of possible overhaul of ACR/LR. Not sure what that will mean. C1 is able to handle the neutral DNGs, but there is no telling what is lost or not with how they are supporting file conversion. (Not criticizing C1 here, just being realistic about the problems with files that may or may not be in any stable output condition, and also there not being any sole dedicated and updated software to best process the files.)
Not using any of this as an excuse for what does appear to be some motion blur in some of the shots posted. That is bothersome, as if the S2 is supposed to have strength as a "non-tripod" MF shooter, it does not seem to be exhibiting results to solidly support that "feature" if things may be bouncing around enough to cause even minor blur. Again, no way to know what really is the issue from the limited information at this point. Beginning to wonder if that is more a root issue for the delayed release of the S2 at this point? Hope that gets addressed.
LJ
Not using any of this as an excuse for what does appear to be some motion blur in some of the shots posted. That is bothersome, as if the S2 is supposed to have strength as a "non-tripod" MF shooter, it does not seem to be exhibiting results to solidly support that "feature" if things may be bouncing around enough to cause even minor blur. Again, no way to know what really is the issue from the limited information at this point. Beginning to wonder if that is more a root issue for the delayed release of the S2 at this point? Hope that gets addressed.
LJ
Hi LJ,
Guy and I will be running the files through both C1 and the latest build of ACR and doing our best with each. Obvious issue is that while Guy and I are pretty proficient with C1, we no longer use ACR with any regularity so even our processing there will be somewhat non-substantive. Again, we'll do our best and post the results, which is all we can do. Other big problem with doing a test at this level is posting image and crop results on the web -- you simply can't avoid color shifts and artifacting in the posted result compared to viewing the original full tiff...
Jack,
Quite agree and I do understand. I was not mentioning the processor issues to discredit anyone, but rather to let people start thinking about how long it may be before all that dust may get settled. I think C1 will do fine for now. ACR.....well, we know that is entering a state of flux, so things may turn out very well.....but that may be a bit later. Presently, ACR still leaves something to be desired for many users, while others find that it does the job quite well for them. Six months from now, we may be seeing lots of improvement in processing algorithms, and that could once again cause us to readjust our perspectives on things....or not. If the S2 files capture the data, that is all that will matter. How that data gets extracted and used to its fullest will develop with time (no pun intended).
Other point.....why not use a real sized big Macbeth Color Checker for the broader angled outdoor scenes? The tiny ones are great for close in work, but tend to get too lost in bigger shooting
LJ