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S2 Chromatic Aberration - how big an issue is it?

markowich

New member
i have to partly retract what i said before. i just did a couple of shots with the HD3II 50 with the 100mm f2.2 lens attached. again, extreme situations, but i wanted a fair comparism with the S2 shots, at least as far as the light situation is concerned. attached you find a 100% crop, taken at f2.2 and developed in....PHOCUS, with lens correction on. bad fringing....so what i originally claimed (no CA on H with PHOCUS) is false. you just have to look for it hard enough. my P65+ is not with me right now but now i am convinced that it would not do much better ...
peter
 

fotografz

Well-known member
in my review of the S2 I included a high-contrast shot which showed no CA. Used 70mm lens.

David

http://davidsaffir.wordpress.com
To be fair, I also found that to be true in certain circumstances of high contrast lighting ... so it depended on how intense or isolated the backlighting was, and especially what aperture was employed.

My S2 test shots showing fringing above were done because I frequently face situations like this while shooting weddings ... which is where I had intended using the S2 to replace typical 35mm DSLRs. It was my "Playtex" strategy to "lift and separate" my output, and distance the IQ from all the herds of 35mm DSLR toting folks entering this business ... but retain DSLR like handling.

Very often scenes are backlit by bright widows at a wedding reception especially a bridal table, or I don't have an ideal time or place to shoot other shots, and am forced to shoot against the midday sun, or against specular laden water ... and purple fringing on a 100 shots is no fun dealing with ... trust me on that.

-Marc
 

fotografz

Well-known member
I've been following the saga of the S2 for awhile now because it's a genuinely interesting camera system. I'm hoping to be an Alpa owner (because of perspective control and the ability to shoot film) but the S2 still interests me a lot.

The thing that's missing from this conversation about alleged S2 aberrations is the relationship between the applied technique of the operator and the system itself. In order to adequately criticize the S2, there should be more effort at showing that problems lie specifically with the S2 and not the technique of the operator. So far, in every photo that I've encountered online with aberrations there is always what I consider to be bad technique too. Is it just a coincidence to often see bad lighting ratios, poor focus, overexposure etc on the part of the operator in S2 shots that contain aberrations. On the contrary, the S2 shots I've seen that had what I consider to be good technique don't appear to have any serious aberrations problems at all. What is the fault of Leica and what is the fault of the operator? Is it Leica's fault if a photographer decides to overexpose highlights on a pavement by as much as 2-3 stops and then complains about aberrations appearing at the line between the shadows and the highlights? Or is that just bad technique? Is it Leica's fault if aberrations occur when a photographer shoots an out of focus subject against a bald sky while overexposing the sky by several stops? Or is that the fault of the operator?

So far, I haven't seen much discussion about whether or not the operator might share some fault or may actually be at fault. I understand that technique can sometimes be a matter of opinion. But I prefer to judge professional systems by how well they perform with proper professional technique. If aberrations start popping up when excellent technique is employed, then that is definitely a sign that there could be a problem with a camera system, lens or software etc. I've owned lenses in the past that performed terrible even with excellent technique (zeiss in particular) But if the technique is bad then what can really be blamed on the camera system?

Some might say that professional camera systems are supposed to work in harsh conditions and should hold up to the stress of bad lighting etc. That may be true for documentary shooters and some other types of photographers that don't necessarily need exercise control over the light and just need to get an image. But the light is still in charge when it comes to most professional photography. No photographers or camera systems have transcended light yet. We are still at the mercy of light, and our technique matters when it comes to capturing the light. The ability to see and differentiate between good and bad lighting is exactly what makes a professional photographer in the first place. It's the same when it comes to sharpness because no photographers have yet transcended scheimpflug and focal plane placement. We are all still at the mercy of focal planes and must properly place them in order for an image to be sharp. The ability to achieve a sharp image with properly placed focal planes, lack of motion blur, lack of diffraction etc is exactly what makes a professional photographer.

If we are going to judge the S2 as a professional system, then I think we should also judge how it works in situations where truly professional and adequate technique is applied too.
This is a very good way of looking at it ... and for the most part I'd have to agree.

However, when testing a MFD camera we often torture test it to find its limitations. Naturally, there is an inclination to evaluate that performance against that of other systems. This is especially true when a manufacturer makes superior claims, or even mildly discounts the efforts of their competitors.

While no MFD system is perfect including the S2, neither are the conditions we often have to shoot in these days. I'd have zero concerns shooting any of the current MFD systems in the studio where I have 100% control of the lighting. All of these cameras love "Fat Light" and great professional technique.

Frankly, for the studio, or location work with full lighting control, using assistants/grips, and shooting tethered ... the S2 is at a disadvantage no matter how good the lenses are. I need the control that professional software provides ... as well as a professional camera.

The form factor of the S2 provides advantages in usage, handling and portability ... which was my initial attraction to this kit as a possible replacement for my 35mm DSLR kit. Yet, that type of usage often can place one in less than ideal control of the lighting circumstances. So we test for situations that we KNOW we will face whether we like it or not.

In short, the world of MFD has moved on to provide more versatile application of these expensive kits other than just in "ideal professional conditions". Guy uses his Phase One P40+ kit to the exclusion of any 35mm DSLR ... including for documentary photography. So do I with my Hasselblad H4D/40 (evaluated and bought after testing the S2). That is part of the evaluations we need to pontificate about, because we deal with it in the real world. The more versatile the system gets, the more we have to deal with less than ideal real-world applications.

-Marc
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
This is a very good way of looking at it ... and for the most part I'd have to agree.

However, when testing a MFD camera we often torture test it to find its limitations. Naturally, there is an inclination to evaluate that performance against that of other systems. This is especially true when a manufacturer makes superior claims, or even mildly discounts the efforts of their competitors.

While no MFD system is perfect including the S2, neither are the conditions we often have to shoot in these days. I'd have zero concerns shooting any of the current MFD systems in the studio where I have 100% control of the lighting. All of these cameras love "Fat Light" and great professional technique.

Frankly, for the studio, or location work with full lighting control, using assistants/grips, and shooting tethered ... the S2 is at a disadvantage no matter how good the lenses are. I need the control that professional software provides ... as well as a professional camera.

The form factor of the S2 provides advantages in usage, handling and portability ... which was my initial attraction to this kit as a possible replacement for my 35mm DSLR kit. Yet, that type of usage often can place one in less than ideal control of the lighting circumstances. So we test for situations that we KNOW we will face whether we like it or not.

In short, the world of MFD has moved on to provide more versatile application of these expensive kits other than just in "ideal professional conditions". Guy uses his Phase One P40+ kit to the exclusion of any 35mm DSLR ... including for documentary photography. So do I with my Hasselblad H4D/40 (evaluated and bought after testing the S2). That is part of the evaluations we need to pontificate about, because we deal with it in the real world. The more versatile the system gets, the more we have to deal with less than ideal real-world applications.

-Marc
Marc you woke me up . Just realized I did a wedding with windows with the P40+ 80mm D lens I think F8 or 5.6 for these but I see nothing at all. I did have the Metz going.
 
Need to stop in now with some facts WRT Raw converter and SW and Leica and Phase...
Peter,
I don't want to add negativity to this thread, but I didn't see any "facts" in your post. I think a more appropriate term would have been "speculation" and, in that case, you may not be too far off the mark in what you stated. The story I heard ;) is that Leica realized it wouldn't make good business sense to provide Phase One (now a competitor) with a contact list of all of their S2 customers - which is what would have happened when S2 owners registered their copies of Capture One.

The reality is that none of this matters anymore. What is done is done. Now, we (S2 owners and potential owners) have to move on and hope Leica and Adobe are working closely together to optimize LR for the S2.

Mark Gowin
 
Guy, I don't think you would see CA from the S2 at f5.6 or f8 in those conditions either. At least, that is why I suspect I was only able to find a handful of S2 photos that showed CA out of couple thousand - I generally don't shoot wide open with bright light sources.

This is something I need to test just to know the limitations I have to deal with.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Thank you - just trying to add some perspective. Its worth noting that my optimism is almost as good as my ability to rationalize buying toys.:D
Mark I love you optimism no doubt about it and seriously I am one of the biggest optimist around. Yea i had 2 M8's that spent more time in Germany than it takes to hand build a Bentley and than rebuild it. LOL

But seriously this one has me really nervous as I think this is a pretty excessive issue that is getting whitewashed a little. At this level we should not be seeing this. Just imagine if you will if this was a Canon issue with 100,000's of customers that are seeing this. The forums would be going nuts with complaints. Yes Leica fans are a tolerant group no doubt and even I am but this one has me scratching my head. I think this is deeper than software alone. I'm back to my system integration theory and something in the chain is not calibrated correctly. It seems all the lens they have out at least the 35, 70 that we know of, so this has thoughts of a sensor issue to me. But I will not downplay the dedicated software issue as well , it needs it to be competitive among others in it's class.

Mark as much as i am one of the biggest gear sluts around and I like the S2 style, I simply can't buy it and I am a sucker for being a guinea pig on this stuff. I'm really bugged by what I have been seeing . For S2 owners i feel for you guys as this should be knocking it out of the park. Yes it is good but it's leaving a grand slam on the bag. Maybe we can help figure out what is going on
 
i have to partly retract what i said before. i just did a couple of shots with the HD3II 50 with the 100mm f2.2 lens attached. again, extreme situations, but i wanted a fair comparism with the S2 shots, at least as far as the light situation is concerned. attached you find a 100% crop, taken at f2.2 and developed in....PHOCUS, with lens correction on. bad fringing....so what i originally claimed (no CA on H with PHOCUS) is false. you just have to look for it hard enough. my P65+ is not with me right now but now i am convinced that it would not do much better ...
peter
Peter,

Thank you for taking the time to do the comparison. It doesn't make the problem go away, but it does help manage expectations.

Mark
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Guy, I don't think you would see CA from the S2 at f5.6 or f8 in those conditions either. At least, that is why I suspect I was only able to find a handful of S2 photos that showed CA out of couple thousand - I generally don't shoot wide open with bright light sources.

This is something I need to test just to know the limitations I have to deal with.
I agree Mark at these apertures it would be something we would have to test out for sure. But I also don't see any hint of it at all. I'm looking for more samples as well because these are on the edge. Not sure i would say this is the de facto standard to go by . Need some wider apertures

I'm a little pissed my Drobo is NOT showing up on the desktop. have to get that going to find stuff
 

dfarkas

Workshop Member
Peter,
I don't want to add negativity to this thread, but I didn't see any "facts" in your post. I think a more appropriate term would have been "speculation" and, in that case, you may not be too far off the mark in what you stated. The story I heard ;) is that Leica realized it wouldn't make good business sense to provide Phase One (now a competitor) with a contact list of all of their S2 customers - which is what would have happened when S2 owners registered their copies of Capture One.

The reality is that none of this matters anymore. What is done is done. Now, we (S2 owners and potential owners) have to move on and hope Leica and Adobe are working closely together to optimize LR for the S2.

Mark Gowin
Well said Mark.

There were other reasons as well to the breakup of Leica and Phase One besides the conflict of interest on software registration. The claims from Phase One agents and dealers at Photokina (hours after the announcement of a strategic alliance) of deep involvement in developing the S2 camera system and Leica making lenses for Mamiya mount certainly didn't help build any goodwill. I was standing in Leica booth when Leica managers found out what was being said and stormed over to Phase One. The rest of the show, reps spent their time in interviews emphasizing that the S2 was designed and built 100% by Leica, without help from any partners. Talks with Adobe started about a month or two afterwards towards the end of 2008.

As you said, the past is the past. Let's look to the future.

David
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Just to add to David's comments . Leica engineer mentioned they maybe afraid Phase would screw around with the software to make the s2 not as good as they are competitors now. Obviously lot's of speculation here on all parties but I agree this is the past and it does not help the future of it
 
Don't get me wrong. I am not whitewashing the issue with the S2 and fringing/CA. I am trying hard to put it in perspective and clarify that in real-world use (versus testing) it only shows up in a very low percentage of photographs. It takes several factors to get the CA to become evident and most photographers simply don't get those factors to line up.

Take the example photo of the glass embedded in the wall posted earlier. I downloaded the DNG (thank you Guy for making it available) and tried to do a simple fix in LR3. I couldn't correct the image and started to get bummed out. Then I realized the image was shot at f2.8 in bright sunlight (1/3000 sec.). I would have never shot that scene at f2.8 if I had that much sunlight. I would have been stopped down to around f5.6 or f8 to get additional depth of field and still had plenty of shutter speed for a sharp hand-held photo. I would have stopped down to give myself some margin to compensate for body sway and not holding the camera perfectly parallel to the wall.

Take Marc's example of the plant with the door light behind it posted previously. I can't say for sure what f stop he used, but I bet the lens was wide open (f2.5) or very close to it. That scene is in the Don Cesar hotel in St. Pete Beach, Fl which is a beautiful hotel. I expect if Marc were shooting that scene for the hotel as a client he would have shot it much differently (e.g., portable lighting, smaller f stop for depth of field, etc.) and CA would not be present.

Testing cameras and lenses provides important information. However, it is important to keep this information in perspective as to how one expects to use the camera and lenses.
 
Guy, I looked at your wedding photograph again and think it represents my points above perfectly. For testing purposes you may have shot that scene without a flash and used a wider aperture to get the indoors subject properly exposed. This would have almost certainly shown CA due to the overexposed scene in the window. However, in real world practice you did it right and used a fill flash to better balance the light from outside to inside. The bride and groom are well exposed and the scene outside the window shows clouds and blue skies.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Absolutely I am very close to being balanced no question. I also agree not everything in life is shot wide open and in many many cases as a Pro I try to avoid the pitfalls when your in the trenches. Hell they are paying us for something right. LOL

Obviously though the allure of shooting wide open is there for the look too so we have to be careful. It's that bokeh thing as well and when you want than some real thinking needs to come into play. So this thread all still leads to a solution that needs to be found. As David mentioned leica said to use defringing but I kind of find exception to what Leica is saying as they are admitting a issue at hand in that comment. Obviously we can read that comment in several ways but bottom line they are admitting a fix for there files.

So as S2 customers become more abundant (let's hope for Leica's well being) you folks need to put the metal to the floor board and get them working on it this stuff as we all did with the M8. I know I was a big part of that but don't settle here, you guys paid dearly for this gear and you need to push them to the wall and make this better. I know some folks take me wrong as bashing and that is a shame because obviously they don't know Guy very well at all. I try to be the guy that is down there throats getting action on any system I have been involved with. So take my advice and get them on this. Many MF folks and we may not have the samples on hand or can actually prove this but I do agree with them yes we get some lens aberrations no question but again this looks excessive to us and I believe that is what this thread is all about is to inform and see something better from this. It just seems off

I think one thing we could all agree on is wide open is forgivable but after that questions come up. When we see it at 4.8 and maybe 5.6 than the hair on my neck stands up.
 

markowich

New member
digital overload

i just picked up a demo MP for an excellent price and will report next week on CA/fringing with various chemistry/sensor/combos.
will be fun at least.----)))))
peter
 

robmac

Well-known member
It's all speculation and I don't want to wind things up, but come-on:

Phase's senior execs aren't idiots. They wouldn't have made the very public statements they made and end up making both they & Leica come across as idiots unless they felt those statements would be backed-up by Leica. They were obviously wrong, but someone got their signals seriously crossed at the 11th hr regarding just how deep a relationship was going exist. What, Phase was going to publicly coerce Leica into a joint deal at the press podium?

The preceding also explains why no custom software - until the 11th hr 59th minute, Solms didn't realize they needed any.

As for Phase poaching S2 owners via C1 registration? The folks in Solms need to get a little more creative when they make up excuses to 'leak'. Lets see, Phase sends registered S2 owners an email offering a special trade-in promo. Ah, uh, um (insert head scratch) so? I mean, I would hope to think Phase is more pro than and quite frankly if the camera is any good, 99.9% of folks will hit the 'delete' button anyway. Also if they felt it was a lemon, they'd be yelling at Solms to take it back vs crystalize a loss via a trade.

Either someone in Solms is drinking their paranoid juice -- or some SERIOUSLY (and I mean seriously) ill-will now exists between they and Phase. Again, my guess is that after the debacle at the S2 release someone at Phase uttered (in Danish) the equivalent of "you'll see #$%^ C1 support for the $%^& S2 when $%^&* Hell freezes over...". Shortly thereafter the excuses started and a call was made to Adobe.

As for Phase crippling S2 RAW support - flattering for LUF die-hards, but as another thread discussed - pppleeeaaase....If Phase gave enough of a da*n, and were that petty and immature in their desire to give Solms one in the jewels, they're be a lot of M8/9 owners out there right now wondering why their files look so lousy after their last C1 update. All Phase and Hassy have to do to show the merits of having custom software in MFDB land is nothing - Leica' use of LR and the threads like this one that result do more for THEIR marketing than any malicious attack or viral ad campaign they could launch.

Again, all water under the bridge, and I wish Leica the best, but I really do wish Solms would stop the silliness of leaking absurd excuses pointing fingers as to why they took the course they did. Either cowboy-up and admit they and Phase had a spat (no one needs the details) and you had to look elsewhere, shut up about it, or get a bit more creative and professional in their public and 'leaked' (or at best behind the scenes ill-advised) comments re: competitors and their products.

The BS with Phase re: the S2 program, public comments from senior engineers about 'wasting money' on software-based lens corrections, etc., etc., - just makes them look immature, exposes them to backlash-- and creates animosity between them and Hassy/Phase. Animosity that achieves nothing other than earn childish giggles from fanboys and create ill-will between them and Hassy/Phase. Ill will they may regret later. Let the S2 program stand on it's own merits and put a muzzle on the silliness.


Well said Mark.

There were other reasons as well to the breakup of Leica and Phase One besides the conflict of interest on software registration. The claims from Phase One agents and dealers at Photokina (hours after the announcement of a strategic alliance) of deep involvement in developing the S2 camera system and Leica making lenses for Mamiya mount certainly didn't help build any goodwill. I was standing in Leica booth when Leica managers found out what was being said and stormed over to Phase One. The rest of the show, reps spent their time in interviews emphasizing that the S2 was designed and built 100% by Leica, without help from any partners. Talks with Adobe started about a month or two afterwards towards the end of 2008.

As you said, the past is the past. Let's look to the future.

David
 
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Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Re the Phase/Leica debacle:

The reason as I heard it was simpler, and made far more sense from a historical POV: The nit that killed the deal was that Leica would have had to release to Phase all of their internal, proprietary image processing secrets for their raw protocol, and at the 11th hour, Leica management decided against this. If you look historically at the relationship between Leica and Panasonic on the smaller sensor cameras, we know this same mentality existed at Leica; the Leica versions of the small Panny cameras always seemed to produce slightly better images -- when pressed, Leica did admit the cameras were mechanically identical and it was their own internal secret sauce that delivered the superior images.

Now Leica is stuck with an open output format a-la DNG, but one where Adobe has their own internal secret-sauce components to muddy the waters... So now Leica has to implement their secret sauces BEFORE the data gets DNG'd, but in a fashion where the benefits will be present in the DNG that Adobe sees openly --- a non-trivial task I fear. I suspect given enough time that Leica will get it sorted, but how long will it take? And will the final solution be as elegant as it might have been had they opened up to Phase for CaptureOne? Personally, I doubt it...
 
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