Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Digital Cameras & Shooting Techniques => Topic started by: diuser on September 10, 2009, 09:36:55 pm
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Michael talks about the very high resolution provided by both the M9 sensor and the Leica lenses. Can one realize that potential without a tripod? I understand that rangefinders don't have mirror slaps. And, one would shoot those lenses mostly wide open. But, on the other hand, they are not stabilized. I am sure this has been discussed ad nauseam in regard to other rangefinders. But, the M9 seems to reach a new level and I wonder what happens to that resolution in practice.
Also the demands on focussing must have gone up. Because of the high resolution and shooting with the lenses wide open, the dof will be extremely shallow. Can one really reach good focus without autofocus and live view? I have a bunch of Zeiss lenses and on a DSLR at least, live view is the only way to reach focus that gives justice to those lenses (in spite of carefully adjusted manual focus matte screens and viewfinder magnifiers).
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Hi,
Very good questions. Leica ha a very accurate rangefinder, but I still have the impression that "dead on" focus is hard to achieve.
Erwin Puts has a lot of interesting write ups on Leica, but they are not always an easy read: http://www.imx.nl/photo/index.html (http://www.imx.nl/photo/index.html)
Erik
Michael talks about the very high resolution provided by both the M9 sensor and the Leica lenses. Can one realize that potential without a tripod? I understand that rangefinders don't have mirror slaps. And, one would shoot those lenses mostly wide open. But, on the other hand, they are not stabilized. I am sure this has been discussed ad nauseam in regard to other rangefinders. But, the M9 seems to reach a new level and I wonder what happens to that resolution in practice.
Also the demands on focussing must have gone up. Because of the high resolution and shooting with the lenses wide open, the dof will be extremely shallow. Can one really reach good focus without autofocus and live view? I have a bunch of Zeiss lenses and on a DSLR at least, live view is the only way to reach focus that gives justice to those lenses (in spite of carefully adjusted manual focus matte screens and viewfinder magnifiers).
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Hi,
Very good questions. Leica ha a very accurate rangefinder, but I still have the impression that "dead on" focus is hard to achieve.
Erwin Puts has a lot of interesting write ups on Leica, but they are not always an easy read: http://www.imx.nl/photo/index.html (http://www.imx.nl/photo/index.html)
Erik
Thank you for those links. Interesting indeed.
Erwin Puts' answer to my first question seems to be: "Best quality asks for a tripod. Period. "
(M8 compared to the Olympus E-3 and Nikon D3; at http://www.imx.nl/photo/technique/technique/page40.html) (http://www.imx.nl/photo/technique/technique/page40.html))
But who shoots a rangefinder with a tripod?
I am looking forward to what Micheal and the other testers have to say about that.
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Thank you for those links. Interesting indeed.
Erwin Puts' answer to my first question seems to be: "Best quality asks for a tripod. Period. "
(M8 compared to the Olympus E-3 and Nikon D3; at http://www.imx.nl/photo/technique/technique/page40.html) (http://www.imx.nl/photo/technique/technique/page40.html))
But who shoots a rangefinder with a tripod?
I am looking forward to what Micheal and the other testers have to say about that.
This thread has also drifted onto the similar question http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....rt=#entry309779 (http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=37555&pid=309779&mode=threaded&start=#entry309779)
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I think that depends on what aspects of lens quality you want to bring out. When folks think about lens quality, resolution is often the first thing that comes to mind, but there are others, like the rendering of out-of-focus areas, and the transition between those areas to the in-focus areas. You may need a tripod for the ultimate in the former, but probably not the latter ...
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I recently upgraded to a P65+, and after thirty years also moved from Hasselblad V to the Phase One/Mamiya 645 system. Using the 645 prompted two questions, can I use this camera handheld, and what's the lightest tripod I can use with this camera?
I'm still deliberating but the answers seem to be that with sufficiently high shutter speeds (1/500s or more) I see little or no difference with 45mm or wider lenses between handheld and tripod mounted, and secondly a tripod that's too light (especially when used in windy conditions or without mirror lock-up) can actually be worse than handholding!
But to go back to your original Leica question, I recall that the noted Leica writer Brian Bowyer said back in the film era that most people dramatically overstate their abilities to handhold a camera, and for the very best results with M photography he recommended at least two stops above the normal guidelines, so 1/125s with a 35mm lens, or 1/250s with a 50mm lens. Yes, an acceptable shot of an unrepeatable moment is always to be preferred to no shot at all, but if conditions allow the speeds that Brian recommended then you can be reasonably confident of achieving results fully comparable with a tripod mounted camera.
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The M allows quite long shutter speeds due to the lack of mirror slap, it gives you at least one stop advantage even over well-damped SLRs. But as with IS, don't overestimate your abilities, you will get nice prints from 1/15s with a 50mm, but of course they're not tack-sharp.
The M8 is as demanding (in a 100% view) as the M9 because it uses the same pixel-size, with a 50mm, I'm unable to distinguish a handheld-shot from a tripod-shot (with timer) from 1/250s on - they are just perfectly sharp.
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People don't forget it is not always about absolute sharpenss. I shoot at 1/125th with my P65 and a 45mm lens hand held and I can only say that the results are great. Nothing to complain about.
I found the biggest problems to be shooting with a tripod a 150 lens and getting into shutter speeds of around 1/5 to 1/50th, below and a both is fine.