Sunday 30 June 2013

Walking with the Leica X Vario - (Part 2 - the Monochromes)

The monochrome set

If you want to catch up, see the Part 1 of my experience

Leica is rightly famous for their monochrome, black and white look. They have a rich and long history in film and that started with black and white. Monochrome is still vital and real today - it discovers shapes, patterns and tones without the distraction of colour. Getting the right look however, when sensors are colour, can be a feat, particularly without clever post processing - Leica by the way, does make the M Monochrom that has a monochrome sensor.

The Images that Got Away

I feel dissatisfied when a monochrome shot is not sharp in context, lacks texture, solidity, shape or finesse. Trust me, I shot quite a few like that on this encounter. Why they got away (or at least, my side of the story).

The Autofocus on the X Vario isn't bad but let's say, it's leisurely.

Street photos of people tend to be monochrome, but I had difficulty getting response from the camera in time for street shots. Many of the Japanese competitors have upped their AF performance but it hasn't trickled down to Leica. The lens also warbles in sound when it focusses - a very quiet warble but you can hear it - again, the Japanese competitors have all kinds of ultrasonic and super quiet motors (partly motivated by movie shooting) and this detracts from the luxuriousness of the camera build and finish.

The Focus Scale

I was happy to see a nice feature that modern digital cameras do not have - a distance focussing scale. The focus ring around the lens has an "A" position which enables autofocus. If you take it off the "A" click position, you enable manual focus. There is no Depth of Field Scale so you need experience or a DOF aid (smartphone app, paper chart) to figure out what happens if you set the lens to f/8 (and be there) and 2 metres. Don't forget to take the ISO off from Auto otherwise, the camera might drop ISO to 100 instead of something feasible like 800 to keep the shutter speed fast enough to freeze motion blur. Doh! I did that. Lots of that.

The trouble is, this is a zoom lens camera - it is way too tempting to zoom and then you have messed up the expected DOF. I did that. Lots of that.

And really, it is Autofocus capable - I was too tempted to flub the estimate of 2 metres on MF, switch to AF, flub that and then switch to MF.

 

So, on to the ones that didn't fail.


Normal Black and White or High Contrast Black and White?
I missed quite a few of some people with fascinating clothes. By the time this shot came, movement had slowed down. This is SOOC JPEG and comes with white sky, gratis. I like the timelessness that black and white brings to this.


Have you wondered why people prefer not to live in No. 3 but 2A? Is this some Chinese auspicious number allergy? This image has had histogram widening - the textures of the wall and on the numbers make it worthwhile.

Leafless trees hold endless fascination for photographers. It's worthwhile finding ones that offer a shape and clarity on negative space but sometimes a busy scene brings context

One of the metro train lnes connecting to the South Yarra Station
Remember, we have a colour capable camera? Sometimes what looks black and white doesn't have to be black and white filtered.


It's not to say that grab shots of unposed people are impossible. This couple had just exchanged a chat and were waiting for the lights.

As I said, we need tones to be obvious as in monochromes, we don't have colour to provide separation.



Part 3, a summing up, maybe, coming soon...

Walking with the Leica X Vario (Part 1)

Preamble

It was delicious of +Frank Yuwono to recruit +Leica Camera in Australia to offer a Leica X Vario for test drive loan on our Google+ 2nd Anniversary Photowalk in Melbourne. And I was quite charmed to shoot the X Vario for 2 parts of walk.

It's a quirky camera and I had not encountered Leica Digital cultural notes and design ideas before - so it was a first for me. I often encourage potential buyers of camera gear to meet up with other photographer enthusiasts locally. There is so much that one can ONLY get from hands on, half an hour, several hours experience - you can't get this vibe of the gear from standing at the shop with the salesperson peering over your shoulder in case you make a run for it, you can't get this assessment from reading copious reviews, comments, notes on internet review sites and forums.

Thanks to distributors like Leica Australia who are willing to loan out gear on a supervised meet or walk - although Frank and the Leica rep did sound a bit worried when we got separated for some hours and they wondered whether yours truly had absconded. Frank jokingly said - "I know where you live".

This isn't a review, nor is this an objective assessment, technical or visual of the camera. And I don't at all, endeavour to leave JPEGs SOOC (Straight Out Of The Camera) virgin nor do I post process .DNG raw files for pixel peeping. To provide context, I normally shoot Olympus Four Thirds and Olympus / Panasonic Micro Four Thirds, with a film background stretching back to my school days. I am not a photo editing enthusiast although I teach and train Microsoft Office and Google Apps - I have a sad case of MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) after the phrase "first, create a layer"

It's a celebration of the joy of that day, a celebration of being able to shoot with friends and puzzle / challenge to work with a camera and a brand I had not seen or used before.

Let's get outside for a walk.


A quiet pastel scene on a cloudy day

There's quite a lot for me in this quiet scene. It's winter in Melbourne, this was in the morning, no rain but it was a dull lit morning, cloudy (EV11@ISO100). When I first spotted this scene, I was attracted to the dull pink, the off white, the greens and the leaves left over from autumn. It's a photo that needs a pause for thought, to enjoy the scene in context and the feeling.



Another scene that caught my eye with the richness of pastel mixed with reflections and a little bit of punch in some colours was the back bar


Lest you think that the Vario XL JPEG engine is muted, there are several settings for it - Standard, Natural and Vivid. I tried Standard and Vivid and in some of these shots added a touch of saturation. This Suzuki was metallic blue, quite bright and eye catching with the darkness of the garage and the muted maroon bin colours acting as a counterpoint.


As the sun managed to put in a little more presence and I encountered Street Art, I had this on Vivid and to finesse it, added saturation on edit. On a fair monitor, the brickwork is quite absorbing as well as the colour tones.

You would think, after this blast of colour outside, that I would escape to some muted colours indoors. Well, I tried but first encountered this carpet.

Now, let us give your eyes some rest. We'll look for something to read


Something water to drink (that image has been warmed up in post)


and something to eat. What about Eggs on Bolognaise ? (1/60th sec, f/6.4 ISO 3200 46mm optical on APS-C sensor)


Of course, with any food, you do insist that the the kitchen is careful about hygiene and washes well.


All in all, for this set of photos, I was quite impressed with the tonal style of the SOOC JPEGs (and I could touch up the look a little without imposing grossness). The back LCD on the camera showed even more attractive images because of the higher pixel density and brightness than our computer screen.

The images that got away

Just like the notorious fisherman stories, there are photographer equivalents that of the whopper that got away. You can as much blame it on the photographer, the slipping of oppurtunity and incident as well as on the gear.

Photos of people around the table talking

Without asking for a posed shot, it is often difficult with any gear to capture a moment when the person looks good, when the light is good and when motion blur is either absent or helps with the story telling. Obviously a big DSLR with the latest high performing large sensor would help quite a bit but then, I am allergic to tramping big gear with me to a relaxed, friendly lunch. Some people mouth - larger aperture lens so here you go, you now have a big DSLR and a big lens and you're entering into Depth of Field shallower than a Bishop's Nose. This X Vario has a 70mm equivalent lens at maximum f/6.4 - you can get to f/2.8 if you go wide to 28mm equivalent with resulting change in perspective of faces and torso shapes.

Some of these shots were 1/60th sec, f/6.4 ISO 3200 - that's EV6@ISO100 Camera Estimated Light Level - If you got yourself an f/2 lens, you could raise the shutter speed (to reduce motion blur).  And f/2 lens on a 50mm to 70mm equivalent lens would have significantly shallow DOF for a two person, 3 person, head and shoulders shot.

Under the circumstances, with this camera and the non removable 28mm to 70mm equivalent zoom lens, just point and shooting, it was quite difficult to reduce motion blur when people moved their head and hands.

Posing people would be the better choice.

Dynamic Range of the camera JPEG engine

In the shots that got away, once I managed to avoid head movement blur, I found that the camera's choice of exposure for the indoor scene was ambitious - hoping that the JPEG's dynamic range would handle the bright light from the window and the darkness of faces on the shadow side of the window. Of course, this is a pretty tough gig for most cameras. If the camera was optimistic by half a stop, complexion and flesh tones would go yellowish-pink bleached with loss of texture - a plastic look on the highlights. Each camera would have problems coping but this camera had this style of coping.

Exposure estimation and Control

I tried to find the Exposure Value Compensation and could not find a dial on the camera that would do this. After some hurried exploration during lunch, I discovered that the silver coloured disc on the back of the camera is a 4 direction button cluster and the Up direction was inscribed with EV+/-

Although my Olympus PEN E-PM2 has a similar idea, the E-PM2 uses a combination 4 direction button and rotary dial - you can simply twirl the dial to change EV Compensation.

Much later, I was shown that there is a tiny dial on the top right corner of the camera and although this defaulted to Program Shift adjustment, if you held down the Up direction of the silver disc and pressed the tiny dial, you could assign the dial to be EV Compensation.

Chalk it down to lack of finding out how to set up this feature - EV Compensation is, for me, the most important primary adjustment for P A S modes of operation.

For full manual (M) mode of setting shutter speed and f/no, the X Vario is different to the typical Japanese camera - On the top deck, there is a dial for manual choice of shutter speeds including A and another dial for manual choice of f/no, including A.  If you set both dials to A, the camera takes on Programmed mode exposure. If you set one of the relevant dials to A, then it becomes either Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority (I think the LCD displays Shutter Priority as "T"). If neither dial is on A, then you are on full manual exposure control.

There are three options for Exposure Metering patterns and you can choose from several levels of JPEG Contrast control but I didn't get into those variations.

Continued in Part 2...

In the meantime:




Friday 14 June 2013

Olympus LIVETIME How-To

Updated: 13th July 2013

Live Bulb / Live Time - What is it?

With digital cameras, for dim scenes, you hold open the shutter and let the light stream through to the sensor. At some point in time, you decide that you have collected enough light so you close the shutter then, hit the Preview button so that you can expect the LCD for correct brightness of the image.

Live Bulb / Live Time enables you to peek at how the image is progressing so that you can decide when that the image is just right in terms of brightness so that you can close the shutter without wasting the current  shot and trying again. If there are light trails or variable motion in the scene, Live Bulb / Live Time allows you to examine the scene as you are waiting for the long exposure shot to complete - you can then continue or abort if something is not what you want, early.

Any modern digital camera should be able to do this, but most designers haven't got round to it. Live Bulb / Live Time was first implemented by Olympus on the E-M5/OM-D, then subsequently the E-PL5, E-PM2 and further models.

What is the difference between Live Bulb / Live Time ?

Live Bulb means you open the shutter by squeezing the shutter release button and hold it down until you want to close it. It's best to use a remote shutter release rather than press the button on the camera body as you might introduce handshake motion.

Live Time means you squeeze down on the shutter release button and can remove your hand. When you want to close the shutter, you squeeze again.

How do you get to the menu(s)?

  1. Set the camera to M - for Manual Exposure (that's the M in the P A S M dial / menu)
  2. Set the Shutter Speed slower and slower - as I change the setting on my E-PM2, it goes 1" then 2" then it continues to 60" - it then goes to LIVEBULB and then to LIVETIME - I prefer to use LIVETIME because I don't normally have a remote control and don't want to stand there holding down the shutter release button.

Optional Settings

Noise Reduction 

Setup . Gear . E (Exp/ISO) . Noise Reduction
I set this to OFF. This carries out Dark Frame Subtraction - if you expose for 20 seconds, the camera does that task and then shoots another exposure ignoring light for 20 seconds further - This Dark Frame represents the background noise of the sensor at that temperature. The camera then subtracts that noise from the real image and hopefully produces a cleaner JPEG. The issue is that if I shoot for 60 seconds, I can't use the camera for another 60 seconds. It does not affect your raw image file if you are shooting raw.

Live Bulb / Live Time display refresh frequency

Setup . Gear . E (Exp/ISO) . Live BULB 
or
Setup . Gear . E (Exp/ISO) . Live TIME

You can choose  between 0.5 seconds to 60 seconds.

The refresh display time does not affect the exposure of your final image, it just means that if you choose too brief a refresh time, you will not be able see the last moments of your shot. If you choose too long a refresh time, you may miss that crucial moment when the brightness for the image is just right - and cause a bleached out image.


IS0 100ISO 400ISO 800ISO 1600
Samples2419149
LiveTimeTotal VisibleTotal VisibleTotal VisibleTotal Visible
Intervals (secs)Time (secs)Time (secs)Time (secs)Time (secs)
0.5129.574.5
12419149
248382818
496765636
819215211272
15360285210135
30720570420270
6014401140840540

Let us work out a case for ISO 200, whatever you set, the display will only refresh for a maximum of 24 times. For half a second intervals, that means you can only see the screen refreshed for 12 seconds. For some fireworks, light painting or dimly lit cityscapes using ISO 200 f/16, you might need 30 seconds or even 60 seconds of light gathering. In that case you might consider 1, 2 or 4 second intervals. In a recent shoot, I found 2 seconds interval, worthwhile.

(One reason some of us are using f/16 is to accentuate the starburst of street lights and other point light sources.)

Live View Boost

Setup . Gear . D Display/Audio/PC . Live View Boost . On

Normally, I prefer my LCD or EVF to simulate exposure darkness / brightness display - this is one of the differences between an Optical View Finder in a DSLR and electronic displays in mirrorless cameras. However, for long exposures, at night /f16, the electronic display becomes so dark that you cannot see clearly. Set the Live View Boost to On so that the camera does not attempt to simulate real conditions - the display remains bright all the time during Liveview for you to carry out focussing, aiming, framing activities.

When you start the actual exposure, then it LiveTime works normally.

Manual Focus

Super Control Panel . MF

When you are shooting in the dark, the Auto Focus system may not stay steady at one focus plane or may fail to settle on the object that you want. You might want to set Focus Mode to Manual Focus - MF.

Image Stabilisation

Super Control Panel . IS - Off

When you are shooting on a long exposure, it is likely you will not be hand holding and be placing the camera on the tripod. Image Stabilisation instead of reducing handshake, may actually create sensor shake. Switch it off.

Want to see some videos demonstrating this feature? Click on YouTube Videos

Also see  Peter Mlekuž 's article

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