Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

[DPNow]

Here is a summary or excerpt from an article that has just been published on DPNow:

Leica's full frame system is firmly 21st century at last

RAW and JPEG sample images including comparison with M-series and L-mount lenses.



Perhaps the biggest camera launch of the year, yet another new offering from Leica and it doesn't overly rely on the Leica M legacy. It's the Leica SL Type 601, the camera that launches Leica's new full frame mirrorless camera system. I'll have a closer look at the hardware in a separate article but I can give you some fundamental first impressions to accompany the gallery of RAW and JPEG sample images accessible towards the end of this page.



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[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

I downloaded L1010233.dng (#19 the door) and looked at it in some detail, both in LR and a RAW file viewer.

In the RAW Viewer, Chromatic Aberrations show up on the wire mesh and the specular highlights.

I normally use DxO Optics PRO Elite, but they don't have the camera & lens profiled yet. Noticing in the exif data, that it had been through LR (6.2.1), I too opened it with LR.

By turning off all the processing pre-sets in LR, the CA fringing becomes visible on the edges of the mesh and is visible on the lock, handle and bottom door bar. However, I'm not certain that LR is not doing something to the DNG file (Adobe default level processing)

I guess I was expecting something exceptionally special, considering the price, and it is likely that this is as good as it gets, as even Leica have to obey the laws of physics...

I think there will be a lot written about this camera and many comparisons made. I tend to look at the IQ in isolation, so look forward to the comments and opinions.

[Ian]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

Thanks for this feedback Graham. I will have a look at the samples and come back to you with some considered comment. But in the mean time I should explain that although the file metadata reveals Lightroom was used to manage the files this was only done to add copyright notices and for selecting the files to be published as well as the creation of the gallery thumbnails. The Lightroom export procedure was set to 'Original' files so these will not have had any processing of the image data applied.

It's possible that if you imported the images into Lightroom yourself then some corrections may have been applied that were not appropriate because the camera and lens have not yet been modelled by Adobe for Camera RAW or Lightroom.

Let me have a look at them myself and I will come back with some more comment

Ian

[Ian]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

OK I have spent some time looking at the sample images using Picasa for Windows (desktop) and Lightroom. Both display the camera JPEG similarly but they display the DNG RAW differently and this is entirely logical. When viewing a RAW file you will see it as the application interprets it by default and its interpretation is unlikely to be the same as a different viewer - in my case Lightroom. But with a camera JPEG it's different, the interpretation of the RAW data was already done at the time the camera produced the JPEG file. I can see that the camera JPEG is a bit sharper, the white balance is more neutral and there is more contrast. The Lightroom view of the DNG RAW file doesn't show any appreciable CA as far as I can make out but the there is a hint of it in the Picasa view. I can't see any CA in the camera JPEG. The frame you have highlighted is not razor sharp but a) I suspect that Leica follows the convention that sharpness is down to the photographer, so the default sharpening will be low and b) the shot was hand held at a modest 1/80th second, so a tripod mounted camera might have been better. The RAW file does stand some useful sharpening before artefacts spoil the party.

Out of interest what was the viewer you used?

Ian

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

Out of interest what was the viewer you used?

Ian

I use FastStone Max View or Image Viewer http://faststone.org/

Having read your reply, I also looked at them with Picasa (Viewer & Editor) and the CA is slightly less and slightly different colours to FastStone Viewer. So variability in the software interpretation of the data is very relevant.

As you say, this all goes away when looking at the jpgs., and whatever LR does by default (even with everything switched off) shows impressive results.
That you took them hand held and it was not absolutely ideal conditions, is far more indicative of what we get in the real world, so are of value as examples.

If you try FastStone, you have to press "A" to load & open the full Image File as it only shows thumbnails when browsing.

I was initially drawn to the door image, by the 64 ISO setting as it rang a bell with Kodachrome 64, which was my film of choice. Purely out of interest, I looked at the ISO 50000 sample, and it was just as I expected...

Thanks for producing this review and the comments, it's always interesting to see what is being produced by what many consider to be the benchmark in quality.

[Ian]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

Thanks Graham. I was particularly interested to see how the use of an M-series lens panned out on the SL body. Leica had to radically modify the sensors in its M-series digital bodies to correct problems exhibited by M-series lenses which were never designed for digital sensors. Without such corrections using off-set sensor microlenses and image processing the corners lose brightness and, more seriously, there is a radical loss in sharpness, especially with wide angle lenses. This was clearly demonstrated when I tried an M-series lens on a Sony Alpha 7 full frame mirrorless body and compared its use on a Leica M9. Sony does apply some corner correction because even DSLR lenses for digital full frame bodies have this problem to a lesser degree but the correction required for M-series lenses is much much greater. You can see in my samples that the Summicron-M 35mm still needs to be stopped down aggressively to moderate poor corner image quality but it's not as bad as when used on a Sony body.

Ian

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

All that you have written on the new Leica and an article you wrote some while ago on using legacy lenses, reminded me of something from my days as an apprentice toolmaker. (late 60s)

I was working on a lathe, when the foreman, manager and site manager came into the shop with a man that turned out to be one of the directors of the company.

Everyone virtually stood to attention when the management came in.

Once introduced, he produced from his pocket a Leica lens and another (think it was Pentax) and I was asked to make an adapter that the Leica would screw into, which would then screw into the camera.

I had to measure the thread on the Leica lens to determine its size, pitch and shape.
(39 mm diameter and 26 TPI of Whitworth form)

[Ian]

[mike_j]

Re: Leica SL RAW and JPEG image samples to download

Ian, I don't think the adaptor gets involved in the often rather inaccurate aperture 'guess'. It's done by the body mounted exposure meter behind the little blue window near the rangefinder window compared with the light level on the sensor. It works on all lenses whether or not they are coded. The 6 bit code does call up lens correction for all known lenses if they are coded.