Leica M9 Colours vs Kodak Portra Film

[MatthewOsbornePhotography]

Loving the Leica M9 CCD Kodak sensor colours -


Leica M9 Colours vs Kodak Portra Film by MatthewOsbornePhotography_, on Flickr

I enjoy film photography, both black and white (Kodak T-Max, Ilford FP4+, Fuji Acros) and the amazing tones of colour Kodak Portra film.

I am already getting very nice B&W images from the Leica M9 but now i'm also getting some great colour stuff (desaturated in PP) so it makes me wonder if colour film still has the edge.

Here is a blog post with more samples - http://matthewosbornephotography.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/leica-m9-vs-kodak-portra-film/

..I keep meaning to do a head to head - Voigtlander Bessa R3A loaded with Kodak Portra 160 35mm vs. the Leica M9 at ISO 160 comparison.

Coming soon!

[Excalibur]

Well your points are more addressed to the few (e.g. pros) as I would have thought there are not many M9 owners here with the lenses you are using .....If Portra is your example\comparison? Then you can get excellent results from a 35mm film camera and lens for under £50, or with medium format cameras you can buy for £150

[iangreenhalgh1]

NIK ColorEfex Pro has a multitude of film emulation filters, including Portra:



So I'm pretty sure you don't need an M9 to get close to Portra.

[MatthewOsbornePhotography]

[BrianS]

I do not like spending time at the computer doing post-processing, much prefer adapting a lens to the Leica instead. These are with pre-war uncoated 5cm F1.5 Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnars, from 1936 and 1935 respectively. Older lenses tend to render colors with more subtlety.

[MatthewOsbornePhotography]

[Excalibur]

[iangreenhalgh1]

I'm still not that impressed with any shots I've seen from the M9. Sure the output looks good, but not good enough to justify the price.

[RSalles]

Brian wrote:

I do not like spending time at the computer doing post-processing, much prefer adapting a lens to the Leica instead. These are with pre-war uncoated 5cm F1.5 Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnars, from 1936 and 1935 respectively. Older lenses tend to render colors with more subtlety.

Point 1:

Maybe you can have much better results with more PP with this shots

Point 2: I second you: I find PP a pane in the ass! I like a lot more shooting than that. Much more. But we're in the game and etc, etc, etc.

Cheers,

Renato

[cooltouch]

To me, PP is all too often a necessary evil, especially if I'm working with a scanned or duped film image. I just accept it as part of the process.

I really like Portra 160 a LOT. I've used it so far only with my Bronica ETRSi, but it delivers images that are as good as very fine grained slides. I like how well it can handle both soft and intense colors as well as various contrast situations. I prefer it over Ektar, to be honest.

Bronica ETRSi, 75mm f/2.8, Kodak Portra 160.

[Attila]

PP is essential part of process, you can be lazy bone and ignore it , but not the smartest way to go. Cheap lens, cheap camera + quick PP often equal than most expensive camera+ lens combo. Especially on lady portraits sad to see careless no pp pictures.

[Orio]

When trying to make digital look like film, film will always win, and the reason is obvious

However, digital has other advantages over film (detail, primarily), so it makes sense so spend time
in post processing in order to find ways to make digital shots getting close to the qualities of film while
keeping the advantages of digital.
In the case of M9, colours have a lot to do with personal preference. Personally, I have fought hard to
escape the sort of greenish accent of the pictures that the M9 releases with the native colour profile and
that you like because they remind you of the Portra film. Instead, I like my digital cameras to produce
neutral output, because it makes them more flexible in PP.
Ultimately, I found a way to get around the greenish tones of M9 by purchasing the Color Checker Passport
target and software and creating my personal M9 colour profiles.
Now my M9 produces a perfectly neutral digital negative that I can handle in PP taking it to any direction
that I want.

[BrianS]

The Jupiter-3: looking at the eyes, it looks to be shimmed properly. It's almost always best to check the focus with a J-3 used close-up and wide-open. Sometimes the softness is due to it being made to the Zeiss standard. At F1.5, there will be softness in the image from any Sonnar. At F2.8- this softness often drops out.

http://www.the.me/lesson-in-history-the-magic-of-the-value-for-money-zeiss-c-sonnar-50mm-f1-5/

I attempted to explain some of this in an article on the C-Sonnar.

As far as Photoshop- I keep it to a minimum. I've used Photoshop since 3.0 was bundled with my first DSLR almost 20 years ago. I try to keep it to a minimum, mostly the equivalent of using Polycontrast filters in the darkroom. These days, most of my images are straight exports from LR4.

http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3546852

As far as justifying the cost of a Leica- I can use the greatest lenses of the last 80 years on it in the fashion that they were designed, full-frame and RF coupled. If you want to do that with a Digital camera, you buy a Leica. Plus, I paid for the M9 and M Monochrom by selling off duplicates of lenses. I still have 60+ lenses in Leica mount.

[Rick1779]

VSCO produce a real impressive LR preset to get the film look
http://vsco.co/film

[Excalibur]

****I can use the greatest lenses of the last 80 years on it in the fashion that they were designed***

Well surely all the older quality lenses were tested on film to see how they performed, so if you are a perfectionist to recreate the past results then it has to be film. Many of the old Hollywood photos of stars are very good, but I've never been interested enough to find out what lenses and cameras they used.

[iangreenhalgh1]

I disagree that all 1.5 Sonnars are soft at 1.5. My 1938 one is sharp wide open. How sharp I can't say for sure, but sharp enough that Tech Pan negatives scanned on my Plustek that can achieve 70lp/mm are very sharp, so I'm sure the Sonnar is capable of more than 70lp/mm wide open.

I agree with Attila, PP is necessary, and a cheap camera and cheap lens plus PP can equal a much more expensive camera and lens.

I also agree with Orio, I like my camera's output to be neutral so I can create the character I want in PP.

This is a 42mp image I made with my 3 year old NEX-3 and Hexanon 3.5/28. Of course, it's had PP. I could achieve the same with a FF camera and a 21mm lens, but I'd be several thousands of pounds poorer and all I'd have gained was some time saving in PP. I don't have thousands of pounds to spend, but I do have time to do PP:

[Orio]

[iangreenhalgh1]

+10 Orio

During my student days shooting film I spent countless hours burning and dodging and making test prints, some days I never say daylight.

To not do darkroom work or PP is leaving the job half done, and as my dad always says 'if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing right'.

[BrianS]

Wide-aperture Sonnars exhibit focus shift due to spherical aberration, which means the focal length at the center of the lens is different from that of the edge of the lens. The result is a "softness" in the image when the lens is used wide-open because the image does not fall into a single point of focus. The image is spread-out, giving it a "plastic-look".

I have a lot of 50/1.5 Sonnars- from a 1934 5cm F1.5 Nickel lens up through the 1984 Valdai Jupiter-3, and the C-Sonnar 50/1.5. They all exhibit focus shift. I've used them on a variety of cameras, from a Contax II and Leica IIIa up through the M Monochrom.

as far as digital post-processing, I've done a lot of that using custom software. I got paid to do it. That was the 1980s for me. 21st century, I prefer using a color filter over the monochrome array. I like the results, those that I show the work to like the results. It is now a hobby, and I do what pleases me. It's way to easy to convert a photograph into a "computer generated graphic art" these days using software, and that is what many people have turned it into. It's no longer photography.

[iangreenhalgh1]

I understand about spherical aberration, but still, the 1.5 Sonnar isn't soft wide open, if you take soft as meaning the resolution is low.

I'm sorry, but to say using PP on an image isn't photography is just wrong. Digital processing is just another tool in the photographer's arsenal. What's the difference between warming up the colours in an image in PP and using a warming filter on the lens when you shot it? Imho, there is no difference, apart from shooting it neutral and warming it in post gives you a lot more control, and what serious photographer doesn't want as much control as possible over each and every step of the image making process?

[Orio]

[iangreenhalgh1]

1938 Sonnar 1.5/50 wide open, 1994 expired Ilford FP4+ rated at 64. Nothing soft here, the SA is only apparent in the sight glow on the highlights.

[RSalles]

Orio,

PP per se is not a bad thing, sometimes a necessary step. I don't agree with the proposition that digital PP and burning & dodging are near the same procedure, one digitally driven and the other well, using the very well known steps. Take the results and see by yourself. I know a photographer which almost his hole work is done in Atacama desert, using Nikon digital stuff, cheap lenses, high number of Lee Filters and many hours in Photoshop. The public has always a "Oh", "Wow", for their image, and I find it a digital work well done but pure garbage in terms of photographic content. Seems like we're seeing some extra-solar planet somewhere near Scorpio Constellation, but not in the Earth as I know.

Also, to achieve a natural look in a heavy post-processed image digitally is a task for a pro: it's easy to screw up the image and make it look like a canvas painted by a blind monkey. On the other side, burning and dodging is almost idiot proof: if one makes a mistake, it seems less good, but not surreal as with digital pp.
The secret seems to be "where" in the picture and "how much", to not cross the line and ruin the image. And one has to be a pro to see that line...
Another point is a mediocre picture, where the photographer try to "save" it with PP. The rendering is almost a mediocrity more "sharp" than it was before.

You can show me a pair of strong post-processed photos in the film era, and I can show you a pair of thousands of hundreds with almost none: digital and film.
The mistake is to believe that pp is a magic tool which will turn a salt-less photo in a masterpiece and a absolutely untouched image in terms of PP in a HCB image,

... just my 2 cents...

Renato

[Orio]

[cooltouch]