Leica CL with Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 Heliar Ultra Wide Angle

rflove

Veteran
I was trying the new adapter that came in yesterday and decided to take the CV 15mm f4.5 lens for a walk at night. The images were all too noisy. I'm too inexperienced with the camera and had the settings poorly selected by mistake. These were captured with as high as ISO 25,000... As I said, much too noisy specially in color. I developed them in B&W with the Silver Efex Pro from the NIK collection.

It seemed kind of strange to post less than adequate images, but I thought what the heck, people might want to see what the camera/lens combo can deliver at ISO 25,000.... I'll definitely go out again at night and try to capture some decent images even with a f4.5 lens... Anyway, here are the results of my night excursion. The Covid-19 pandemic is producing some very solitary streets. Specially for a Friday night in Atlanta. Most photos were taking on Peachtree street in Midtown. The metadata does not identify the lens correctly... The CL only allows a choice of Leica lenses to be entered manually. I thought that Leica lens was the closest thing to the CV 15mm f4.5

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I was trying the new adapter that came in yesterday and decided to take the CV 15mm f4.5 lens for a walk at night. The images were all too noisy. I'm too inexperienced with the camera and had the settings poorly selected by mistake. These were captured with as high as ISO 25,000... As I said, much too noisy specially in color. I developed them in B&W with the Silver Efex Pro from the NIK collection.

It seemed kind of strange to post less than adequate images, but I thought what the heck, people might want to see what the camera/lens combo can deliver at ISO 25,000.... I'll definitely go out again at night and try to capture some decent images even with a f4.5 lens... Anyway, here are the results of my night excursion. The Covid-19 pandemic is producing some very solitary streets. Specially for a Saturday night in Atlanta. Most photos were taking on Peachtree street in Midtown. The metadata does not identify the lens correctly... The CL only allows a choice of Leica lenses to be entered manually. I thought that Leica lens was the closest thing to the CV 15mm f4.5

View attachment 217473
The grain adds to the atmosphere, for me it works well in some pictures and less in others. This one is my favorite.
 
CL seems to render the B/W noise beautifully. Of course the fine grained stuff can only be inspected in 1:1 view but from what I see, if there's an ISO 25k photo worth printing, I wouldn't hesitate to print it big.

As a separate remark, wonder if 1/80 sec is an overkill for a focal length that is normally safe to shoot at 1/15 or at least 1/24 sec. I don't see much motion needing to be stopped :)
 
I very much like the overall look of these images - the lens and the camera really work well together.

The grittiness is just about all I can take, though - it's a nice effect for sure, but I'd like things just as well if they were a little smoother; maybe one or two stops of ISO down ... So, Mike's suggestion might be really interesting to explore.

M.
 
CL seems to render the B/W noise beautifully. Of course the fine grained stuff can only be inspected in 1:1 view but from what I see, if there's an ISO 25k photo worth printing, I wouldn't hesitate to print it big.

As a separate remark, wonder if 1/80 sec is an overkill for a focal length that is normally safe to shoot at 1/15 or at least 1/24 sec. I don't see much motion needing to be stopped :)

I totally agree with much of this. On my defense I can only repeat what I think I wrote in the initial post. I just haven't learned to use the camera properly. The little control wheels befuddle me and the camera is nothing like shooting with the M240 or the Q1. I'm going to make more efforts to learn and become more proficient with the camera. I am just anxious to get out there and shoot with it.
Another factor to consider in my case is that both, my eyes and my mental powers have somewhat diminished in my eight decade :p and that, lamentably is not something I can change.
 
I very much like the overall look of these images - the lens and the camera really work well together.

The grittiness is just about all I can take, though - it's a nice effect for sure, but I'd like things just as well if they were a little smoother; maybe one or two stops of ISO down ... So, Mike's suggestion might be really interesting to explore.

M.
Absolutely on target. The grittiness is nothing but noise, pretty unbearable in color. I'll make a more concerted effort in my next night outing and present better work ;)
 
Well, I went out today in the (too) bright sunlight with the CL and the CV 15mm f4.5Heliar and the CV 21mm f1.8 Ultron
Here are some representative images to judge the merits of both lenses. I'm getting the hang of the camera and I'll probably go out tonight and take the monopod along to see how the lenses do with a little better set up with the camera settings. I'll keep the ISO below 6400 and see what happens. I cropped some of the shots and applied lens corrections in LR. Hey are the 15mm images.

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Here are the images captured with the CV 21mm f1.8 Ultron


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Oh yeah, that happens with me too. If the controls can't be read from physical dials I can't read them :D

Yeah, it's the Japanese "complexity increasing system" under the pressure to stay ahead and relevant, they not only improve the cameras and lenses with wonderful, more advanced sensors, processors, etc. But they started "improving" the interface between the user & the camera. Many photographers and bloggers go all gaga over customizable controls to the already overwhelming number of controls over the yet more complex and excessive number of parameters the give you to control the process. Those sub-sub menus within sub menus within menus are terribly confusing.

Personally I loved my Epson R-D1's controls including the "film advance" lever. Frankly I don't care for much more than the ISO, shutter speed and aperture controls which include a little "A" among the values selectable. Somehow a lot of people are so consumed with the intricacies of "programming" their camera, they probably forget the truly important parts of photography like choosing the subject, composing, using the light and chasing the light.. I don't know, maybe I'm all wrong but we managed to capture some nice images with cameras like this

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So I went out last night with the CL and the CV 15mm f4.5 determined to get good B&W images with less noise than my first attempt. This time I tried different settings with the camera and shot with the aid of a monopod.

I developed the images in ON1 Raw and then I thought they were too dark. I processed them again in LR using the auto exposure button. I might have run into the dynamic range limit of the CL... The noise again appears when trying to recover the shadows.

Please bear with me, the post is image heavy. I tried to get interesting images but beauty is in the eye of the beholder :)
I will say that walking the (almost) empty streets fairly late at night is kind of a little adventure. I think it's fairly safe as one can keep considerable distance from anyone or anything that might seem unsafe, still.....

the images got inserted in the reverse sequence, imagine walking backward and taking shots :)

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Here are the rest of the images from last night. CL with Voigtlander 15mm f4.5
the images got inserted in the reverse sequence, imagine walking backward and taking shots :)



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All your subjects seem to be motionless, so the trivial solution is to use a tripod. Says someone who avoids carrying a tripod as much as possible :). Underexposing and recovering shadows in post generates the same noise or even more than a correct exposure at higher ISO, that depends on the characteristics of the camera. Longer shutter speeds or wider apertures are the only real solutions to limit the amount of noise. But you knew that of course :).
 
The camera seems to be choosing the iso with iso 6400 being a popular choice which invites that nice grain. I remember the GRII with it's TAV mode did this with similar satisfying results. But I wonder if there's a way of limiting the ISO to say 800 on the CL?
 
Q2 has max ISO set and the min shutter (1/f, 1/2f, etc). CL might be similar.

The camera seems to be choosing the iso with iso 6400 being a popular choice which invites that nice grain. I remember the GRII with it's TAV mode did this with similar satisfying results. But I wonder if there's a way of limiting the ISO to say 800 on the CL?
 
All your subjects seem to be motionless, so the trivial solution is to use a tripod. Says someone who avoids carrying a tripod as much as possible :). Underexposing and recovering shadows in post generates the same noise or even more than a correct exposure at higher ISO, that depends on the characteristics of the camera. Longer shutter speeds or wider apertures are the only real solutions to limit the amount of noise. But you knew that of course :).

I did take the monopod to steady my hand, but not the tripod. I don't mind doing it, but in these days and in these circumstances I just did to want to take the time required to do proper long exposure shots. Although I could have taken fewer, higher quality? images... I'm no stranger to long exposure photography and I might try setting up and doing it in another occasion.
 
The camera seems to be choosing the iso with iso 6400 being a popular choice which invites that nice grain. I remember the GRII with it's TAV mode did this with similar satisfying results. But I wonder if there's a way of limiting the ISO to say 800 on the CL?

There is indeed a way to set the ISO to any number between the native 100 and a useless 50,000
I arbitrarily chose the 6400 maximum to see how it would turn out... I'll try again and look at several second exposures. Back when I had a Sigma Dp2 I took long exposure shots at night of the downtown connector traffic from a bridge above it. I got those cool light trails and very detailed photographs. That Foveon processor was really amazing. That camera rendered some awesome images, but it was the most frustrating camera to use. Had use the Sigma proprietary software to extract the images from the SD card. It was awful.
 
All your subjects seem to be motionless, so the trivial solution is to use a tripod. Says someone who avoids carrying a tripod as much as possible :). Underexposing and recovering shadows in post generates the same noise or even more than a correct exposure at higher ISO, that depends on the characteristics of the camera. Longer shutter speeds or wider apertures are the only real solutions to limit the amount of noise. But you knew that of course :).

The camera seems to be choosing the iso with iso 6400 being a popular choice which invites that nice grain. I remember the GRII with it's TAV mode did this with similar satisfying results. But I wonder if there's a way of limiting the ISO to say 800 on the CL?


OK, so tonight I tried limiting the ISO to 100 and 200. Used the tripod and shot exposures of around 1 second. Here are some shots taken with the CV 21mm f1.8. I did not shoot wide open, but at and around f4

Not too much noise, but they seem almost too sharp, clinical maybe.

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Open up to f/1.8 and you should find the clinicality greatly alleviated ;)

Edit:

Assuming these shots are taken at ISO 200, f/4 and 1/2 sec,

at ISO 800 (+ 2 stops)
at f/1.8 (+ 2.3 stops)
at 1/30 sec (- 4 stops)

Should be fine. If the CL is too lightweight to stably hold you might get blur but that's how it would go for on a heavy M body.
 
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