3.25.2021

I wanted to show you how ISO 50 looks on the Leica SL2 but Blogger tends to compress the goodness out of images. So I made you a gallery on Smugmug. Details in the blog.

https://kirktuck.smugmug.com/ART-AROUND-AUSTIN/Austin-with-a-Leica-SL2-at-50-ISO/n-PsF2cm/


Whenever I write something about the color rendering of a lens or a camera, or the sharpness of one of them, and then post images here on the blog I'm inevitably a bit disappointed by how the images look within Blogger. 

Today I was using the recently acquired Leica SL2 and the ancient and battered Leica 28-70mm (which vignettes like crazy on the L-mount adapter at the wider focal lengths...and close up) and I was experimenting with ISO 50. I wanted to see what the low ISO (which is native) 50 would look like. How would the colors look? What does the ISO 50 setting do to the dynamic range? Is it better? Is it worse? I tried it and liked it a lot and wanted to write about it here but why write if you can show pictures, right?

But the conundrum is that whatever I show here is size limited by the program and the format. Not so on Smugmug.com which is where most of my client galleries happily reside. Then it dawned on me that I could just create a gallery and share the images with you that way. 

If you follow the link you'll see that I've required no password and the images can be downloaded at the full resolution at which I shot them. You can look on your own machine to your heart's content. 

The files started life as middle resolution Jpegs which is about 22 megapixels. The downrezzing in camera makes them appear a bit sharper. I set the WB manually to the cute little sun icon. I was able to set a lens profile in the camera menu for the exact Leica lens. 

If you click on the image you'll go larger but there are tools on the left hand side that allow you to go all the way to the full res. Also, if you choose to download an image it will download at the full resolution. 

These are for personal use. Please don't repost them. Thanks!

It's taking me a while to get used to the SL2 since the interface is so wildly foreign compared to just about everything else. But now it's starting to build up some happy momentum. See if you agree....

https://kirktuck.smugmug.com/ART-AROUND-AUSTIN/Austin-with-a-Leica-SL2-at-50-ISO/n-PsF2cm/

14 comments:

  1. Good Lord, what a difference. How much would it increase our subscription rate to make this a regular feature?

    ReplyDelete
  2. MM, I thought you'd like that. I either just got a lot better at photography or Blogger is really a painfully compressive filter for images...

    thanks for the quick feedback!

    ReplyDelete
  3. MM, subscriptions would go up about 1.5%. Anything more would be usury.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very cool. Thanks for taking the time to do this. The Smugmug version of photo number 3 has some light banding in the blue sky. I downloaded the image and viewed it on my MacBook. No banding in the downloaded version of this photo on my computer.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The pictures are lovely but there's one thing I just do not understand:

    Why is the image area at the top blue in color? Is this some special setting in the SL2?

    Where I live (Ohio) all the top portions of my outdoor images are flannel gray everyday:)

    Thanks for sharing!

    CDC

    ReplyDelete
  6. Chris DC The beauty of sky replacement.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Looking forward to your SmugMuged photos from your (next) newly aquired FUJIFILM GFX 100S at ISO 50. If image quality is the bomb and you don't have all the money in the world the Fuji seems to be the way to go at this point in camera history.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Just to be clear... I was kidding around with MM about subscriptions. They do not exist for this blog. The content is free to read at all times. Just a note to the too literal amongst us. ...

    ReplyDelete
  10. Chris in DC. That blue is an effect caused by too much clean oxygen in the air. The hygienic and oxygen rich air is imported from Patagonia in order to make the city more livable for our newly arriving billionaires. Just a small courtesy for the ultimately entitled. Though I doubt they will thank the taxpayers for that either....

    Bracing myself for the interesting changes the tech $$$$$ people will bring to our culture. In addition to raising the prices on all real estate...

    ReplyDelete
  11. My reaction is the same as the first commenter. I looked at the Smugmug images on a 27 inch Retina screen and almost dropped my coffee. There is such a difference. It would be great if you could start making a high res gallery part of your content. I don't think we had any idea just how rich and technically nice these files were. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I've seen the future for Austin - that nice ranch at the edge of town becomes a gated compound. Silly zoning battles over building a helipad. Here, when one two-digit billionaire (so called because he had a two-digit Microsoft employee number) got into a beef with a neighbor over the construction noise at his refurbished manse, he settled the litigation by simply buying the neighbor's house for $3.5 million.

    ReplyDelete
  13. UFFDA! Spectacular, Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "Just to be clear... I was kidding around with MM about subscriptions. They do not exist for this blog."

    Oh. And I was prepared to offer double the increase. :)

    Kirk, it is so nice of you to provide us this service. One of my pet peeves is that review sites so often comment on this or that characteristic of an image and you cannot see it due to artifacts, compression, etc.

    Thank you so very much.

    ReplyDelete

We Moderate Comments, Yours might not appear right after you hit return. Be patient; I'm usually pretty quick on getting comments up there. Try not to hit return again and again.... If you disagree with something I've written please do so civilly. Be nice or see your comments fly into the void. Anonymous posters are not given special privileges or dispensation. If technology alone requires you to be anonymous your comments will likely pass through moderation if you "sign" them. A new note: Don't tell me how to write or how to blog! I can't make you comment but I don't want to wade through spam!