HDR and Panoramic Photos

Many use the Leica M9 (or any other M-series) for street / portrait / candid photography. I also see lots of questions about the M9 in combination with nature / landscape photography. No idea why they ask these questions, because the Leica M-system is just as capable of shooting landscapes as any other camera.

The first photo is an 8 photo panorama shot from the hand (in manual mode). The second photo is a 3 exposure HDR (-2EV, 0EV, +2EV). Also shot without a tripod.

So, if anyone tells you that a Leica M-system camera isn't suitable for anything else than street / candid / portrait / documentary photography doesn't know what he/she is talking about. The limitation is the photographer. Not the equipment.

Cleaning the Leica M9 Sensor

The last couple of days, I noticed those well known dust spots in my photos. So time to clean the camera. I already tried the blowing technique with a Giottos Rocket-Air blower. This usually does the trick, but not this time.

Checking for dust on the sensor is done by using the following procedure;

• Use a small aperture on the camera (f/11 or smaller)
• Overexpose the image  by 1 or 2 stops (by using exposure compensation)
• Take a photo of a white piece of paper. No need to keep the camera stable, because the dust ain't moving anyway.
• Check the photo for spots by zooming in on the LCD screen on the back, and move the around. The dust spots should be very visible this way.

So, it's operating time:

Leica M9 and the Cleaning SetItems used are (clockwise): cheap-ass headlamp, VisibleDust cleaning fluid, VisibleDust Arctic Butterfly, Giottos Rocket-Air blower, the patient (with lockable cable release to be used with the Bulb setting on the camera), and Delkin full frame swabs.

First I tried the Giottos Rocket-Air blower to remove the dust. Result; nothing... Next up; the Arctic Butterfly. Still dust visible on the photo's. So, one option left; wet cleaning.

I used the full frame swabs from Delkin, but even though these are specially made for full frame sensors, I found the maneuvering in the camera housing troublesome/cramped. Also, it seemed that more dust was getting on the sensor by using these swabs. After two tries I quit using these swabs, and got my crop sensor swabs from VisibleDust out. I used those before on my Nikon D300 (with success). The advantage of these swabs is that they are smaller, which gave me more room to maneuver in the camera housing. And guess what; the dust was gone after the first swipe.

Excellent!!

For those who are wondering about cleaning their camera; there's not really much to is. As long as you prepare yourself, and use the right tools.

• When you have dust in your up-right corner on the photo, it means that the dust on your sensor is on the lower-left part (when you're looking in the sensor housing). The image you see through the lens / view-vinder is flipped horizontally, AND vertically on the sensor. This helps in determining where to put your cleaning efforts.
• Make sure you have a way of locking the shutter when performing the cleaning. I can't image what will happen to the shutter, when your swabbing the sensor and your finger slips of the shutter release. I always use a lockable cable-remote.
• Use a (Rocket) blower to remove the dust particles that are not stuck (glued) to the sensor.
• Try a Butterfly-like brush to remove the particles that not that stuck. Problem is, you don't know if they will come loose.
• Finally, use the wet method.

SanDisk Memorycard Issues with the M9

Everyone following the latest Leica M9 news, knows that there are some issues with the Leica M9 and certain SD memory cards. Worst-case scenario is that you didn't record a single photo in a whole day shooting.... The (visual) symptom is that the red light on the back of the M9 keeps flashing (and flashing, and flashing), and that the camera locks up eventually.

To resolve this, you need to remove the battery fro the M9, and re-insert it. After that you can see what the last properly recorded photo was, and hopefully, it wasn't a photo you made last month....

Today I noticed a little side-effect from this behavior; It seems that the filenames recording lags behind as well. After the SD card error, I changed to another SD card, and resumed shooting. At home I noticed that a lot of my photos had a '-2' in the filename after the import in Lightroom. So I guess that the M9 forgot to count/remember the earlier filenames that did made it to the disk, and started with a (incorrect) 'last-known-good' filename number on the new card. Might be that this doesn't occur on the original card, since the camera should see that the filename is already taken, and it increases the filename count. It could also be that it just overwrites a properly recorded image before going bad. -> mental note for the future.

This camera still amazes me in images quality etc. (which is good), and in buggy software (which is bad of course).

Leica M9, Carl Zeiss Sonnar T* 1.5/50mm ZM @ f/1.5

Day 11: Another Day in the Field

After the scare of the focus-shift had settled, I 'mastered' the compensation technique for this 'problem'. Turns out that moving myself about 2 inched towards the object AFTER I focussed on it, the object would be in focus (results may vary depending of the distance to the object). The further you're away, the smaller the compensation needs to be.

Both images were shot @ f/1.5 (Carl-Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50mm ZM T*) with a focus distance of 2 to 3 metres with little to no compensation for the focus shift. In the first image there's a bee just left of the flower/weed.