[Leica] Comparison of M8 Photos in Infra-Red

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

>David,
>
>It was interesting to read about your test.
>
>It gave me a much better understanding of the (then) rather cryptic 
>wishes expressed by Henning: "If there ever comes a dedicated B&W M8 
>with special IR sensitivity, then I will be interested" - or 
>something to that effect.
>
>And I now understand that the self-induced censorship may not only 
>have been confined to Michael Reichmann et al.
>
>Mads

Not at all. Nothing cryptic. Just a straightforward preference for a 
specialized tool that would be better at its task than anything else 
out there.

That had nothing to do with the 'magenta' IR effect. It's just that I 
mostly use my M's to shoot B&W, and a dedicated B&W camera can 
produced much better B&W images than one that is basically a colour 
camera. No bayer pattern which means greater sensitivity and greater 
resolution with less artifacts. Also the rumours suggested a higher 
pixel density. A totally win-win situation for me. If it also kept 
the IR sensitivity, it would be an almost ideal M camera for me.

If there had not been the slight promise of this B&W digital M, I 
would have ordered and taken delivery of an M8 by now. And I would 
have been happy with it. I noticed the high IR sensitivity the first 
weekend I used the camera, when I took pictures at a family gathering 
where someone wore a black t-shirt, which exhibited the magenta cast. 
I've shot enough extended spectra stuff over the years to make the 
connection, and hauled out my IR filters right away, and was 
delighted with the results. I posted most of this information before, 
and also wrote Stefan Daniels about the results of my testing.

At that time I didn't know what might still be done with the 
firmware, but I knew it had to something pretty creative as I didn't 
think that the 'colour accuracy' issue could be fixed that way.

What I sent him, in part, was this:

----------------------------------------

3. With regard to the very strong Infrared sensitivity that I've 
noted; I assume that the production M8 will have the same 
characteristic as that is not something that is firmware related. 
That is something that I'm very interested in, as I've been shooting 
infrared material for decades, and with film it's always been a huge 
aggravation and cost, considering the need to always bracket. I did, 
however, notice that especially under tungsten light the colour 
accuracy was affected. Again, for my use that is less important than 
the useability in the infrared region. Please keep the infrared 
sensitivity.

----------------------------------------

The only thing is that I got the camera fairly late in day, in that 
what was presented was that the camera was final in its physical 
form, and only the firmware had yet to be finalized (version 0.23). 
So the information I sent Stefan Daniels definitely got to him too 
late to change much. He could have maybe gotten his superiors to 
delay the launch at that point, but not much else. He must have known 
about the spectral response before. In any case, at that time the 
inertia of the whole thing would probably have been immense.

I still feel the same way, and would rather use hot filters over the 
lenses than compromise the IR sensitivity. Obviously, I'm in the 
minority in this.

I'm not a wedding photographer, nor fashion photographer, nor any of 
the other areas were the use of a hot filter is a big pain and/or a 
ridiculous expense on top of an already overly expensive camera. My 
use, and particularly the B&W use would not be adversely affected by 
good IR response.

-- 
    *            Henning J. Wulff
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