Leica M Monochrome

troopers · September 3, 2012

Any owners out there....comments?

I find myself converting to b/w more often...I hear it's a must own for b/w photography.

ziggy53 · September 3, 2012

First, a very minor correction; it's a "Leica M Monochrom". There is no final "e". (It doesn't matter to me, but it does to some.)

It's a very curious thing how some folks think that a monochromatic camera by anyone is a "must own". I mean it's curious in that most of us live in a world full of color. It's only a fluke of engineering and science and chemistry that B&W film was invented first, and it used to be an honorable goal to produce color photography.

The thing you must ask yourself is "why" you wish to pursue monochromatic imagery? The other thing to ask yourself is whether Leica engineers have produced a camera which correctly interprets the colored world into monochromatic tones that work for your purposes?

One of the nicer things about color photography is that "you", the photographer, get to choose how you wish to render the tones, including the conversion and interpretation of color tones into monochromatic tones.

In a digitally perfect world, each imager would acquire luminance and color image data simultaneously but separately. In the Bayer chip world, each photosite captures only some of either luminance or color information, which gets interpolated and interpreted by the demosaicing and processing steps into a (more or less) complete color image. Working from RAW files at least we gain some versatility and flexibility in how we interpret tones and colors.

Working from a monochromatic image we relinquish much more control in many ways, while gaining some control in other ways. What we gain is a type of tonal purity, since the demosaicing step is avoided. Since the sensitivity of even a monochromatic imager doesn't match human sensitivity to light, there still needs to be linear to logarithmic translation of luminance tones, although the exact translation curve is subject to human design during initial processing. This just means that some engineer or engineering team had to make decisions about how to interpret the sensor data, unless a true imager readout can be preserved in a RAW file.

Functionally, I like what I have seen from the Leica M Monochrom. The luminance displays a type of smoothness that is difficult to achieve from a Bayer design*, and practically impossible to obtain in a single exposure from a Bayer design.

Of course, the camera is still just a singular tool for the photographer, and no single tool matches all needs.

*(Check out the Hasselblad H4D-50MS and H4D-200MS for an example of a Bayer camera which "can" capture representative color and luminance tones for each photosite, although it requires multiple exposures internally, and sophisticated processing afterwards.)

Osprey · September 3, 2012

I have been curious about the interest in BW photography in the digital world also, having done a lot of it as a young boy. I must say that at that time color was maybe just becoming common; however the magic of the chemical darkroom was something I treasure to this day. That said when color became available I moved on.
I think that people who did not have the experience are curious about BW. Many of the famous photographers that they hear about produced great classic images in BW. I would be curious to ask Ansell Adams if he would have, given the choice shoot in color or BW, or given the chance do both in one camera. Of course I can’t do that. What do you think?
The real question is why would a manufacturer want to produce a BW only body? As Ziggy stated we have the luxury of converting our images digitally to BW or Green and Blue, or Grey and Red or anything we want.
All that said Photography as Art allows the creator to set the goals and objectives of the image. Personally I would not want to invest the $$$$$ to do BW only.

ziggy53 · September 3, 2012

Osprey wrote: »

... I would be curious to ask Ansell Adams if he would have, given the choice shoot in color or BW, or given the chance do both in one camera. Of course I can’t do that. What do you think? ...

Ansel Adams did experiment with color film photography, and some have been published:

http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color-Harry-Callahan/dp/0821219804
http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color-Andrea-Stillman/dp/0316056413

I honestly believe that he would have embraced digital color photography for its post-processing capabilities. After all, some of his best works are highly processed:

(Ansel Adams attribution, images from this site: http://jeffsiddens.com/2011/10/variations-on-moonrise-hernandez-new-mexico/)

troopers · September 5, 2012

Thanks Ziggy for the most informative response, although you lost about halfway down.

Thanks for the correction on Monochrom (darn autocorrect). I hear/read that b/w conversions (from my D800) doesn't close to what the Monochrom can produce...I can't quantify it...maybe it's the tonal range, or the deep blacks. I would love to see two same b/w shots, one from the Monochrom and one converted from color.

ziggy53 · September 6, 2012

Take, for example, this image:

http://ziggy53.smugmug.com/photos/i-HVB6tvZ/0/O/i-HVB6tvZ.jpg

It's just a snapshot of a (then) three-year-old at a park, new to him. Like any typical child of his age he's scrambling to try everything. In the context of the situation, just a series of snaps to commemorate the day, I felt this was a pretty good example of his exuberance.

The image started as this:

Pretty much a "tosser". However, I liked his stance and I liked his expression, so I figured that it was worth a try to see if I could bring out something usable.

This image quickly derived:

... but it was still obvious that the clutter of leaves and the distraction of the picnic table growing from his head needed to be dealt with.

Using B&W processing and this filter set and settings:

..., along with some underlying color work (which I won't show because it only "makes sense" in the context of the resulting B&W conversion), I arrived at the final image:

..., where the leaves are tonally subdued and the picnic table is less distractive. It's not perfect but the eye is drawn to the boy and his activity and not to the surroundings. All of this was accomplished without the use of complicated image masks.

The problem with the Leica M Monochrom is that you will lose this opportunity for tonal correction, since you'll be dealing with Leica's definition of how to convert the color scene.

In short, you relinquish a lot of artistic control by shooting with a dedicated B&W digital body.

As far as the "Leica look", I believe that it boils down to using lenses of double-gauss optical construction, and the Nikkor 50mm, f1.8D is an example of that design, or using a similar design, like any of the Nikkor fast aperture primes from 35mm through 85mm, and then applying tonal adjustments and sharpening to yield a similar appearance.

There is absolutely nothing proprietary to Leica cameras, digital or film, to warrant their mystique. Everything Leica is, of course, very well designed and I do "like" what they can achieve, but I like what each manufacturer produces in their top-tier equipment.

SillKicking · September 8, 2012

So lets be up front here.. I have a Leica habit. Ever since I first held a Leica Iiic I have been hooked.

Like most people I made the switch to digital 10 years ago and love my D700 for lots of reasons but for street photography it just does not work for me.

However there is nothing quite like my 1956 Leica M3 DS with a 50mm rigid Summicron mounted on it. Its my goto camera for street photography and the outfit I always carry when travelling. I shoot 95% black and white and often at night.

So to the M9M.. for me it has real appeal.. a digital M3 with high ISO and super IQ. I can even mount my 1955 Summarit 50mm f1.5 on it and get all that classic Leica glow.

The real problem with the M9M (and all digital Leica gear) is the price.

So I will stick with a Nikon DSLR for digital for now.

PHOTOMAYBE · September 12, 2012

ziggy53 wrote: »

Ansel Adams did experiment with color film photography, and some have been published:

http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-QUOTE]
Ansel Adams was a master darkroom technician as well his long time assistant Alan Ross.I am sure he would revelel in the situation we have at our finger tips with out breathing toxic poisons.He did HDR manually on the easel.An amazing person he was indeed.
But I think once I learn more I will be able to create B&W images that will be acceptable from an original digital color image.So I think that although a neat camera Leica came out with the only advantage is the German Glass in front of the camera and I read somewhere that by taking the chip out that creates the color it somehow will allow a sharper image.Remember I barely know which end of a digital camera button to push or how to use Elements or photoshop,but I bet you once you know your stuff you will have no problem creating a beautiful B&W from a color digital shot.
Sorry, I was a B&W darkroom geek and held Ansel Adams on a pedistal as a kid when I was in NYC.Yes he did play around in color as well as Ziggy showed.

mercphoto · September 12, 2012

Thought this link to a blog article was appropriate.

http://www.johnthawley.com/journal/2012/5/15/leica-m9-monochrome.html

ziggy53 · September 14, 2012

The German/English Leica M Monochrom Rangefinder User Manual is here (English starts around page 85):

http://en.leica-camera.com/assets/file/file_6920.pdf

Leica M Monochrome

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