A walk-through of the Leica M9 and Leica M9-P menus in the Leica M9 article

[Overgaard]

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In celebrating the two year birthday of my Leica M9 I've prepared two new pages on the Leica M9 article.

 

This is the first one I have put online now:

 

leica.overgaard.dk - Thorsten Overgaard's Leica Pages - Leica M9 Digital Rangefinder Camera - Page 14: A walk-through of the Leica M9 and Leica M9-P menus

 

Any comments or questions would be good as I want to streamline it a bit more and make it very simple to use and easy to understand.

[jaapv]

Hi Thorsten!

 

Great idea.

 

A few points I would like to make:

 

With White balance the setting is unimportant, as you have the same presets in your raw converter as on the camera, so it does not really matter where you choose them.

 

As for compression, you just mention 18 Mb. I would advise uncompressed to be wholly futureproof if you have enough storage space on the computer.

 

You missed the renaming of the user menu - and it is hard to give advice on how to use it as that is a very personal choice. Some use it for easy selection of uncoded lenses, I have one for high-ISO shots as it saves my exposure compensation,monitor brightness (low) etc. I would say it saves time if you want to change multiple settings for special situations.

 

Thank you for your great site

[viramati]

Very interesting and informative read Thorsten

I do though have to beg to differ on 2 points but then these a personal things

1. User Profiles. I have to say that I find these very useful for use with non leica lenses such as my CV 12mm which needs various parameters set in different ways and I can just choose them from the user profile and I can even write a name for it rather than having just profile 1,2,3 etc. I also have a setting for street where I often use auto iso and other specific settings. which brings me to point 2

2. Auto- iso. I tend to use this a lot in street work where the light can change very quickly and I want to be able to set the shutter speed and aperture and let the auto iso take care of the exposure. I can quickly judge roughly the ambient light and adjust shutter speed but the really unfortunate thing about this setting is that leica give you 1/125sec as the maximum when I really need it to be at least 1/250sec.

Anyway thanks again

P.S Jaap you beat me to it as I'm not a very quick writer

and please please leica never remove the user profile setup

[tele_player]

As for compression, you just mention 18 Mb. I would advise uncompressed to be wholly futureproof if you have enough storage space on the computer.

 

On this point we disagree. DNG compression doesn't affect the future accessibility of the files.

My title at work is 'senior software engineer', I can comment on things like this with some authority.

 

The important aspect of DNG's future accessibility is the fact that the DNG spec is publicly available. As time goes by, the only thing needed is to shift the files onto newer storage media as older technologies become obsolete.

 

-Robert

[jaapv]

It is not about the accessibility. There should be no difference if both files adhere to the DNG standard.But the compression is not lossless. At present one only misses the data lost when photoshopping the file very extensively. But in the future edting programs may/will need more data than the compressed file can provide.

[salim]

Very useful article. However menu wise isnt the M9 and M9-P exactly the same. The way the artile is set as if they are different. Or am I missing something?

[Overgaard]

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Very useful article. However menu wise isnt the M9 and M9-P exactly the same. The way the artile is set as if they are different. Or am I missing something?

 

It's the same menu. I have just made that clear. Thanks for noticing.

[Overgaard]

It is not about the accessibility. There should be no difference if both files adhere to the DNG standard.But the compression is not lossless. At present one only misses the data lost when photoshopping the file very extensively. But in the future edting programs may/will need more data than the compressed file can provide.

 

There was a discussion at Leica Camera AG last year about this where it was said that many tests had shown that nothing was missing in the image when compressing.

 

It may be likely that there would be more data to work with in PS or LR in an UNcompressed file if you want to stretch the image and make changes.

 

The compressed file is a DNG, only it is made smaller. So it will be compatible with any DNG standard in the future.

 

Thanks for this.

[Overgaard]

Hi Thorsten!

 

Great idea.

 

A few points I would like to make:

 

With White balance the setting is unimportant, as you have the same presets in your raw converter as on the camera, so it does not really matter where you choose them.

 

 

 

I've just changed the whole text about White Balancing to clarify what it is and why (I think) that it should be done in camera.

[Overgaard]

Very interesting and informative read Thorsten

I do though have to beg to differ on 2 points but then these a personal things

1. User Profiles. I have to say that I find these very useful for use with non leica lenses such as my CV 12mm which needs various parameters set in different ways and I can just choose them from the user profile and I can even write a name for it rather than having just profile 1,2,3 etc. I also have a setting for street where I often use auto iso and other specific settings. which brings me to point 2

2. Auto- iso. I tend to use this a lot in street work where the light can change very quickly and I want to be able to set the shutter speed and aperture and let the auto iso take care of the exposure. I can quickly judge roughly the ambient light and adjust shutter speed but the really unfortunate thing about this setting is that leica give you 1/125sec as the maximum when I really need it to be at least 1/250sec.

Anyway thanks again

P.S Jaap you beat me to it as I'm not a very quick writer

and please please leica never remove the user profile setup

 

Great input viramati and jaap. I will be incorporating these viewpoint in the text now.

[IkarusJohn]

Thorsten,

 

Another great addition to your article. When I find the time, I will send you a spell checked version of the entire article - just a bit busy at the moment. If you could send me a Word version, I'd be happy to mark the changes and add comment if this helps - don't worry about IP or loss of your material; I'm a barrister, and the material is so distinctively yours.

 

Two comments - I also find the Profiles useful for quickly selecting settings that I need for different situations. Though I have to say that I don't trust them entirely, so I find myself adjusting as I go along.

 

I also bracket when I'm unsure about compensation. When I started with the M9, for some reason I was under-exposing pretty much all the time. I don't feel I have done much different, but with time this has changed. Perhaps the camera has encouraged me to look more critically at exposure, which is a good thing.

 

Also (while it's not in the menus), will you include a section on exposure compensation? Most people will understand neutral grey as a concept, and that in auto the camera will try to under-expose bright scenes (snow) and over-expose dark scenes (inside churches etc). The common recommendation is to shoot manual, and simply set the shutter above or below the metered reading. The downside with this is getting used to fiddling with dials, while concentrating on the image. The fool proof method is an incident light reading, but I gave up on all that and sold my Sekonic meter.

 

As I see it, there are a number of alternatives (none of the wrong):

 

- stick with auto-exposure, and take your chances. Not ideal, but in a hurry, it can work if you're confident that the reading will be about right.

 

- stick with auto and select a skin tone or other neutral grey and use the exposure lock. I do this a bit (habit from Nikon days, where the EV adjustment was fiddly), but it's not ideal recomposing and refocussing with your finger half on the shutter release.

 

- stick with auto, and either bracket or set the compensation in the Set menu. This way, you can identify the compensation in advance (e.g. if you're going to be shooting in snow), and then largely forget about it. You also get the exposure readout in the view finder, which I like.

 

- go manual. This involves either taking a reading in auto and then resetting it to a compensated value, or starting manual, and then selecting a shutter speed a stop or two in the direction you need. With the M9, as the aperture and shutter rotate in the same relative directions, this is easy, but I find I have no idea what the shutter speed is (not in the viewfinder), so I have to check. I dislike taking my eye from the view finder.

 

- use the dial on the back of the camera. I haven't done this much, but I suspect it's the best alternative. I do need to get used to the rotation direction, and it effectively means ditching my Luigi half case. This isn't the end of the world, but I like the protection it gives and the feel of the grip.

 

This probably crossing more territory than just talking about menus, but this goes to the heart of your style of photography, I feel. Set the ISO, set the WB, set the aperture wide (use an ND filter if you need to), control the settings and shoot.

 

How you compensate the camera's metering is a huge component of this.

 

Cheers

John

[jaapv]

Whatever else, Thorsten - the photographs in the article are superb!

[Gerard]

+1

[tele_player]

Of course - when I read 'future proof', I mistakenly thought you were referring to LR's DNG compression. I don't use the M9's compressed RAW.

As a computer guy, I think it would be interesting to test the effect of Leica's compression scientifically, but to do that correctly would require some information which Leica is very unlikely to provide.

 

It is not about the accessibility. There should be no difference if both files adhere to the DNG standard.But the compression is not lossless. At present one only misses the data lost when photoshopping the file very extensively. But in the future edting programs may/will need more data than the compressed file can provide.

[jaapv]

It has been tested in LFI in 2007. The losses in Leica's in- camera compression are well documented. I believe the DNG compression as used in Adobe's DNG converter and LR etc. is lossless, but that is not what I meant.

[01af]

Any comments or questions would be good as I want to streamline it a bit more and make it very simple to use and easy to understand.

There are many little quirks and inaccuracies, and even a few mistakes.

 

A walk-through of the Leica M9 and Leica M9-P menus

 

The third line says, "The menu on the Leica M9 and Leica M9-P are identical. They are the same." Don't say the same thing twice. It's not wrong but it feels rather clumsy and makes the reader wonder if the author really is confident about what he's trying to say.

 

White balance

 

There is only one Kelvin scale, not several. And as far as I know, the idea of using that scale to express colour temperatures was not Lord Kelvin's. A short explanation (maybe including a link to Wikipedia) that the colour temperature of light basically is the temperature, in Kelvin, at which a so-called "black body" (e. g. a piece of coal or metal) would glow emitting light of the respective colour would be more useful than a snide remark about Lord Kelvin's alleged attempt of becoming immortal. He was famous and a legend in his living days so he wasn't in need of any tricks to immortalise himself—he already was. I think—but I could be wrong—the concept originally came from the astronomers who at some point realised that the different colours of the stars are not random but closely correlated with their temperatures.

 

At some point, the article says, "Digital photography [...] has largely been advertised as 'you can fix it in the computer,' but that is rubbish." No, it's not. For in-camera JPEG images it true but for raw images, it absolutely does not make the slightest difference whether you set the white balance before (in the camera) or after the shot (in the computer). In fact, setting it before is just a hint in the metadata and does not affect the recorded raw image data in any way. So getting the white balance right is important only for the in-camera JPEG files ... and even those will take some fine-adjustments to the white balance just graciously. The article completely fails to mention this ... which is strange as you do recommend using the DNG format elsewhere.

 

Personally, I've set my M9 to DNG+JPEG format and to the Daylight preset and mostly just leave it there. Only for extended indoor shots I'd select Tungsten (or 3200 K, as you recommend). Manual white-balancing may be appropriate for studio set-ups or similar situations but is definitely recommended against for any kind of editorial or photojournalistic shooting—it's a waste of time, and you risk ending up shooting at a grossly wrong setting.

 

Compression

 

"DNG stands for Adobe Digital NeGative and is fundamentally the same as RAW [which means raw; it's simply the raw data from the data you have in a file], only DNG is an Adobe standard." It's sad that you so fundamentally don't understand what the significance of DNG actually is. Sure, DNG basically is just another raw format ... but unlike all other raw formats, it's an open standard—that's the point. It is open in three ways. First, the specification is fully documented, and the documentation is available free of charge to anyone. Second, it is open for use by anyone—any camera manufacturer can use it, and any software manufacturer can develop tools (viewers, converters, etc.) for it. Third, it is open for any camera or scanner technology—it can hold raw data of any kind, of any bit depth, for any number of primary colours (not just three), for any colour model (Bayer, Foveon); it can include any kind of metadata. It can even hold non-raw image data. Try to create a converter that for instance converts Canon's CR2 file into Nikon's NEF format—that's impossible. But one can convert any proprietary raw format into DNG format. Furthermore, you can read modern cameras' DNG files with seven-year-old DNG converters—try that with any other raw format!

 

And by the way—it's not RAW but raw. It's no three-letter acronym but just a simple word in the English language. The only format actually called RAW is a whimsical Photoshop file format which is an entirely different thing.

 

Exposure compensation

 

This section implies that 0 and -1/3 were the only two selectable values.

 

I use 0 in manual exposure mode and -1/3 in auto exposure mode for high-contrast subjects (and 0 again for low-contrast subjects) ... but of course you can select any value from -3 to +3, in 1/3 increments.

 

This section also fails to mention that exp. comp. can also get adjusted via the thumb wheel on the camera's back (unless disabled in the main menu), and that the wheel is just another control to affect the very same setting. It is described further down so here a short reference would be useful—e. g. like this: "The exposure compensation can also be accessed using the thumb wheel; for details see section xyz below."

 

User profile

 

I think it's a very bad idea to discourage the readers to use this essential feature. It is far more useful than just to provide presets for several different users. I am the only user of my M9, and I'm using the user profiles virtually every day. If nothing else, it's extremely useful to quickly and reilably reset the whole camera to a known state ... no matter what you previously had worked at.

 

The ISO menu

 

"ISO 80 is called 'PULL 80' because it is an artificial reduction of the sensors sensitivity to half—or one could call that a buil-in ND filter [ND=Neutral Density, a grey filter reducing light; usually put in front of the lens]."

 

No, one cannot call the "PULL 80" setting a built-in ND filter because it significantly reduces the camera's dynamic range while an ND filter doesn't. So never use PULL 80 unless there absolutely is no other way to get the shot!

 

Lens detection

 

It should be made clear that automatic lens detection will work only in conjunction with 6-bit-coded lenses. Manual lens selection is mentioned a few lines further down but it is still unclear that automatic lens recognition will do nothing with uncoded lenses.

 

Furthermore, it would be worth mentioning that the lens menu does not contain any lenses for manual selection that don't come without 6-bit code. So all lenses released after 2006 are not available for selection in the menu. The logic being, these lenses all are coded so no need ever to select them manually (which is a nuisance for those who use 3rd-party lenses and would like to pick the closest Leica lens from the menu).

 

Flash sync

 

You prefer setting this to "1st curtain", and you even are giving a reason as to why (albeit only indirectly so)—but this section completely fails to explain why there is the option to choose "2nd curtain" as an alternative. Your own preference is good and valid—but the primary point of the whole article is to educate the new-coming user to find his own preferences, isn't it?

 

Auto slow sync

 

Same issue as above—no explanation why and when slow sync might be useful (when using the flash gun for fill-in rather than as main light source).

 

Color management

 

"The correct setting would be 'Adobe RGB' as this is the largest color space (best quality due to more possible color tones)."

 

As a matter of fact, this is the wrong setting. The correct setting is 'sRGB', and 'Adobe RGB' should be selected only when the user is familiar with the minutiae of colour management and absolutely aware of the consequences of his choice. In the vast majority of cases, in-camera JPEG files will be used for applications or in situations where sRGB is the proper colour space. Converting 8-bit JPEG images from Adobe RGB to sRGB is a bad thing which should be avoided if possible (of course, converting colour spaces in the other direction would be even worse).

 

And DNG files aren't affected by the in-camera colour management anyway. So set the camera to 'sRGB' and be done with it (unless you've got a very specific reason to do otherwise). Furthermore, do not confuse a narrower colour space with lower quality. For a low-bit-depth format like JPEG, just the contrary is true is most cases.

 

DNG setup

 

This section is mostly wrong. The only point to agree with is that the 'Compressed' setting won't affect the final image quality in any perceptible way—not even when pixel-peeping. But technically, it is a lossy compression method which means that actual data gets actually thrown away. Sure, it's insignificant data ... but not empty data.

 

Furthermore, Leica's compression method depends on software no less than Adobe's compression method does. So your implication that Adobe's DNG compression was inherently unsafe while Leica's in-camera DNG compression was safe is just bunkum. As a matter of fact, both compression methods are equally safe (or unsafe). Adobe's method is lossless and can be applied to Leica's compressed and uncompressed DNG files equally well. It will compress Leica-compressed file even further but without further data loss.

 

What is this, by the way?

 

"It is prominently located on the front of the camera and is of no practical use, except you can see the different pairs of framelines ..." Well—at the beginning you said the same thing twice in one line ... and here you're saying two contradicting things in one single sentence. In fact, being able to see different pairs of framelines without actually switching lenses (or even with no lens mounted at all) is an extremely practical use. I use it frequently.

 

"I frankly don't know of any who uses it ..." Now you do.

 

 

Whatever else, Thorsten—the photographs in the article are superb!

Yes, they definitely are!

[jaapv]

I admire the time and trouble you have taken to write this post, Olaf - although I certainly would have chosen a different tone from time to time, most points are valid, I think. I disagree with just one thing - the part about sRGB and Adobe RGB - yes -in a JPG workflow you are right, unexpected things may happen unless you have the whole chain color-managed, but does it not apply to the postprogramming program used? Many will be TIFF based where the best results will be seem working in the widest color space and dropping down is done when one needs an sRGB file - nowadays only for web use in most cases.

And Lightroom will do the whole work at the final stage anyway.

If one has an Adobe RGB compatible monitor the "risks" of Adobe RGB are minimal imo.

 

One could argue that beginners should stick to the safest option - sRGB, but my take is to learn to do it right from the beginning.

And yes - I do use the frameline selector too from time to time - so now we are two

[01af]

I disagree with just one thing—the part about sRGB and Adobe RGB. Yes—in a JPG workflow you are right, unexpected things may happen unless you have the whole chain color-managed, but does it not apply to the postprogramming program used?

The primary reason to use JPEG right out of the camera (as opposed to raw files) is to have ready-to-use images that require minimal post-processing—such as cropping and resizing only—or no post-processing at all. And most applications that expect JPEG files also expect sRGB as the colour profile. sRGB is the profile that you're supposed to use when quick and easy image handling is called for. So JPEG files that contain an Adobe RGB image are uncommon and often will cause all kinds of problems. Sure—you can use Adobe RGB with JPEG files ... but it requires every part of the image-handling chain to know how to deal with non-standard ICC profiles. My experience is, as soon as you hand out JPEG files which are not sRGB, problems will pop up everywhere sooner rather than later.

 

And it's a common misconception to believe that Adobe RGB will give you more colours. In JPEG format, it won't. You have always just 256 shades per colour channel, and in Adobe RGB, the steps from one colour to the next just are bigger which leads to a wider colour space at the expense of coarser colour discrimination. So the best quality is not achieved with the widest colour space but with the narrowest that is wide enough. And sRGB is wide enough for most subjects. And when it's not then you can always fall back upon DNG, as you're always shooting DNG+JPEG, don't you?

 

Converting JPEG images from Adobe RGB to sRGB is not a good thing as it will leave gaps in the colour ranges much the same way as you will get gaps or combs in the tone historgram when cutting your 256 levels back to, say, 246 levels. Converting colour spaces is fine with 16-bit file formats ... but not with 8-bit JPEG. Sure—for practical intents and purposes this is just an academical issue; a converted JPEG file will look just fine in most cases. However don't delude yourself into thinking that shooting in Adobe RGB automatically will yield the best-possible colour quality. If in the end you need sRGB images then you will get the best colour quality out of the JPEG format when shooting in sRGB right from the beginning.

 

Shooting JPEG files in Adobe RGB colour space makes sense only when 1) for some reason you're bound to shooting in JPEG format only, and 2) you have the control over the whole image-processing chain down to the final print. The image file should never leave Adobe RGB, i. e. never get converted to sRGB. Otherwise, better shoot sRGB.

 

 

Many will be TIFF-based where the best results will be seem working in the widest color space and dropping down is done when one needs an sRGB file—nowadays only for web use in most cases.

Yes, that's the preferred way of working ... but in order to make sense, it does not depend on the original working file being TIFF (as opposed to JPEG) but on the original file being 16 bits per channel (as opposed to 8 bits per channel). With JPEG files out of the camera, this precondition is not met.

 

 

If one has an Adobe RGB compatible monitor the "risks" of Adobe RGB are minimal imo.

The risks will start raising their ugly heads not on your own monitor but on other people's monitors (or printers or whatever).

[jaapv]

I would not for a moment consider anything but 16-bit workflow starting from DNG. Unless I were in a tearing hurry and then a JPG- in camera settings output is all I would do.

And yes - the problems start when the files get into uncontrolled places. That is what Paul was saying - and that is sRGB territory I concur - but the OP was asking about the best settings in his own chain.

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Overgaard]

There are many little quirks and inaccuracies, and even a few mistakes.

 

 

The ISO menu

 

 

No, one cannot call the "PULL 80" setting a built-in ND filter because it significantly reduces the camera's dynamic range while an ND filter doesn't. So never use PULL 80 unless there absolutely is no other way to get the shot!

 

 

 

[/color]

 

 

Dear Olaf,

 

Thanks for this. I'm still in the process of fine-tuning this to be simple, yet correct and applicable. So far so good I hope.

 

Can you clarify the point above, I would like to know more about this.

 

In general my understanding is that you have the most original in the base iso, the 160 ISO, and that the quality of the colors and noise depend on the quality of the software algorithms and camera profiles in for example LR. So for me reducing to half or increasing to the double would be the same. And the further you go from the original base ISO, the harder it will be to get the true colors and all.

 

I'm clear that this might not explain all, but it explain the point I usually try to make: That you have to stay between 80 and 800 ISO to have reasonable true colors and reasonable noise. And if you can shoot it right in camera, you don't stretch the software algorithms in trying to adjust colors and exposure.

 

Thanks for your efforts on this!