carbon_dragon Posted June 14, 2012 Share #341 Posted June 14, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) The M8 may be the closest I get to this camera. I can't help thinking though that a good color camera such as the M8 or M9 with a good black and white conversion technique using the color channels is the equivalent of a black and white camera with filters you can apply after the fact. It's an advantage of digital that it's a shame not to take advantage of. The number of people who will be able to get access much less purchase an M9 is already pretty limited. Of those the ones who aren't just buying a Nikon D4 or high end Canon is even less. The ones who actually want to buy a rangefinder and are willing to pay $8000 and on top of that want a camera without color capability has to be pretty small, even over the entire world. I'd love to know the demographics of Leica buyers. I make a pretty good living and even the M9 is pretty much out of my reach. Who do you have to be to be able to just order such a ultra-niche camera? Don't get me wrong, if money was no object I'd order one just out of curiosity. It's an interesting idea but I can't help seeing it as evidence of Leica's questionable judgement. Frankly I hope I am wrong because I need Leica alive and able to repair its cameras. But perhaps I'm being too hard on Leica expecting them to be a player in the production of cameras for real people to take pictures. Maybe they know their audience and they know that most of their customers care more about the mystique and exclusivity and will pay for it. Maybe they know if they produced a camera at more reasonable prices, most of their customers wouldn't be interested and they couldn't compete with Canon and Nikon, strictly on performance. Leica does produce some nicely made, but cheaper and more modern small cameras, but they seem to make sure they cripple them so they don't threaten the Ms. If the X2 had an electronic viewfinder and they could use Leica lenses, still at $2000, what then? I wonder. Of course it wouldn't be full frame but it would be a pretty interesting entry to the Leica line. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted June 14, 2012 Posted June 14, 2012 Hi carbon_dragon, Take a look here Survey: Your opinion about the new LEICA M MONOCHROM. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
M'Ate Posted June 14, 2012 Share #342 Posted June 14, 2012 One of the most celebrated Leica M photographers of the last 10 years gives his opinion. Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here… Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! Link to post Share on other sites Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members! ' data-webShareUrl='https://www.l-camera-forum.com/topic/179026-survey-your-opinion-about-the-new-leica-m-monochrom/?do=findComment&comment=2039777'>More sharing options...
pop Posted June 14, 2012 Share #343 Posted June 14, 2012 ..gives his opinion. They said that about the LASER' date=' too, in 1961. ([i']Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation;[/i] a solution in search of a problem). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwilliamsphotography Posted June 14, 2012 Share #344 Posted June 14, 2012 This has been an interesting thread ... IMO, the primary draw was and continues to be higher ISO performance ... and all the color conversion debates are irrelevant to that performance factor. The M9 can't do it. You can't take advantage of color info at higher ISOs because ISO 3,200 to 10,000 isn't an option. That also answers Canon Ambassador Jeff Ascough's "Problem that never existed" theory. If you want a super low light M digital camera for B&W work, it hasn't existed until now. Using a M9 and $11,000 Noctilux is a partial option be it a grossly impractical one ... or you can shoot with a Canon, like he does. For now, I'm considering taking a pass on the MM for reasons other than those discussed here ... supporting a possible M10 replacement for the M9, and the possibility of both upgrading my S lenses to LS versions, plus securing a H to S adapter have placed a hold on available funds that would have been ear-marked for this camera ... and a S3 would be priority #1 should that happen in future. If the M10 isn't my cup of tea, then those funds will be diverted to a MM. So I'm in a holding pattern until the other M shoe drops. -Marc Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 14, 2012 Share #345 Posted June 14, 2012 Since this won't be an impulsive purchase, I assume that most of the people who buy the MM know why they are doing so. If it sells it will be good for them and for Leica. Being a small camera company it makes sense to me that Leica looks to filling niches that are not being served by larger companies. Especially considering they don't have comparable resources to compete with technology alone. That being said I have to say that one thing that digital photography brought us is low light color photography that is way more capable than what was done on film. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted June 14, 2012 Share #346 Posted June 14, 2012 Alan, rather than concentrating on the mathematical-like references to color, it might help to consider the physiology of human sight and how luminance influences the perception of colors. We are dichromatics. The eye-brain is what creates color. Not filters. The term 'nonspectral' color should inform us that we see colors that do not really exist. Perhaps there is an intellectual misunderstanding that is confusing us (or me) here. I referred earlier to an excellent book on this, possibly in a different thread. I'm sure it will interest you. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing by Margaret Livingstone. one thing that digital photography brought us is low light color photography that is way more capable than what was done on film True. In fact, we can make color pictures of scenes that are not color to our eyes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 14, 2012 Share #347 Posted June 14, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) Alan, rather than concentrating on the mathematical-like references to color, it might help to consider the physiology of human sight and how luminance influences the perception of colors. We are dichromatics. The eye-brain is what creates color. Not filters. The term 'nonspectral' color should inform us that we see colors that do not really exist. Perhaps there is an intellectual misunderstanding that is confusing us (or me) here. I referred earlier to an excellent book on this, possibly in a different thread. I'm sure it will interest you. Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing by Margaret Livingstone. True. In fact, we can make color pictures of scenes that are not color to our eyes. Thanks, but I already have a pretty good idea how the human visual system works (constancy, etc.) and the different ways colors are created, altered, or influenced in various scenes. (Scattering, surface effects, fluorescence, refraction, etc.) The issue with color photography is not to reproduce colors from the real world as this is impossible but to make acceptable facsimiles or pleasant interpretations of them on a screen or print. The color separation method is how this is accomplished in color photography. My hat is off to them if a reasonably nice interpretation can be accomplished with each filter over the Bayer array still allowing half of the volume of light and half or more of the visible spectrum to pass with no significant attenuation. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent M10 Posted June 14, 2012 Share #348 Posted June 14, 2012 Patrick Clarke did a guest post on SteveHuffPhoto.com about monochrome conversions and the Monochrom. Pretty interesting information: Unscrambling The Monochrome Egg – A B&W Camera only explanation by Patrick Clarke | STEVE HUFF PHOTOS Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 17, 2012 Share #349 Posted June 17, 2012 One of the most celebrated Leica M photographers of the last 10 years gives his opinion. Yes- but why is he shouting so loudly? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 25, 2012 Share #350 Posted June 25, 2012 Let's quote B&W on filters vs digital: Filters solve problems before they arise on the sensor.As opposed to postprocessing programs. Those cannot create data that are not in the file. Many of the most popular colour and contrast manipulations work by deleting data. (destructive editing) Such, partly rough, manipulations leave gaps in the file that may not be visible on the monitor, but will be apparent on a high-resolution print. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjh Posted June 25, 2012 Share #351 Posted June 25, 2012 Any why don't the manufacturers put the IR/UV dyes in the Bayer filter to avoid an, in effect, neutral density filter over the red pixel? Because it isn’t something you would wish to avoid – the sensor’s excessive sensitivity for red needs to be compensated for. Even the sensor of the M Monochrom shares the cover glass that absorbs not just IR, but also some of the red light. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted June 25, 2012 Share #352 Posted June 25, 2012 Let's quote B&W on filters vs digital: They couldn't be biased in the slightest Honestly, this is not something I've *seen* proof of in print, certainly not with filters for mixed light correction (which I still use all the time). I suppose if you're really trying to torque a file severely in post with a low-quality original, maybe. But I doubt it... Still, my experience isn't proof. YMMV. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 25, 2012 Share #353 Posted June 25, 2012 They couldn't be biased in the slightest . Lol! I think there may well be a bit of marketing apart from the bias, however, there is a point there somewhere. Working in 8 bits will soon show that postprocessing does deteriorate a file. Even 16 bits probably does and we all know it is possible to kill a file in extreme postprocessing. So something must be happening, I guess, although I personally have never seen this alleged "good on screen - bad in print" effect. But I must admit that I have been thinking for a long time that physical balancing of the color channels with an optical filter must be better than tweaking the amplification with the attendant noise problems. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 25, 2012 Share #354 Posted June 25, 2012 But I must admit that I have been thinking for a long time that physical balancing of the color channels with an optical filter must be better than tweaking the amplification with the attendant noise problems. There are trade-off either way and one must make a distinction between theory and practice. This is kind of hair splitting stuff for general photography but that is normal for camera forums. You are putting a piece of glass and some dye in the optical path. Is that a good idea since it can slightly affect the image and is also prone to showing reflections. What if you need two filters - polarizer and green for instance and you are using a very wide angle lens? The Bayer filter is directly over each pixel and shouldn't degrade image quality at that point. An other issue is perhaps you don't want to affect the entire color channel (as I mentioned in the other thread.) What if you are shooting a b/w portrait and simply want to darken the blue sky without affecting the skin tones? Consider that many times when one uses a filter the idea is merely to darken the blue part of a sky to add drama or one wants to lighten some foliage. Neither of these scenarios is going to degrade a digital image much unless you really are trying to pull up deep foliage to a light tone. And that would go way beyond using color adjustment controls anyway. A filter will only darken an image so if there are tones that you want lighter, exposure will have to be increased to do that and then the filter hopefully will hold back the rest of the areas from being too light. But they may not do that - depending on how much color content those areas have. If you really have to fine tune the b/w image in a very technical way... to make various products reproduce in particular shades for instance, you might not find the controls in using filters to always be adequate. (An example would be clothing that had multiple colors in a pattern that are hard to distinguish without careful tone adjustments from color.) And sometimes it is a lot easier to work on a color image than a b/w one when it comes to masking off areas. (You can select everything by specific color or color range and change the brightness and contrast values that way.) In any case for those considering the MM, it is a simple matter to take some of your existing color images, convert them using the most modern and powerful tools available and see if you like the look and detail. If not, then try to determine if there is anything about using the MM (with or without filters) that will give you the look you want. I can see the additional resolution and higher ISO being useful if you really think you can take advantage of it. And a lot of b/w film images were shot without any filter at all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stephan_w Posted June 26, 2012 Share #355 Posted June 26, 2012 hello I got my D800e yesterday and have a MM on order. I'm really impressed by the Nikon at high ISOs and wanted to ask if anybody may have tested high ISo-quality against the MM (lets say at 3200 for example). thx. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted June 26, 2012 Share #356 Posted June 26, 2012 Well, the MM is clean at 3200 and only starts to show really visible ( but acceptable, even rather nice) noise at ISO 10.000. You will not see the clumps you will see on a Bayer filtered sensor through lack of interpolation. Talking about apples and oranges:rolleyes:. More like cherries and pumpkins I would say. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stephan_w Posted June 26, 2012 Share #357 Posted June 26, 2012 Well, the MM is clean at 3200 and only starts to show really visible ( but acceptable, even rather nice) noise at ISO 10.000 that good? wow! on the D800e at 3200 iso I have very visible grains, like when you scan a Kodak 100. It can be easyly cleaned with NR in LR, so I'm really impressed. But reading you, I expect even more from the MM. Btw the D800 is really the most ugly camera I've ever seen ...... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 26, 2012 Share #358 Posted June 26, 2012 Relating to filters and comparing the MM with the M9, it seems to me that the MM advantages in making top quality B&W landscapes, which I do, lies in it's having the ability to have 4 times the pixels employed when I want to darken a blue sky with a red filter. You are implying that in order to have a darker sky on the M9 you'd only be using the red channel. But that is not so. You could simply darken the blue sky in the color digital file without affecting the rest of the image and then do the b/w conversion. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jamie Roberts Posted June 26, 2012 Share #359 Posted June 26, 2012 You are implying that in order to have a darker sky on the M9 you'd only be using the red channel. But that is not so. You could simply darken the blue sky in the color digital file without affecting the rest of the image and then do the b/w conversion. Of course, you can always do an "apply image" conversion as well. As you imply, Alan, you wouldn't be running out of pixels any time soon mixing the red channel with existing channels. That's not to say the MM won't have more detail. It will. Whether that's important in a sky conversion, or not, is difficult to say. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanG Posted June 26, 2012 Share #360 Posted June 26, 2012 That's not to say the MM won't have more detail. It will. Whether that's important in a sky conversion, or not, is difficult to say. I think we are getting into some difficult to predict levels here... I may be wrong but I think it's hard to say what precisely to expect without doing careful side by side testing. Assuming a sturdy tripod and everything is locked down for maximum sharpness. I certainly don't have an answer but I wonder... The M9 sensor and the MM sensor both have the same number of pixels. It is just that the M9 interpolates the colors out to a file size three times the size of the pixel count. Whereas the MM just duplicates all pixels to fill the 3 color channels. But how much negative impact is there from the M9's interpolation and Bayer filter array since it is still sampling 18 million pixels of detail in the first place? Now maybe in the case of some colorful objects it is only using a smaller number of pixels that are mostly from just one or two color channels. But when I split the three color channels there usually is a lot of detail in each of them. (Few broad empty areas.) Of course there can also be noise and other factors that affect the look and quality of the image. So I wonder what actually is the difference in resolving power in practice for typical subjects once you convert the M9 file to b/w and compare it to an MM file? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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