Monochrom - Image Samples and Thoughts

[Guest Ron (Netherlands)]

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There is no shadow around the wires that I could detect.

 

Well as long as the MM owners / users can't detect them, you won't have a problem to solve eh...

they are very clear though even to my untrained and tired eyes...

 

of all these postings I get the impression that MM files need a lot of post processing to get them right and make them look as pleasant as the pictures from ..lets say a M9 or even a M8

Edited September 5, 2012 by Ron (Netherlands)

[Bill W]

Bill, surely you have a special account for your photography needs? I hide all sorts of stuff from my wife that way.

 

Cheers and I hope you get your camera a-ok.

John (the anti-Longhorn)

Account? What account, no clue what you are talking about...!!!!

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[jaapv]

Well as long as the MM owners / users can't detect them, you won't have a problem to solve eh...

they are very clear though even to my untrained and tired eyes...

 

of all these postings I get the impression that MM files need a lot of post processing to get them right and make them look as pleasant as the pictures from ..lets say a M9 or even a M8

Ummm - rather the opposite.

I fondly believe I am not too bad at Photoshop, but getting a good B&W conversion out of the M9 will have me frting around for quite a bit.

I have a small collection of MM DNGs to pay with, and it as always exposure etc, curves, maybe local adjustment brush for contrast, dodging and burning and off for output sharpening. That is all.

Silver Efex will impart special looks if you like them. I have no tried it, I am waiting for the free one (Leica, please get your finger out and deliver my camera....)

Edited September 5, 2012 by jaapv

[brianv]

Do a Carpet Plot of the image. If there is a dark line at the edge of a transition from neutral grey to bright white, the carpet plot will show it.

 

Ohhh all the software waiting to use on Monochrome images in the 21st century.

[Wolfgang Chuck]

Chuck, I use Tamarkin. Mail order is easy and NO TAX!

 

Thanks, for the recommendation. I have a dealer I have been using in NY since I moved back to SC, but I was hoping something local had popped up.

[johnbuckley]

Well as long as the MM owners / users can't detect them, you won't have a problem to solve eh...

they are very clear though even to my untrained and tired eyes...

 

of all these postings I get the impression that MM files need a lot of post processing to get them right and make them look as pleasant as the pictures from ..lets say a M9 or even a M8

 

Ron - I don't think I've spent more than two minutes in post processing on any Monochrom image. It's sort of remarkable. You basically need to play with the shadows (on LR4), and that's about it. Now, I'll admit on the shots I quite like, I send it over to Silver Efex Pro 2, and may have a little bit more fun there. But as compared to the way I labor over EVERY color image from my M9, the Monochrom is a breeze.

[Photoskeptic]

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Ummm - rather the opposite.

I fondly believe I am not too bad at Photoshop, but getting a good B&W conversion out of the M9 will have me frting around for quite a bit.

I have a small collection of MM DNGs to pay with, and it as always exposure etc, curves, maybe local adjustment brush for contrast, dodging and burning and off for output sharpening. That is all.

Silver Efex will impart special looks if you like them. I have no tried it, I am waiting for the free one (Leica, please get your finger out and deliver my camera....)

 

jaap, I've been working at PS for quite a few years now and I'm able to come up with a GREAT bw image with only a few steps. And no, I won't share them with you

 

That is only with Leica files. My Nikon files take a little more fiddling.

[SpiritShooter]

Do a Carpet Plot of the image. If there is a dark line at the edge of a transition from neutral grey to bright white, the carpet plot will show it.

 

Ohhh all the software waiting to use on Monochrome images in the 21st century.

 

Not sure what a carpet plot it. BUT, when I sample the areas where the red arrows are as compared to the rest of the sky, the results show quite a bit of darker tones. Looks like a dark halo around the light.

(Not including the airplane )

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[pop]

(...) when I sample the areas where the red arrows are as compared to the rest of the sky, the results show quite a bit of darker tones. Looks like a dark halo around the light.

 

Is the part of the image you are showing here the jpg image? Those dark "smears" look rather like artifacts introduced by the jpg conversion.

[Kittyphoto]

Well as long as the MM owners / users can't detect them, you won't have a problem to solve eh...

they are very clear though even to my untrained and tired eyes...

 

of all these postings I get the impression that MM files need a lot of post processing to get them right and make them look as pleasant as the pictures from ..lets say a M9 or even a M8

 

No, I have tried shooting DNG+JPG.

JPG straight from the camera is very good. Tone is smooth and very good sharpness. DNG is bonus. You could dodge and burn increase/decrease contrast with max quality. For my taste Niks Silvereffex tend to over amplify everything.

 

It is hard to judge quality from monitor view. If you make big print from MM, you will see the difference.

[jaapv]

jaap, I've been working at PS for quite a few years now and I'm able to come up with a GREAT bw image with only a few steps. And no, I won't share them with you

 

That is only with Leica files. My Nikon files take a little more fiddling.

That might be (more or less) true of the M8, but the M9 files take a bit of work to get to what I consider adequate.

[brianv]

Carpet Plots: my original digital images had to be plotted as a "3-D" graph. Early detectors suffered a form of "Cross-Talk" between channels, where a bright object on one pixel dragged down the neighbors. That problem would cause dark lines to surround a bright line. It was correctable in software. 30+ years ago.

 

I downloaded the image, and enlarged in Photoshop using nearest neighbor. "My Mental Image" of this process: JPEG works by doing a Cosine Transform of the image, then storing the coefficient values. Cosines are "waves", the samples are built back up using these waves. Compression and transformation are involved, and artifacts are introduced. These artifacts occur where there are sharp changes in intensity. The "light and Dark" areas get spread out. Basically, the high and low of the Cosine wave undershoot and overshoot the actual intensity of the image. I think this is what is happening in the image.

 

When my M Monochrom arrives, I'll look at it in more detail- but you can try this: In Lightroom export a DNG file to a ".BMP". Bit Image files are either uncompressed, or stored using a different algorithm.

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Edited September 6, 2012 by brianv

[dierk]

for those, who are looking for DNG files from the MM.

many may know Thorsten Overgaard, he offers DNGs here

 

I myself offered 3 files from the MM with Summilux 35mm/1.4 FLE with the M9 and the MM with and without filter for download. You can find the here on the.me

and my first personal impressions (not high sophisticated technical comments as you find here) are also here at the.me

 

If there is any interest, I would offer, to post images with no PP and after my PP and interpretation.

 

Many more are in my flickr gallery.

dierk

Edited September 6, 2012 by dierk

[brianv]

You can see the same type of JPEG artifacts in this image, from my 20 year old Monochrome Kodak DCS200ir. I'll look at the ".BMP" from it later. I wrote my own software to convert from Raw to BMP, and it is straight conversion.

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[pedaes]

Dirk - enjoyed your impressions,well done. Interested in your comment that you can't use filters with 35 'lux. Why? I have a UV as protector on mine, although I accept not really necessary as I have hood on permanently, but this suggests there will be no issue with filters

[SpiritShooter]

I guess the toughest part of viewing and reviewing the images being posted is that we don't always know how the photographer processed the images. And of course, none of us wants to make an $8,000 mistake by purchasing any kind of item, so we tend to dig and grasp for whatever we can in order to make an informed decision.

 

If the posted jpg images are showing significant digital artifacts, I guess it will be very difficult to make an informed comparison without the raw files.

 

Thanks all for the great information.

[brianv]

Another implication of this: It may be that sending files out for printing and publication should be in another format, one that does not introduce artifacts. This type of problem has been of long interest to me. A number of people that I work with use JPEG 2000, which is based on a different compression scheme. JPEG 2000 uses "Wavelets", a spatial transformation, rather than frequency based transformations. Compression schemes such as run-length-encoding are lossless. This is allowed in BMP files.

 

Color images from cameras with mosaic filters are interpolated, which softens the edges. It reduces "High Frequency Content" which is where JPEG artifacts pop up. Monochrome images are not interpolated and retain the higher frequency content.

[Agent M10]

Another implication of this: It may be that sending files out for printing and publication should be in another format, one that does not introduce artifacts. This type of problem has been of long interest to me. A number of people that I work with use JPEG 2000, which is based on a different compression scheme. JPEG 2000 uses "Wavelets", a spatial transformation, rather than frequency based transformations. Compression schemes such as run-length-encoding are lossless. This is allowed in BMP files.

 

Color images from cameras with mosaic filters are interpolated, which softens the edges. It reduces "High Frequency Content" which is where JPEG artifacts pop up. Monochrome images are not interpolated and retain the higher frequency content.

 

What about TIFFs? I believe we had our last prints printed from uploaded TIFFs at Whitewall.

[jaapv]

TIFFs can get quite large if not compressed. It depends on the printer lab I suppose. Whitewall accepts 250 Mb max TIFFs

Edited September 6, 2012 by jaapv

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[Guest Ron (Netherlands)]

It is hard to judge quality from monitor view. If you make big print from MM, you will see the difference.

 

Thanks for your response, but I guess and 'm afraid that that is exactly where one only might see the difference, with big prints....so many of us won't see / need it then....(no offence, I'm fully aware I am still very sceptical about the MM , and reading all these threads didn't help to reduce it