Leica M (typ 240) Field Test and Review

[macjonny1]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Great review! And I can see why you like the new M so much. Some nice pictures going with that review.

 

I think it's good to see what the M is capable of when using it in a setting that is taking advantage of the strong points of the M. A dark setting where the extra iso is put to good use with loads of artificial lighting and strong colors everywhere. Strong visual stimulation from all sides. Taking a M9 there would result in much blander pictures.

The M is smoother and slicker with colors popping from every nook and cranny. I mean in a setting where everything is about pumping up visual impressions (full on make up, full on colored lighting, every glitch in human skin cemented away, hair in absurd colors), the M shines (almost literally in the pictures it takes).

 

I think people contemplating the purchase of the M would do well to see how well the M does this, and how it's character works with what we photograph. If you're going for a full-on colorful modern look I would say the M is even better than CMOS camera's like the D800.

 

And worrying about AWB is almost silly with a beast of a modern bold color camera like the M. Give the M some color to work with and it goes to work to suck every bit of color out of the scene (on the other hand, give it a drab boring landscape-scene and it refuses to work it's magic at all). You can't have both brave full on colors and realistic AWB at the same time. To me the M is a camera that you should shoot because you're excited about what the M will do with it. A real "let's see what the M sees here" camera.

 

There are some disadvantages to the advantages (as the Dutch guru Johan Cruijff teaches us ). Poppy colors and slick/smooth rendering with great dynamic range do have the tendency to look kinda digital and plasticky. The HDR look is always a danger to the M files in my opinion. Sometimes even bringing the shadows up just a lil will be enough to suddenly make a picture look overly post-processed. Sometimes even the unprocessed picture will already look like a digital CGI rendering to my eyes.

Going with the times, I doubt the modern look will be a problem for the M. It takes the M to where Nikon and Canon already seem to be going. Besides with the World Press winner having that kinda HDR digital movie poster look, very few people seem to mind it, and many love it.

 

Btw one could of course change the files in post during either the raw-processing or the printing. One could try to make the M9 look more like the M or vice-versa. But my theory is that it's always better to work with the character/rendering of your camera than against it. That goes for lenses as well. Some lenses will be working with the character of the M and some will be working against it. For the best results work with a camera and a lens and a way of processing that works with your visual vision (instead of against it). Old lenses on a MM is a good example of how this works.

 

It doesn't really matter if it's a CMOS-CCD thing or some other part of the camera, but I think that there certainly are differences between the rendering of the M and the M9 (and the MM btw). And where there are differences a subjective decision is called for by the buyer. Choosing your gear is part of the creative process. Will the M take you were you want to go? Or does the M9?

 

Excellent post. I've always thought more dynamic range ETC isn't always *better* just different. Files look different to me from my M9 and my D800E. Sometimes I prefer one or the other. It's nice to have choices, and kind of nice that it's not always the same. I like the images I get from my M9

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[leicashot]

Excellent post. I've always thought more dynamic range ETC isn't always *better* just different. Files look different to me from my M9 and my D800E. Sometimes I prefer one or the other. It's nice to have choices, and kind of nice that it's not always the same. I like the images I get from my M9

 

Feels like when digital first came out. When it finally got great, people were saying it looked 'unreal' but I thought it looked 'more realistic' as pixels were finer than grain, and now that dynamic range has exceeded film, I'm seeing it happen all over again, and Leica users talk about it more than anyone

[Rick]

I believe the high degree visual perception we are endowed with does not exist solely for us to appreciate our ability to recognize and enjoy optical fidelity. Rather, it was designed for us to understand the often vague and imperfect world around us.

 

It is somehow less gratifying to have perfection handed to us and defined in, say, the output of an electronic device's image. Obtaining gratification from our incredible visual system by focusing on the fidelity of an image is somehow a perversion of our amazing visual and perceptual system's ability to make sense of the abstract and indistinct.

 

Maybe, this is why some of us like film, imperfect photographs, or for that matter, impressionistic paintings . Maybe, in some small way, this is getting closer to defining art.

[250swb]

Well observed Rick.

 

Imperfection is what drives the world and without it art could not exist, whether as somebody's personal means of expression or on a wider world scale. Artists use imperfection to evolve, and without slight imperfections of meaning in language, or music, or painting, or sculpture, or photography, everybody would agree on a statement and we could say 'yes, that's art dealt with, we can stop now'. It would seem the only way adherent's of the perfect camera or lens can evolve is to buy the next one.

 

Steve

[Rick]

Thanks Steve. Imperfection and what is left out is often more satisfying than perfection and what is defined. Perfection is a sort of perversion in itself.

 

I was thinking about a carpenter purchasing a new saw. I know craftsmen and their tool analogies only go so far. But, the carpenter's saw may be a sharper and a better tool, but it is really only "better" in it's ability to allow the carpenter to build the vision of the house he has imagined.

 

The perversion enters into all of this when the carpenter measures the saw and tests its ability to cut and then, derives more pleasure from the perfection of the saw than the what he can create from it.

 

Of course, any saw can create an architectural piece of art. A physical object that exists. An object that not only exists but defines the empty spaces around and in the design... that exists in our imagination. Art.

 

Cameras are wonderful tools, as well, of which I am guilty of deriving perverse pleasures. But, I try, often unsuccessfully, to understand that they are only a tool to create an imperfect object, that will hopefully exist in our imagination more than it will in perfection.

 

M8, M9, M... it really doesn't matter if your goal is to produce imperfection.