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Monochrom Screen displays grainy picture


Aluisa

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Hello everybody! I just got a Leica Monochrom and am puzzled: I shoot in JPG. When I view the picture on the rear screen of my camera, it displays a lot of grain. I don't see this grain however, when I view the image on my computer. Even more mysterious: My husband's Monochrom doesn't display this kind of grain on the rear screen image! Are my camera settings faulty, or is it a Software problem and I need to turn my camera in for repair?

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The screen on the MM is useless, utterly useless for looking at images.

I don't know why its so awful, even compared to the M9, which is pretty rubbish in itself.

I can't even check for accurate focus with the MM screen... only OK for the histogram.

 

Its a shame as the MM is an expensive camera and its also very easy to blow highlights. I would have liked a high quality screen that does justice to the resolution and accurate blinking highlights, or ideally an ability to select individual 'zones' to blink. I LOVE the MM and the files it produces, but I would have liked Leica to have put more thought into the firmware for a B&W digital workflow, or at least added in a later firmware update.. instead we are left to rot....

 

BTW you are only getting 10% of the MM by shooting JPEG! You are wasting the investment in the camera, who's sole raison d'être is the tremendous tonal range and plasticity of its raw files......

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The MM LCD screen is no worse than the M9 screen, it's simply that we notice how much we normally use colour contrast changes to judge sharpness and detail when the colour is removed. Undoubtedly a larger higher resolution screen would help if judging B&W images, but it is what it is. In any case, the histogram is far more important in the reviewing of the MM image than it ever was with the M9, and that works if you set your clipping points correctly. Try not to compare it and it will start to work for you, compare it and you just get bitter and twisted about something you have no power over.

 

Steve

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The screen on the MM is useless, utterly useless for looking at images.

I don't know why its so awful, even compared to the M9, which is pretty rubbish in itself.

I can't even check for accurate focus with the MM screen... only OK for the histogram.

 

Its a shame as the MM is an expensive camera and its also very easy to blow highlights. I would have liked a high quality screen that does justice to the resolution and accurate blinking highlights, or ideally an ability to select individual 'zones' to blink. I LOVE the MM and the files it produces, but I would have liked Leica to have put more thought into the firmware for a B&W digital workflow, or at least added in a later firmware update.. instead we are left to rot....

 

BTW you are only getting 10% of the MM by shooting JPEG! You are wasting the investment in the camera, who's sole raison d'être is the tremendous tonal range and plasticity of its raw files......

 

Not entirely true. The JPEG's are surprisingly robust. A raw workflow is normally preferable for the following reasons:

 

1. Highlight recovery if at least one channel contains highlight information.

 

2. White-balance setting after the event without color shifts.

 

3. Raw files can handle more extreme tonal adjustments especially in the shadow areas.

 

Point 1 and 2 is irrelevant for the MM which leaves point 3 as the only advantage. Because of the high quality compression used by Leica the tonal adjustments must really be extreme before you will notice a difference. The question is why one would even consider using JPEG. There are a few possibilities:

 

1. Because of the slow writing times and small buffer the whole shooting experience is improved by using JPEGS. The difference in responsiveness is quite startling ( actually depressing if you usually use DNG's ). The problem is compounded by the huge DNG files of the MM.

 

2. Both the discreet mode problem and the banding problem ( which varies across samples ) is caused by a data throughput limitation. Both are largely mitigated by using JPEG's.

 

3. Occasionally one might run out of storage space. This is not very likely due to cheap high storage cards but it can happen.

 

4. Only certain raw convertors can read MM DNG files. Some people with different workflows might experience that as a limitation.

 

As usual one should trust you own eyes. An easy solution is to use the DNG+JPEG option and shoot under a variety conditions and compare the files. I personally use DNG files but I believe that JPEG's might be a valid option for some people.

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BTW you are only getting 10% of the MM by shooting JPEG!

 

This is exaggerated unthinking forum mantra. It holds true that there are major advantages in using a RAW as the starting point with colour DNGs, but Monochrom DNGs, with a single channel, are quite different (think of them as broadly equivalent to an unsharpened 16-bit TIFF file). Provided they aren't over-sharpened in camera, the Monochrom JPEGs are excellent and give up very little in practice (i.e. if you judge what you actually see and print rather than refer to theory and spec sheets) when compared with the DNG equivalent. That said, I shoot DNG+JPEG and usually (though not always) use the DNG as my starting point.:)

Edited by wattsy
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This is exaggerated unthinking forum mantra. It holds true that there are major advantages in using a RAW as the starting point with colour DNGs, but Monochrom DNGs, with a single channel, are quite different (think of them as broadly equivalent to an unsharpened 16-bit TIFF file). Provided they aren't over-sharpened in camera, the Monochrom JPEGs are excellent and give up very little in practice (i.e. if you judge what you actually see and print rather than refer to theory and spec sheets) when compared with the DNG equivalent. That said, I shoot DNG+JPEG and usually (though not always) use the DNG as my starting point.:)

 

Interesting proposition. It agree with you that the key is shadow detail only, as WB and highlight recovery are irrelevant.

I expose for the highlights on the MM and this means I am frequently selectively pulling up shadows. I use Aperture 3 with SE Pro plug in, doing the 'whole image' adjustments in A3 and then selective adjustments (and occ film grain if it suits the image) in SEP. Of course SEP is working on a TIFF rendering, so the only advantage I am getting with raw adjustment is the whole image shadow pull up. I usually use the tone curve to do this so that I can tweak the contrast appropriately as well. I will have a play with some JPEGS.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you everybody for your propositions and remarks, especially as regards shooting JPG or RAW. I will switch to RAW eventually, but as I use a rather old computer with little RAM at the moment, JPGs are easier to work with.

 

I did solve the mystery of the grainy picture on the display: I was using an old lens (Summaron 35) and it seems the "lens-detection" feature doesn't work correctly with this lens. When I switched the feature off, all my pictures were displayed in full sharpness on the camera's display.

 

I now use a more modern lens, and there I can use the lens-detection-feature without problems.

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The screen on the MM is useless, utterly useless for looking at images.

I don't know why its so awful, even compared to the M9, which is pretty rubbish in itself.

I can't even check for accurate focus with the MM screen... only OK for the histogram.

 

Its a shame as the MM is an expensive camera and its also very easy to blow highlights. I would have liked a high quality screen that does justice to the resolution and accurate blinking highlights, or ideally an ability to select individual 'zones' to blink. I LOVE the MM and the files it produces, but I would have liked Leica to have put more thought into the firmware for a B&W digital workflow, or at least added in a later firmware update.. instead we are left to rot....

 

 

I beg to differ on some of this.

The screen really isn't that bad (as you have subsequently posted).

I really only use it for camera settings and a quick look at the histogram (and warning for highlight clipping). The B&W display is much clearer to assess than the colour one of the M9.

 

Regarding blown highlights, with only a bit of practice after first getting the camera I was only rarely doing this. In very high contrast situations some bracketing helps.

Remember that the sensor does have an increased dynamic range over the M9.

 

This is not a design fault of the camera but just obviously there is only one data channel. Colour cameras have three so one can sometimes salvage data in one of the three in an overexposed file/area. A bit of noise/grain can always be added to the file to give some depth to those blown highlights.

 

Oh, and be prepared for a nice surprise once you switch to RAW files.

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I did solve the mystery of the grainy picture on the display: I was using an old lens (Summaron 35) and it seems the "lens-detection" feature doesn't work correctly with this lens. When I switched the feature off, all my pictures were displayed in full sharpness on the camera's display.

 

The other thing you can do, if you haven't already, is switch off any in-camera sharpening for your JPEG. Even moderate levels of sharpening can produce a grainy image in the display, but not as you say on the final image. Do sharpening in post processing for finer control. You can see this by shooting a large smooth area of tone in JPEG only, like the sky, with sharpening switched on and then off. If you use .dng the display JPEG doesn't seem to apply the sharpening and isn't grainy, so perhaps it is a firmware characteristic.

 

Steve

Edited by 250swb
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