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Leica Monochrom - Correct exposure

flanoizele

By flanoizele
in Leica M Monochrom

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sm23221
sm23221

Too many people worry about blowing out highlights with their MM. Look at geoffryg's photo. What harm is there in blowing out the sky? I'd be happy if my LCD was blinking red in the sky. It's white,

geoffreyg
geoffreyg

I'm struggling to understand the confusion here. In order to avoid blowing out the highlights, one uses an exposure that gets up to, but not across, that happening. If that means the shadows are block

Jeff S
Jeff S

The first bolded statement makes sense, while the second one contradicts it by establishing a 'rule'; sometimes it makes sense to let blacks go black. I think some MM users (and others) try to open up

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convexferret

convexferret

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I assume that you know most of what I'm going to say but I want this reply to be complete.

 

In most digital cameras, the presence of a bayer filter in front of the sensor means that the RAW file contains information for red. green and blue. If any of those channels are blown out then the postprocessing software can use the remaining two to give a fairly accurate result, which explains why you can often pull back quite a bit of highlight information in overexposed shots.

 

The monochrom, not having a bayer filter, only has one channel: grey. If it blows out then there is no remaining information with which to reconstruct the missing details. The result is that any overexposure is deadly and must be avoided at all costs. Thankfully the monochrom cameras have plenty of extra detail hiding in the shadows and so some tactical underexposure is often not a problem at all.

 

Of course having to be this careful could mean that you have to slow down a a lot and have to take multiple shots to get that perfect exposure with the brightest part of the scene almost but not quite clipping. I use my Monochrom for everything and so I do some preparation to ensure that I spend very little time worrying.

 

I live in a sunny country, so a very large % of my shots are taken in perfectly predictable light. I took a bright-but-not-reflective item (a very white t-shirt) and took multiple photos to work out the Monochrom equivalent of the sunny sixteen setting. I did the same with my customary yellow filter on. When the light is different I'll find some similarly white-but-not-reflective item and take a couple of shots to get my exposure in the ballpark. i learned to work from there and when I had any doubts, to underexpose a little. So I really just use the Monochrom meter to get me in the ballpark and the blinkies to get things perfect. I know ahead of time the settings for most common lighting conditions and will work out new settings when the light changes even if I'm not yet thinking of taking a photo.

Edited by convexferret
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