M240 vs MP (a la carte)

[Peter H]

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Thank you for adding information of substance to this...

 

 

I think you've misread Jaap's two last posts. He's defending you, and then responding to my flippant post.

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[stryker]

I think you've misread Jaap's two last posts. He's defending you, and then responding to my flippant post.

 

Ah. I found it more likely I was being ridiculed.

[jaapv]

You're too recent on this forum - icecream has a history between Peter and me

[stryker]

You're too recent on this forum - icecream has a history between Peter and me

 

Ha ha ok.

Thanks.

[plasticman]

I can't really see why the option of a film camera ever came into this discussion? It just seems like the luxuriousness of the 'object' was the only benefit you could see in an MP, and all the actual photographic advantages lay with a digital camera? But the fact that you automatically assume the M240 has "wider dynamic range", and that "RAW is much more versatile" and so on suggests that a digital camera is what you really want, and everything else was just simply seeking after affirmation.

 

Incidentally, one of the things I miss when post-processing film scans is all the time and fiddling I used to do with my digital files: with film I find it's all over almost too easily - after the inverted linear batch scans are done (I spend that time reading/cooking/playing with the kids/working) when I've run them through ColorPerfect, they're done!

Occasionally I want to dodge or burn a bit (when I use Viveza2 for convenience). Otherwise the color, texture and range of the images are exactly the way I want them. It's almost a disappointment not to sit in front of the computer for hours on end tweaking raw files to get the look I liked.

 

One other thing - it'll take a few years of film purchasing to come anywhere near how much money I 'lost' when selling my M8. On the other hand I enjoyed using that camera, so financial calculations didn't enter my planning when buying or selling.

[250swb]

In terms of making the most of an image the photographer has probably already spent hours or days working towards, travelling, walking, waiting, then I don't know why the last part of the equation has to be knocked off as quickly as possible. It doesn't matter if it's film or digital, processing an image should take as much work and as long as necessary to finish it, or why bother in the first place?

 

Scanning can only be a chore if there is nothing on the film to excite the photographer, digital post processing can only be boring if the gratification was only in pressing the shutter and not being proud of the final image.

 

I like to encourage photographers to take the idea of a 'work ethic' seriously, simply to get the most out of their efforts. But working hard is less like work if the end result has some worth on a personal level. It only feels like work if it is a hollow effort.

 

So if the photographer finds anything taking up their time that irritates them with using film, or using digital, they should consider first and foremost the thing in front of the camera and the person behind it, something isn't meshing, they aren't excited.

 

Steve

[Frase]

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If its was me and I really wanted to put some more money into Leica, I would go for a black paint M4 which is cheaper and in my opinion nicer to use than the MP and a secondhand M9 you could do that for £5000ish.

Good luck.

[macjonny1]

New thread title: "droppin' 7Gs...tell me how!"

[pgk]

This will be my first Leica camera, and since I'm sinking 7G into a camera.....

 

I am shooting with an OM10 SLR right now, and having this 'time delay' with viewing my images (versus immediate satisfaction/chimping with digital and RAW with editing software) taken slightly irritating.

 

To conclude, I've been mentally going in circles, with film camera MP (ostrich a la carte and it's bloody gorgeous) vs digital camera M240 black (impressive feature set).

 

Does anyone have any advice (or both a film Leica/digital Leica and share their experience)?

Moving from an OM10 to a Leica Rangefinder is a substantial step. FWIW here's my suggestion. Buy a used film rangefinder (they can be had for a few hundred (£$€s if you look around - I just picked up a perfectly good M4-P for a very, very reasonable amount indeed) AND buy a Leica M8 - again look around but dealers have them with a warranty at good prices. Prices have dropped to the point where if you buy reasonably, you are not going to lose much if anything with either or both bodies.

 

Add a lens (which will fit both) and you can try both and decide which way you want to go. If you lose a small amount, put it down to the cost of the experience of trying both film and digital systems out - which may well be a cheap solution compared with making a mistake with a large financial outlay. You may even find that you like both so much that you keep them:).

[Stealth3kpl]

I think the handling of the camera has a bearing on the matter, and the M8/9 will handle very differently to an M(240).

I've just hung up 2 rolls of Acros. I wonder what's on them. How exciting......

 

Pete

[Steve Ash]

It is easy to foresee that you will end up with both options sooner or later. To enter the film experience will bear no risk due to a broad second hand market. Analogue cameras hold their value quite steady, so you might pull out anytime in the unlikely case you will not fall in love.

Steve

[Rick]

You may be able to achieve the best of both worlds by contacting Camera Leather cameraleather.com Leica M series. This company makes leather camera covers for Leica cameras including the M240. Here is an example (on a film M3) of the Ostrich leather you stated was "bloody gorgeous." This leather cover can also be ordered for the M240... this way you can have both the M240 and the Ostrich leather. Win-win! I believe I've partially solved the conundrum for you.

 

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[lenicolas]

The decision can only be yours of course, but it's fun to discuss, so here we go:

 

Get an M240.

When I got a full-frame dslr, I pretty much stopped using my film slrs.

The M6 was the last 24x36 I still used, but since I got the M240 I can't see myself using it again.

I do miss holding it, and I love the though of a mechanical camera that doesn't rely on batteries and doesn't have a screen to distract me, but the M240 does everything it did, better and faster.

I guess I don't have what it takes to be a true romantic. In the end of the day performance matters to me. The result matters to me more than the process. YMMV.

(Of course 24x36 wasn't bad. For most things it was "good enough", but ever since I first scanned a 6x7 ekta on an imacon, I realized that 24x36 film was never meant for true IQ but for portability and speed. Now we have digital cameras that have both fantastic IQ and 24x36 usability : what exciting times!)

 

Don't get a MP.

With 24x36 cameras nowadays, the film stick, the processing and the scanning are the limiting factors. Not the camera or the lenses.

If you're not gonna shoot low iso, invest in professional processing and a hasselblad scanner (or make optical prints) you'll probably never see much difference between your oly lenses and the Leica...

And in my experience, the grain of a tri-x pretty much eats the little extra detail a Leica lens gives over a japanese lens. Do you want to spend thousands of $ just to shoot a nicer looking camera?

 

 

I wouldn't go for the M9(p) either. It's a half baked digital M. The IQ is there, but the camera is slow, buggy, the screen is useless, the shutter louder, the battery is a joke, it's uglier than film at 800 iso, and it's very likely that in 2 years the few references of sd cards it actually works well with will have disappeared.

I'm being harsh. It was a very nice camera but the M improved it on every aspect.

 

Investment-wise, none are a good idea. Nobody's gonna want to pay more for your à la carte MP in ten years than they pay for an M6 now.

You want investment? Get a M6 and 2 good Leica lenses. Get a 75 summilux and a used 28 elmarit asph (i hear Leica is discontinuing the 28). You'll still lose money over ten years, but less. And who knows, you could get lucky.

 

Cheers.

 

sent from a phone with auto-correct.

[IkarusJohn]

I don't want to flame a digital versus film war, but I'm not entirely sure if it is the camera or photography which is causing the angst. I understand if the question is - please tell me if an a la carte MP or an M(240) is a nicer camera. That's a fair question, but is relatively unrelated to photography. My suggestion is that the MP is probably a nicer camera to hold, fondle and enjoy. The M(240) is a computer.

 

But if your question is about photography (as you say), then workflow becomes important, and it might just answer your question in a more meaningful way.

 

Film

 

In the old days, you bought your film, exposed it, and sent it off for printing and processing. It was exciting, but all the images were batch processed at 4x6; there were maybe one or two you liked, and maybe you'd get them enlarged, but mostly they'd be passed around, then thrown in a box. Similarly with slides, though exposure was more demanding, and viewing more of a ceremony (your friends and family usually dreaded).

 

Then you got keen - really keen and did your own processing and printing. Now the process changed developing and drying film, doing contact sheets, and then carefully printing your selected images - often more than once till you got a good enlargement you'd mount. For slides, not much changed, except that the combination of Kodachrome and Cibachrome printing became addictive. You'd read Adams' books, dodge, burn and experiment with exposure times, different papers, and you'd spend hours in a dark room, losing track of time.

 

Now, there's nothing wrong with this process, if that's what rocks your boat. I have developers and an enlarger somewhere at home, and an M3 I love but rarely use. It is a chemical process which some love; and they argue a high quality B&W print, properly processed, is better than any digital print. They may be right, if they have the discipline. However, at home I have Salgado's Genesis in the huge, two volume limited edition set. Salgado was a died in the wool Tri-X shooter, but for this book some of the images were shot with film (Tri-X) and the others digital - I couldn't tell you which. All the images have been processed to give the look that he and his wife want - it's really not possible to say that one image has the classic Tri-X look, and another the pasticity which classically comes from a Canon CMOS sensor. They have all been processed to look like Tri-X. I don't believe that, with processing of both digital and film, it is possible to say that good digital has not caught film - actually it is something a bit different from film, but it is simply not feasible to say that digital gives a poorer quality image than film.

 

Digital

 

There are two ways of getting a digital image onto your computer for processing (from your cameras, I mean) - take the image on your film camera, process the negative, then scan it. If you are disciplined in your developing and you have a good scanner and are also disciplined in using it, then you will faithfully capture in your digital file what was captured on your film. If ...

 

The second is relatively simple - exposure your image on your digital camera, and transfer it to your computer (either using the cable or taking out the card). Provided your sensor is clean, the image exposed onto your sensor will be faithfully transferred to the digital file on your computer.

 

Now, once you have your digital file (however it got there), you can manipulate it. If your end result is a fine print, you need a good, calibrated screen and software you are comfortable using (LightRoom or Aperture are the most common here, I'd say - I prefer LightRoom, but then I don't like the Aperture interface, and I sometimes use PhotoShop, which makes me favour the Adobe product). For black and white, I expose the image on my Monochrom, process it in LightRoom, and email it to WhiteWall. I get a few weeks of anticipation, then my fine print arrives. It's well worth it.

 

Lots of people print. I'm never really sure what they do with the prints. If you listen here, many will say that they expose thousands of images and they're always running out of space on their SD cards, and storage on their hard-drives, and they love printing. If that were me, I'd be buried in paper. My background is film, and because it was expensive I didn't bracket, I didn't take lots of images of the same thing. I thought about each shot and did one exposure (a risky strategy when you think about it). With digital, I do lapse back into this approach, but I try to take more and reduce the risk of poor composition or exposure. But, from each outing, I'd be lucky to get a handful of keepers. More critically, I only print what I really like and what I'm confident I will still be happy looking at hanging on the wall years ahead.

 

So, my point is - think about the photography and the workflow you want. Digital completely revolutionised my photography, but I do still have a film camera on the shelf which I bring out from time to time ... Enjoy your M(240) - it will give you hours of fun; and if you want to try something different, pick up a secondhand M3, or M4, or M5, or M6 or even order that MP a la carte you love - there will always be a good stock of reasonably priced secondhand film Leicas about and I doubt Leica will discontinue the a la carte programme. You have bought into a system, and it doesn't start or end with one camera.

 

Lenses are another problem altogether!

 

Cheers

John

[honcho]

..... Here is an example (on a film M3) of the Ostrich leather you stated was "bloody gorgeous." This leather cover can also be ordered for the M240... this way you can have both the M240 and the Ostrich leather. Win-win! I believe I've partially solved the conundrum for you.

 

[ATTACH]437834[/ATTACH]

 

 

Get your scanner covered with ostrich leather too.

 

Perfect.

[plasticman]

I don't recognize any of the characterizations of film in the long posts above. I don't shoot film because of some 'romantic' notion about process, and other than a couple of times at university I've never used a darkroom.

 

I enjoy post-processing my film images in photoshop, and even after working with digital imaging and video in advertising for most of my career, I now vastly prefer the results from color film.

 

That's my experience. Though admittedly I sometimes can't control the impulse, I try not to be obtuse and use my own preferences or limitations to say one medium is 'better' than the other.

[jaapv]

You may be able to achieve the best of both worlds by contacting Camera Leather cameraleather.com Leica M series. This company makes leather camera covers for Leica cameras including the M240. Here is an example (on a film M3) of the Ostrich leather you stated was "bloody gorgeous." This leather cover can also be ordered for the M240... this way you can have both the M240 and the Ostrich leather. Win-win! I believe I've partially solved the conundrum for you.

 

[ATTACH]437834[/ATTACH]

 

That is Ostrich Leg. Nothing like the leather Leica uses. Rather unappealing to my eye.

http://gizmodo.com/5720797/this-stunning-leica-m9-wraps-chrome-in-ostrich-leather-yes-ostrich

[stryker]

I don't want to flame a digital versus film war, but I'm not entirely sure if it is the camera or photography which is causing the angst. I understand if the question is - please tell me if an a la carte MP or an M(240) is a nicer camera. That's a fair question, but is relatively unrelated to photography. My suggestion is that the MP is probably a nicer camera to hold, fondle and enjoy. The M(240) is a computer.

 

But if your question is about photography (as you say), then workflow becomes important, and it might just answer your question in a more meaningful way.

 

Film

 

In the old days, you bought your film, exposed it, and sent it off for printing and processing. It was exciting, but all the images were batch processed at 4x6; there were maybe one or two you liked, and maybe you'd get them enlarged, but mostly they'd be passed around, then thrown in a box. Similarly with slides, though exposure was more demanding, and viewing more of a ceremony (your friends and family usually dreaded).

 

Then you got keen - really keen and did your own processing and printing. Now the process changed developing and drying film, doing contact sheets, and then carefully printing your selected images - often more than once till you got a good enlargement you'd mount. For slides, not much changed, except that the combination of Kodachrome and Cibachrome printing became addictive. You'd read Adams' books, dodge, burn and experiment with exposure times, different papers, and you'd spend hours in a dark room, losing track of time.

 

Now, there's nothing wrong with this process, if that's what rocks your boat. I have developers and an enlarger somewhere at home, and an M3 I love but rarely use. It is a chemical process which some love; and they argue a high quality B&W print, properly processed, is better than any digital print. They may be right, if they have the discipline. However, at home I have Salgado's Genesis in the huge, two volume limited edition set. Salgado was a died in the wool Tri-X shooter, but for this book some of the images were shot with film (Tri-X) and the others digital - I couldn't tell you which. All the images have been processed to give the look that he and his wife want - it's really not possible to say that one image has the classic Tri-X look, and another the pasticity which classically comes from a Canon CMOS sensor. They have all been processed to look like Tri-X. I don't believe that, with processing of both digital and film, it is possible to say that good digital has not caught film - actually it is something a bit different from film, but it is simply not feasible to say that digital gives a poorer quality image than film.

 

Digital

 

There are two ways of getting a digital image onto your computer for processing (from your cameras, I mean) - take the image on your film camera, process the negative, then scan it. If you are disciplined in your developing and you have a good scanner and are also disciplined in using it, then you will faithfully capture in your digital file what was captured on your film. If ...

 

The second is relatively simple - exposure your image on your digital camera, and transfer it to your computer (either using the cable or taking out the card). Provided your sensor is clean, the image exposed onto your sensor will be faithfully transferred to the digital file on your computer.

 

Now, once you have your digital file (however it got there), you can manipulate it. If your end result is a fine print, you need a good, calibrated screen and software you are comfortable using (LightRoom or Aperture are the most common here, I'd say - I prefer LightRoom, but then I don't like the Aperture interface, and I sometimes use PhotoShop, which makes me favour the Adobe product). For black and white, I expose the image on my Monochrom, process it in LightRoom, and email it to WhiteWall. I get a few weeks of anticipation, then my fine print arrives. It's well worth it.

 

Lots of people print. I'm never really sure what they do with the prints. If you listen here, many will say that they expose thousands of images and they're always running out of space on their SD cards, and storage on their hard-drives, and they love printing. If that were me, I'd be buried in paper. My background is film, and because it was expensive I didn't bracket, I didn't take lots of images of the same thing. I thought about each shot and did one exposure (a risky strategy when you think about it). With digital, I do lapse back into this approach, but I try to take more and reduce the risk of poor composition or exposure. But, from each outing, I'd be lucky to get a handful of keepers. More critically, I only print what I really like and what I'm confident I will still be happy looking at hanging on the wall years ahead.

 

So, my point is - think about the photography and the workflow you want. Digital completely revolutionised my photography, but I do still have a film camera on the shelf which I bring out from time to time ... Enjoy your M(240) - it will give you hours of fun; and if you want to try something different, pick up a secondhand M3, or M4, or M5, or M6 or even order that MP a la carte you love - there will always be a good stock of reasonably priced secondhand film Leicas about and I doubt Leica will discontinue the a la carte programme. You have bought into a system, and it doesn't start or end with one camera.

 

Lenses are another problem altogether!

 

Cheers

John

 

Brilliant post, thanks very much!!!

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Rick]

That is Ostrich Leg. Nothing like the leather Leica uses. Rather unappealing to my eye.

This Stunning Leica M9 Wraps Chrome In Ostrich Leather (Yes, Ostrich)

 

I agree, the original Leica Ostrich you linked to is much nicer. I'd like to have a pair of shoes in that... or a camera bag. I have a bag site I could link to if, you would like me to.

[jaapv]

Not really into bags other than container…