400 Leica photographers agree: we love CCD!

[Paul J]

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I have been retouching for 21 years, 20 years of that commercially. I started photoshop when there were no layers and no undo's.

 

Phase One themselves admit that their CMOS sensor is not quite up to the standard of the CCD sensor, but they have done an exceptionally good job of making the most of it's colour, which outperforms other CMOS offerings and what the standard has been. They have a product which is a very good compromise and gives the added benefit of high ISO and proper Live View for those customers that were demanding it.

 

It's not just the colour of images with CCD but the tonal separation, the colour differentiation, and the dynamics and inter-relationship of these properties through a wide range of adjustment and in all tonal zones.

 

For a company like Leica, and the seeming majority of their customers who do not recognise or perhaps perceive the difference, they are most likely happier with the better battery life and faster operation, the live view and motion that CMOS sensors provide over CCD. Motion, and it's increased revenue is the biggest factor, it's here to stay.

 

I'm not saying that CMOS will forever be inferior, I'm not saying that the results from CMOS are bad either, I'm saying that for the time being, CCD has properties which I prefer and find more desirable for what I do.

[NB23]

I have been retouching for 21 years, 20 years of that commercially. I started photoshop when there were no layers and no undo's.

 

Phase One themselves admit that their CMOS sensor is not quite up to the standard of the CCD sensor, but they have done an exceptionally good job of making the most of it's colour, which outperforms other CMOS offerings and what the standard has been. They have a product which is a very good compromise and gives the added benefit of high ISO and proper Live View for those customers that were demanding it.

 

It's not just the colour of images with CCD but the tonal separation, the colour differentiation, and the dynamics and inter-relationship of these properties through a wide range of adjustment and in all tonal zones.

 

For a company like Leica, and the seeming majority of their customers who do not recognise or perhaps perceive the difference, they are most likely happier with the better battery life and faster operation, the live view and motion that CMOS sensors provide over CCD. Motion, and it's increased revenue is the biggest factor, it's here to stay.

 

I'm not saying that CMOS will forever be inferior, I'm not saying that the results from CMOS are bad either, I'm saying that for the time being, CCD has properties which I prefer and find more desirable for what I do.

 

Let's not mix chips with foie gras, please.

 

What is Leica about and what is Phase One about?

 

One is all about snapshots, portability, simplicity, ease of use. The orher is all about the end PRINT.

 

One is about hand holdability. The other is about the Best possible tripod.

 

One is about the smallest bag. The other is about the Biggest possible studio.

 

One is about a 24x36 sensor. The other one is about a 3 times bigger sensor.

 

Would you see me handholding a Phase One camera set at iso 400 and shooting pics of my kid eating his pudding at the window in low light? That would be insane.

 

Would you see me shooting a car for poster ads and all kinds of other publications with a Leica M9 wide open at iso 200? That would be insane.

 

Design the M9 or M10 (M240?) so it cannot be handholdable, make it big, make it a studio beast, make it a resolution King, make it a tripod Homer, make it slow, make it cumbersome, make it 40,000$ and without video, then naturally it should have a ccd.

 

The leica M9 is just not into that game. Thank God.

[mikeleng]

All these negative responses is doing my head in !

Yes Peter as got some support, its a start, so why don't we give him a hand in his campaign .

Lets have some light hearted responses for a change .

I'll start :-

Leica M9P - We Love CCD

Mike

 

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[Prosophos]

I have been retouching for 21 years, 20 years of that commercially. I started photoshop when there were no layers and no undo's.

 

Phase One themselves admit that their CMOS sensor is not quite up to the standard of the CCD sensor, but they have done an exceptionally good job of making the most of it's colour, which outperforms other CMOS offerings and what the standard has been. They have a product which is a very good compromise and gives the added benefit of high ISO and proper Live View for those customers that were demanding it.

 

It's not just the colour of images with CCD but the tonal separation, the colour differentiation, and the dynamics and inter-relationship of these properties through a wide range of adjustment and in all tonal zones.

 

For a company like Leica, and the seeming majority of their customers who do not recognise or perhaps perceive the difference, they are most likely happier with the better battery life and faster operation, the live view and motion that CMOS sensors provide over CCD. Motion, and it's increased revenue is the biggest factor, it's here to stay.

 

I'm not saying that CMOS will forever be inferior, I'm not saying that the results from CMOS are bad either, I'm saying that for the time being, CCD has properties which I prefer and find more desirable for what I do.

 

Thank you for articulating this so eloquently. I could not have stated this any better, and it is precisely my view of things.

[01af]

I have been retouching for 21 years, 20 years of that commercially. I started Photoshop when there were no layers and no undos.

And now you expect us to be impressed?

 

I am still hoping that someone has more to offer than just words to prove that images from CCD sensors have desirable properties not found (and not replicatable in post-processing) in images from CMOS sensors. Until then, I shall file these anecdotes under the "placebo" label.

 

I am using digital CCD cameras for eleven years and CMOS cameras for six years now (albeit none from Phase One), and Photoshop for ten years, and I never found images from CCD sensors being inherently superior to CMOS images ... to the contrary—if there is a perceptible substantial difference (rarely) then it's always in favour of the CMOS.

[TRIago]

And now you expect us to be impressed?

 

I am still hoping that someone has more to offer than just words to prove that images from CCD sensors have desirable properties not found (and not replicatable in post-processing) in images from CMOS sensors. Until then, I shall file these anecdotes under the "placebo" label.

 

I am using digital CCD cameras for eleven years and CMOS cameras for six years now (albeit none from Phase One), and Photoshop for ten years, and I never found images from CCD sensors being inherently superior to CMOS images ... to the contrary—if there is a perceptible substantial difference (rarely) then it's always in favour of the CMOS.

 

You write saying you want people to offer more than just words.

But just after it you write again saying "if there is a perceptible substantial difference (rarely) then it's always in favour of the CMOS."

 

So why don't you do what you want the others to do?

In short: just share with us raw files.

Or you expect us to be impressed with only words?

[hellerkar]

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I have and continue to own Leica 8, 9, and M 240 cameras all of which I acquired when they were first launched. Each has its place and each has its strengths and weaknesses.

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, for sure, but I cannot recreate the "look" I have come to prefer from the source files of the M240. I find this most pronounced in pictures of people which is my most frequent and preferred subject matter. Others might not agree and might prefer the files they are getting or might think a compromise was needed to gain other advantages they needed or wanted.. Perhaps someone has a “secret sauce” in post processing that has not yet been shared and demonstrated….which may in fact be proprietary. Okay….but it has eluded me and has eluded others and not for want of trying. While I do not “like” change as much as I wish I did, this has never stopped me from pursuing and embracing it. I think the M240 has great versatility and wonderful features as a camera but something changed not for the better for me in terms of the images I can create with it.

 

I hoped that the letter would continue a positive, informed discussion not only among photographers/customers but also with representatives from Leica, too. I would never discourage someone's success or satisfaction with the tools, features, and, ultimately, images they prefer. In fact, I like to celebrate that.

 

Peter, personally, deserves more credibility and respect for his findings than some of the responses that have been posted here exhibit. His work is astonishingly good and he has devoted a great deal of time and open-minded experimentation to this effort. I agree with the letter (that's why I signed it) and share an interest in further developing the CCD sensor technology…or frankly, any technology, that creates files I can turn into the kinds of images I have come to treasure from the M9 (and the M8) with their CCD sensors.

 

For those of you for whom the CMOS sensor is giving you preferred imagery? Wonderful. Does this mean that it is giving everyone preferred imagery? No. Does it mean that one can seamlessly "convert" a CMOS file into one that emerged from a CCD sensor? No, it doesn't. At least in many images where the differences matter most. Hence the letter.

 

Thank you to those who have responded with courtesy, knowledge, helpfulness, and experience regardless of your “point of view”. We all learn and grow from this. For those who have chosen to post rude and misguidedly speculative posts? Well, I guess we learn something from that, too (albeit not about cameras, photography, or image creation).

[2wk]

Leica is extremely lucky to have customers with a magical thinking disorder.

 

Bad lens with all kinds of aberrations? = magical glow= master= magical thinking

 

Bad M8 with no IR filtration? = "yeah but Leica wanted to give control to the end user"= "yeah but Magnum is B&W mostly"= "yeah, the M8 is a BW sacred monster" = transforming a shitty camera that was 2 generations behind when it came out into a "great master's" tool= magical thinking.

 

M9 with weird color shifts and still not enough IR filtration, cracking sensor, slouchy slumpy camera, all kinds of defects, corrupts files like no other, just can't use it efficiently without having 25 extra batteries in your pocket, of which 22 loat their charge by 50% just because it was in contact with air= "yeah but Leica designed its sensor to be as close as Kodachrome as possible" (no jokes, this was yet another BS statement from magical thinking customers)= "and its a CCD sensor, that's just better at base iso"= magical thinking.

 

New Zeiss 35 f1.4 is better than the Lux asph 35 fle according to all the reviews out there= "yeah but Leica is still better. Don't ask me how I know, it just gotta be" = magical thinking.

 

And so on.

 

I own the M8 and M9 since new. I didn't use the M9 for the first 2 years. It just sat there losing value. Such a huuuge PITA to use. The M8 as well. Can't shoot 2 images in a row without something possibly freezing. Countless lost images, countless hair lost as well.

 

Leica digital is just an endless sea of BETA products. Now we read that the M240

Colors are the worst of all digital cameras on the market?

What? Isn't there a Leica guy supposed to copy Kodachrome colors for Leica cameras?

 

Well, no. That was a myth.

 

All about Leica is a myth in this digital age.

 

Actually, Leica's luck is its customers and their magical thinking.

 

Watch this: the next M11 (M360 or whatever it will be called to sound cool by the magical thinkers) will be yet another fiasco. But the customers will support it. There's nothing like the Leica customer. Magical thinking fixes everything, magically.

 

 

Wow... endless bummer . Think positive ! In my opinion these cameras may have some faults they are still great tools for making images.

[01af]

So why don't you do what you want the others to do?

You didn't read this thread from the beginning, did you?

[250swb]

Yes, yes, of course. We all need to take a Leica course.

 

Your insight proves particularly embarrassing to me:

 

Thank you Tom Smith, Leica Akademie. | Photographs by Peter

 

Well it's better than inventing mythical consequences out of slight differences isn't it? Fuel the fire and you get the responses you expect because people are all too happy to discover they have something very special. You can imagine how they lower their voice and talk about it in hushed tones, 'this is a special camera with a CCD sensor, behold!'

 

It is a part of the current plague on Leica photography and it fits perfectly into the corpus of Leica mysticism.

 

Steve

[TRIago]

You didn't read this thread from the beginning, did you?

I did. Will you upload the raw files? Or you expect us to be impressed without them?

[Lenshacker]

A question for the M240 owners that state they were unhappy with the skin tones from the new camera:

 

Have you tried using an IR cut filter over the lens?

 

The first-generation Nikon CMOS (a variation called LBCAST) SLR's had an issue with skin tones, and was corrected through the use of IR cut filters over the lens.

[Prosophos]

Thank you to those who have responded with courtesy, knowledge, helpfulness, and experience regardless of your “point of view”. We all learn and grow from this. For those who have chosen to post rude and misguidedly speculative posts? Well, I guess we learn something from that, too (albeit not about cameras, photography, or image creation).

 

I second that.

 

Thank you so much Karen.

[TonyField]

Sounds plausible to me.

 

While the two colour signatures are not identical, they sure are similar. You can see they share the same DNA, so to speak. Both got reds that are too blue, blues that are too red, and all colours badly over-saturated to different degrees, mostly blue. That's why blue skies always look so radio-active in digital M pictures. People with no refined sense of colour—i. e. the majority—appreciate those gaudy bigger-than-life colours. Yuk!

 

This is my essential experience ... and why I shoot the M9 as my walkabout camera only. By accident of the scene, the occasional image has perfect colours. I quite like the M9 for B&W. It is "such a lovely camera in the hand" - and my many lenses from the old days of film still hold their own.

[hellerkar]

No, I haven't. I have seen some mention of this as a partial support. I will try them, though, and appreciate the encouraging suggestion. Thank you.

Edited January 30, 2015 by hellerkar
This is in response to Lenshacker's post

[jaapv]

To all those who have posted that they are experienced and able photoshop users:

I found, after more than a decade of study and intensive use that there are two books that are utterly essential, both by Dan Margulis:

 

Professional Photoshop opened my eyes to the changes in Photoshop since CS2 through 5 and the use thereof.Some parts, even in CC are obsolete and others much more powerful if used properly. Dozens of better techniques.

 

Modern Photoshop Color Workflow cut my computer time by 80% by explanaining the PPW panel of actions (free) which is now my most powerful tool. For instance: M9 skin tones problems? One click and a minor saturation correction: gone.....and much,much more.

 

Downside: Like all Dan's books these are brainbreakers that need to be read twice (see my desperate thread in the PP forum) bu I am starting to get it now.

Highly recommended, no, essential

Edited January 30, 2015 by jaapv

[jaapv]

A question for the M240 owners that state they were unhappy with the skin tones from the new camera:

 

Have you tried using an IR cut filter over the lens?

 

The first-generation Nikon CMOS (a variation called LBCAST) SLR's had an issue with skin tones, and was corrected through the use of IR cut filters over the lens.

 

In my case both an IR filter and Dan Margulis' Skin Desaturation action. Problem utterly gone.

[BerndReini]

I don't need raw files, I have played with them. I want to see a picture taken with the M9 unaltered in LR with the standard Adobe Profile applied, and the same picture taken with the M240 adjusted to look exactly the same.

 

I have tried and gotten close, I pointed out the difference I see in the pictures that were posted earlier in this thread, yet so many people here claim it can be done. Please show me how close you can get, because when CCD fans are accused of not knowing how to post-process, then these accusations may just stem from people who can't perceive subtle differences.

 

And as far as IR sensitivity is concerned, yes, I notice much stronger sensitivity to IR with the M240 than with the M9, but filters? Now we are back to that? And this time without automatic correction for cyan corners with wide lenses?

 

The M240 is a first generation camera, like the M8, with all kinds of problems, and what it is trying to replace is too good of a camera for me to be an early adopter again.

Edited January 31, 2015 by BerndReini

[Jeff S]

The M240 is a first generation camera, like the M8, with all kinds of problems, and what it is trying to replace is too good of a camera for me to be an early adopter again.

 

My M240 has had zero issues (although others report a couple)…same good experience as my M8.2. One could argue that the M9 is more of a first generation camera than the M8.2, which addressed (along with FW updates) most all M8 issues, with the exception of UV/IR filter use. The M9, incorporating the first FF sensor and bigger files, has suffered from edge issues, sensor cracks, card compatibility and buffer issues, discreet mode freezes, and cover glass delamination. It, too, suffered from early color complaints (see my above post), and although it has more internal IR filtration than the M8 or M8.2, it does less well eliminating IR contamination than does the use of an external filter.

 

Depends on one's perspective….and experience. I think the M240 has been the most successful digital M launch to date (strap lugs were remedied immediately). And it's better built than its predecessors. Btw, nothing to do with CCD or CMOS.

 

Jeff

Edited January 31, 2015 by Jeff S

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[BerndReini]

I have one of the first M9s that shipped and it gets a lot of use. I have had one dead pixel, which was taken care of in New Jersey in three weeks and none of the other issues. I admit that I don't use discreet mode and I have only ever used Sandisk Ultra SD cards, but again my M9 has been great. I got a demo of one of the first M240s and the initial firmware's terribly warm white balance put such a damper on my excitement that when it was finally fixed, my initial rush to upgrade has subsided and I was looking at the new M more critically. It will be interesting to see how many people will defend the M240 as passionately as the M9 more than five years after its release and after a new model has been released.