Is there a right way or wrong way to use the Leica Monochrom

[Guest NEIL-D-WILLIAMS]

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Okay, the link was to a small JPEG but it still works.

 

 

I don't have a jpg in my drop box.........what I sent you was a 35MB DNG file.........not sure whats gone wrong

[Printmaker]

My bad. This one is from the DNG.

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[Guest NEIL-D-WILLIAMS]

Anyone else want to have a go at this picture.........DNG file here it will be interesting to see what can be done

[Printmaker]

Like most files, you can spend hours tweaking before you're happy. I don't think there is anything wrong with your camera. You probably just need to learn how to adjust the highlights, midtones and shadows in the software. Just look at each area (or zone) and move it until you like the look. I often hit the auto button just to see where the software wants to take the image then go back to default and use the auto settings as a suggestion. Most of the time I find the auto too contrasty but it is a starting point. I never go into Silver Effects until I get very close to what I want first in Photoshop (or LightRoom). I've been using Photoshop since the early 90s so it is always my first choice. I'm working on my LightRoom skills and have a long way to go.

 

Good luck!

[Geoffrey James]

Here you go. 30 seconds in camera raw.

The shadow detail from the OP's image has disappeared and there is a lot of weird layers happening in your sky. A classic case of not leaving well enough alone. The first trick is understanding how to make an exposure, which is critical even in digital photography.

[A miller]

post-28798-0-65384200-1430809504swbtest.jpg

 

This wouldn't be my finished picture, but it is what I mean about an 'S' curve. As I recall I added a little 'Soft Contrast', re-balance the detail with a bit of Shadow Structure, apply a tiny 5% vignette to stop the eye wandering off the edge of the image, burn the top and bottom to achieve the same, place a control point over the bundle and make it lighter again (after the previous Soft Contrast adjustment), place a control point over his/her face to lighten it again, and added a small amount of warm tone as the psychological ingredient. Adjustments made to a file full of information as opposed to a small JPEG are more subtle, and there are other ways to achieve exactly the same thing or better. But look at the travel photographs of HCB or the environmental images of Salgado and you will see a similar depth to the image.

 

Steve

Bingo.  This is an example of how an image was processed to enhance the composition and draw the viewer's eye to exactly the areas in which the photographer wants.  

I believe that I was the one (or one of the ones) who pointed out that I felt that your PP was resulting in overexposed images that did not showcase the MM's tonality. 

As a general matter, the first thing you have to do is avoid blowing any highlights - at all costs - and then focus on opening the shadows and popping the highlights very selectively to achieve as wide of a range of tonality with crisp but not too much contrast and micro-contrast.

Here is a before and after of three examples.  All PP was made in LR exclusively through localized adjustments.  No SEP.  

BEFORE

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[A miller]

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AFTER

 

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[A miller]

another example

BEFORE

 

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[A miller]

AFTER

 

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[A miller]

one more...

BEFORE

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[A miller]

AFTER

 

 

 

And I will say that I have printed each of the three examples on the Ilford Baryta paper using a semi-manual "silver gelatin" process through Whitewall in Germany and am extremely happy with the way in which the MM retained shadow detail and how I was able to achieve clean and noise free images.

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[Guest NEIL-D-WILLIAMS]

AFTER

Mr. Miller

I got it and thank you............for some reason I have misunderstood previous advice whereas I thought that the way to shoot a MM was to push it to the right in camera and recover in PP whereas what I now understand is to pull it to the left in camera and push it back to the right in PP.................Please say thats correct

Fantastic pictures by the way

[Printmaker]

Okay Neil, I'm not sure I understand your problem. I went to your website and you have some beautiful B&W shots posted there. Are you giving the old leg a yank just to start a conversation? It sure looks like you know what you are doing.

[A miller]

Mr. Miller

I got it and thank you............for some reason I have misunderstood previous advice whereas I thought that the way to shoot a MM was to push it to the right in camera and recover in PP whereas what I now understand is to pull it to the left in camera and push it back to the right in PP.................Please say thats correct

Fantastic pictures by the way

YEs, that's correct.  Just look at the last photo of the belly of the bridge.  You can hardly see it for G-d's sake!  And look at how much detail I was able to extract; all with just LR!  And believe me the print was noise free.

[Guest NEIL-D-WILLIAMS]

YEs, that's correct.  Just look at the last photo of the belly of the bridge.  You can hardly see it for G-d's sake!  And look at how much detail I was able to extract; all with just LR!  And believe me the print was noise free.

Thank you Sir for the pictures...........I think I mentioned in my opening post for pictures to help me

I got it now and will continue to work on my PP skills

[Guest NEIL-D-WILLIAMS]

Okay Neil, I'm not sure I understand your problem. I went to your website and you have some beautiful B&W shots posted there. Are you giving the old leg a yank just to start a conversation? It sure looks like you know what you are doing.

Printmaker absolutely no.......most of my B&W pictures are taken with either a DSLR or M9/M240 and converted to B&W I only have a few (I think) pictures on my website taken with the MM

Ive not been happy with what I have been getting out of the MM so thats why I started the thread 

[A miller]

one more example showing the power of the shadow detail retention of the MM.  In most any other camera this would be a throw away shot (except that ETTL likely wouldn't be used as an exposure crutch with most cameras)

 

BEFORE

 

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[A miller]

AFTER

Mind you, there will be MANY situations in which blown highlights will be inevitable, and then your images will suffer b/c the exposure zones 7-9 will not have sufficient tonal detail and won't transition well with the midtones.  This was my big beef.  In the street (where your shots are often on the fly and you can't study the scene and contemplate the correct ETTL exposure) it just seemed that I always blew highlights somewhere in the image in order to obtain sufficient detail in my main subjects (normally people).  And those blown highlights, typically in the horizon but also elsewhere in the images, cause the images to lose their charm.  Hence my sale of the MM and shift to film (sorry for bringing that up).  I liked the results I was getting for controlled shots (as shown above), but at the end of the day I have nothing to do with them and don't think anyone else would be interested in them.  So I shifted to a medium that makes me happy.

 

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[Guest NEIL-D-WILLIAMS]

Okay Neil, I'm not sure I understand your problem. I went to your website and you have some beautiful B&W shots posted there. Are you giving the old leg a yank just to start a conversation? It sure looks like you know what you are doing.

Printmaker these are the only two Leica Monochrom pictures on my website

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[Jeff S]

...........for some reason I have misunderstood previous advice whereas I thought that the way to shoot a MM was to push it to the right in camera and recover in PP whereas what I now understand is to pull it to the left in camera and push it back to the right in PP...............

 

Neil, the consistent advice in this thread and everywhere else regarding the MM is not to blow the highlights.  The rationale is that unlike using your M240 (or DSLR) for mono conversions where you can recover highlights from another color channel even if one channel is blown, the MM (without color channels) is unforgiving. Once your highlights are blown, forget it.

 

Secondly, unlike most digital cams where noise and artifacts are often introduced when significantly boosting shadows, the MM allows for clean shadow recovery even for severely underexposed images.  So, rather than ETTR (expose to the right), which some endorse for digital, many do the opposite with the MM, i.e., expose to the left and recover in PP.

 

The best thing to do, of course, is to expose 'properly' in the first place without blowing highlights.  Toward that end, the RAW histogram in your MM is a wonderful tool.   

 

Why do I still think you're playing with us?  Are you still on that rig?

 

Jeff