MOZ Posted August 17, 2015 Share #21 Posted August 17, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) I think the right light is what is the breakthrough. Soft light with sparkles will do the trick I think. I find it hard to get good results in sunshine. http://www.overgaard.dk/leica-M-Monochrom-Type-246-Digital-Rangefinder-Camera-black-and-white-sensor-page-28-The-Leica-M246-Goes-to-Paris.html Your article is just great ! I've found the same results as yours... I even prefer the MM1 in sunshine, i find the 246 to be quite hard when it's really sunny. I also tried the new filters, got the yellow that is "not bad". You get nice clouds, skies and sweet highlights... I still prefer the ND filter 8x I bought following your advice some years ago No need of SE with this new leica, I stay with LR and PS and it's enough... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted August 17, 2015 Posted August 17, 2015 Hi MOZ, Take a look here Typ 246: How long is the learning curve?. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
BjarniM Posted August 17, 2015 Author Share #22 Posted August 17, 2015 I also tried the new filters, got the yellow that is "not bad". Can i ask which specific yellow filter? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted August 17, 2015 Share #23 Posted August 17, 2015 I don't think that you will find much difference in use between the major brands. For quality, use B+W, Heliopan or possibly Hoya. I think the only strength left on the market is medium (B+W 022) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOZ Posted August 17, 2015 Share #24 Posted August 17, 2015 It's the new Leica yellow filter... that got out for the MM 246 (in 39 or 46 size)... They got a yellow one, an orange one and a green one, depending on what you want to do. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted August 17, 2015 Share #25 Posted August 17, 2015 It is probably made by B+W, then. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
algrove Posted August 17, 2015 Share #26 Posted August 17, 2015 I prefer the Orange B+W. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted August 17, 2015 Share #27 Posted August 17, 2015 Advertisement (gone after registration) It's the new Leica yellow filter... that got out for the MM 246 (in 39 or 46 size)... They got a yellow one, an orange one and a green one, depending on what you want to do. Leica don't make filters, they badge them. Anybody else thinking about a filter please try to get B+W or Heliopan first, going to the source is much cheaper. Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MOZ Posted August 18, 2015 Share #28 Posted August 18, 2015 Leica don't make filters, they badge them. Anybody else thinking about a filter please try to get B+W or Heliopan first, going to the source is much cheaper. Steve I tought they made special ones for the new MM, well, if I knew they were only B+W filters I would have ordered one at B+W (!!!)... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joakim Posted August 18, 2015 Share #29 Posted August 18, 2015 It is probably made by B+W, then. A little of topic but I have to ask, I have not seen any green filters from B+W (46mm) for sale anywhere and yet Leica has green as part of their set. Does B+W make green filters only for Leica or could it be another manufacturer? My Monochrom color filter set is yellow, orange and red from B+W and green from Heliopan. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterP Posted August 19, 2015 Share #30 Posted August 19, 2015 Oddly enough I didn't notice any difference from shooting w/ my M type 240, 4 days after picking up my M/M typ 246 in Los Angeles, I was shooting a boxing tournament in Tokyo. http://ppolitanoff.blogspot.com/2015/08/shooting-boxing-with-leica-m-monochrom.html Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BjarniM Posted August 20, 2015 Author Share #31 Posted August 20, 2015 To get this discussion back on track. What's a reasonable time perspective regarding the learning curve? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff S Posted August 20, 2015 Share #32 Posted August 20, 2015 Varies by person, of course. Have you been following advice so far, e.g., looking at videos, reading books, shooting and experimenting with PP a lot on your own....etc? If you have, you will have speeded up your learning curve. If not.... Depends, too, on your standards for success. I'm still learning and improving after years (not M246 specific...but same principles). Jeff Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted August 21, 2015 Share #33 Posted August 21, 2015 To get this discussion back on track. What's a reasonable time perspective regarding the learning curve? There isn't a learning curve for the M246, other than reading the manual to know what the buttons do, otherwise it's just a dumb instrument awaiting your bidding. The learning curve in any sort of photography and using any camera is to know and understand the type of photograph you want to make. When you know what type of photograph you want to make, something like HCB perhaps, or one of the New Topographic photographers, or Ansel Adams, or Ralph Gibson maybe, the learning curve progresses to understanding in this case software, previously it would have been darkroom techniques. Asking how long it takes to learn the camera misses the point that the camera is programmed with firmware to make pictures that suit an average type of image that most people can then adapt to their style, not firmware that dictates a style or firmware with a secret that needs unlocking. Take a step back in time. Photographers chose a type of film to put in their camera because it suited their style or purpose. The concept of learning a camera would only occur if all the knobs and buttons were unfamiliar, but the main learning experience had already been mastered because the photographer had an opinion about what type of image they wanted from the camera (after they'd learnt all the knobs and buttons). Fast forwards to digital and the 'film' is a neutral average unthreatening and sometimes bland digital image recorded by the sensor, to gain anything from it that represents an alternative opinion on the photographers behalf requires intervention at the software stage. For many photographers this idea does resurrect thoughts of the jeering mob shouting 'manipulation!'. But that comes down to ignorance of what went before, and comes from people who think an opinion is something only Hans the firmware programmer in Germany can have, or his alter ego Shinji in Japan. In other words they buy camera's based on corporate styles of image making and that is as far as they get in photography, an endless round of accepting somebody else's concept of average, so we have 'Olympus colour' etc., promoted as selling points for the ready made image. Truth be told you can get 'Olympus colour' from a Leica M240, but it's a software job, just as making a pastiche of a Ralph Gibson no longer requires Tri-X but can be done with an M246 and software. The only element that is required to get to any visual destination is to have a personal opinion. Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Livingston Posted August 21, 2015 Share #34 Posted August 21, 2015 ...requires intervention at the software stage. For many photographers this idea does resurrect thoughts of the jeering mob shouting 'manipulation!'. But that comes down to ignorance of what went before... Exactly! Back in the seventies I did a LOT of developing and printing (Cambridge Camera Club Darkroom and later, my own basement)... I was on a big learning curve as far as darkroom technique was concerned and realised that photography was practically 'painting with light', in that to get what I wanted from an image required work, burning in, dodging... (you all know the rest...!) I was changing images almost completely and it was the most creative part of the process. I hated slides as I would get maybe one or two images in 36 that were good and perhaps one or two per year that I was genuinely happy with... and they were as much about luck as anything creative on my part. With B&W on the other hand, I could manipulate images to such a degree that the process of creating a final image was as much about darkroom work as it was about the initial photograph - actually more, now I come to think about it. The image would start at the camera and at the time of exposure I would have a fairly good idea of what I wanted the final image to look like. Because I was doing my own darkroom work I would be able to develop and print that same day, or very soon afterwards, so my 'image in mind' would be fresh... the process was one continuous work flow, just as it is with digital today. I would then make a straight print from a potential photograph and then think about what I wanted and whether it was possible to achieve and make no end of test strips and prints to decide on what was needed and then try to put them all together to create the image I wanted. I produced a portfolio of around thirty or so prints that I was really proud of and would exhibit and maybe four or five that I still remember to this day. All this took about several years... Photography then took a bit of a back seat. Work and career got in the way (once I realised that becoming a Magnum photographer was unlikely to happen!!!). So, despite having quite a lot of work published, particularly in the music arena, I concentrated on my real career and photography took a bit of a back seat. Over the next few years I continued to use photography as a means to an end and continued to have work published, but in publications and books that were more to do with either other interests or for work... with occasional forays into doing things for other people. Then came digital photography and I started using my D100 and later, D200 very much as I had used slide film. Great for recording things and getting simple record stuff photographed (for example, I worked on a book on Messerchmit 109G that was published for modellers, where all of the cockpit detail shots and a lot of the DB engine shots were mine). The Nikons were great for that sort of work and as far as personal stuff was concerned, there was very little. I wrote articles for carp fishing magazines and a lot of my photographs were published there as well, including a cover photo from Redmire Pool. But my creative photography simply stopped and digital to me was simply recording straight images in the way I used slide film in the past. Then late last year I had a little money come my way and I treated myself to my first proper Leica M. That changed everything. For the first time since the seventies and darkroom work I realised that to get the best from it I would need to go on a long learning curve with Lighroom (as opposed to darkroom!) and for the first time in many years I recognised again that the opportunities to be really creative were once more available to me (they always had, of course, I just didn't think of it that way). I am learning, slowly, how to get the results I want. My camera is not the limiting factor, nor are my lenses, the limiting factor is my ability to 'see' and knowing how to get what is in my mind onto the screen and eventually onto a print. Exactly as as it was all those years ago when I was using my Nikon F2's and a darkroom. Full circle. Striaght jpgs from a camera are a little like slide film to me... sometimes I'm lucky, but more often than not, I'm not. My M240P is now my Nikon F2 and the darkroom is my MacBook Pro... The camera functions are easy to learn, there is no difference (apart from learning how to focus quickly with a rangefinder!). Lightroom is more of a learning curve, just as learning how to expose, crop, dodge and burn, crop and all the other really creative things that happened in the darkroom was a long learning curve all those years ago. The advantage is that it is quicker and you can see what you are doing in real time... and you can get help on forums such as this. Its going to take time, but I am re-learning photography all over again... well, remembering it as it was when it was genuinely more creative and more enjoyable, to be more accurate. The very reason I decided to buy my Leica in the first place was to get back to photography. I had simply forgotten that the camera was only part of it... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Pope Posted August 21, 2015 Share #35 Posted August 21, 2015 Bill, what an excellent post. Thank you for echoing my thoughts almost exactly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BjarniM Posted August 22, 2015 Author Share #36 Posted August 22, 2015 Thanks a lot for your thorough input, Bill and Steve. It seems i will have to invest some time in the post processing part, though i rather would like to spend more time shooting and less post processing. Have you been following advice so far, e.g., looking at videos, reading books, shooting and experimenting with PP a lot on your own....etc? Yes, i have been reading and looking at tutorials and have been experiencing in both Lightroom and Photoshop. I will put some more effort in this part. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
fiftyonepointsix Posted August 24, 2015 Share #37 Posted August 24, 2015 Do people find that more post-processing is required for M246 images compared with the M Monochrom? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
rfunnell Posted August 24, 2015 Share #38 Posted August 24, 2015 Only changed from the MM9 to M246 last week but so far there seems to be less post processing needed ... just my 2c Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted August 25, 2015 Share #39 Posted August 25, 2015 Do people find that more post-processing is required for M246 images compared with the M Monochrom? I see it the other way, it isn't that more post processing is needed, it is simply acknowledging some post processing is needed if a photographer wants to go beyond being the dumb interface between camera and image. A long time ago when the MM1 was released camera users found the files thrilling just because they had no colour, they became instant artists, but photographers saw they were flat and lifeless and started to work the camera more. So the MM1 wasn't exactly 'plug-and-play' and neither is the new one, and while a colour image often keeps camera users happy because of the thrill of colour, a monochrome image should really be treated in the same terms as a traditional darkroom print to gain the most from it. It's like being the conductor of an orchestra against buying the CD. A good book to read again is Ansel Adams 'Examples - The Making of 40 Photographs' which describes how a fine B&W image is made by the photographer. Another good reminder are the darkroom notes of Don McCullin for his 'Shell Shocked Marine' to show that even dramatic 35mm documentary photographs have every last ounce of power extracted from them...... http://www.wemadethis.co.uk/blog/2012/01/shaped-by-war/ Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jvansmit Posted August 26, 2015 Share #40 Posted August 26, 2015 Another good reminder are the darkroom notes of Don McCullin for his 'Shell Shocked Marine' to show that even dramatic 35mm documentary photographs have every last ounce of power extracted from them...... http://www.wemadethis.co.uk/blog/2012/01/shaped-by-war/ Steve I hadn't seen the McCullen article before...very interesting. Particularly striking to me is how much he burned in the eyes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.