Very late M240 review

[mirekti]

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I have a wide gamut monitor, and been complaining about the colors since the very beginnings.

I purchased CC Passport and QPcard, and simply never liked the output. LR converter is bad for me. I don't like it. C1 was ok, but lacked LR features.

Eventually I got used to what I have, and started using one of the member's custom profile with small tweaks plus Nik software.

Embedded was way too saturated for me, and not sure if I missed anything there.

All in all, colors' taste is so personal so... ...no need to get excited. IMHO "Leica colors" in LR are not too nice.

[indergaard]

Have you tried creating LCC profiles for your Lens in C1? If you have I would be curious of your experiences.

 

I just purchased a Universal Lens Calibrator in the hope that I can create a set of unique LCC profiles and see if that helps with some of the artifacts I see as well.

 

No I haven't tried createing LCC profiles.

I did talk to C1 support however, and they were willing to let me ship them my Leica lenses so that they could create profiles for them and include them in the future versions of C1. They would need to have the lenses for about 1 month to create the profiles. They were not willing to give anything "loaning" lenses from a private person to improve their product, and I was told by C1 that it was the only way they could create profiles for Leicas lenses since they were not able to have them on loan from Leica directly to do this.

Quite strange. But it is what it is.

[Adam]

No I haven't tried createing LCC profiles.

I did talk to C1 support however, and they were willing to let me ship them my Leica lenses so that they could create profiles for them and include them in the future versions of C1. They would need to have the lenses for about 1 month to create the profiles. They were not willing to give anything "loaning" lenses from a private person to improve their product, and I was told by C1 that it was the only way they could create profiles for Leicas lenses since they were not able to have them on loan from Leica directly to do this.

Quite strange. But it is what it is.

 

 

That is very odd on many levels. I heard Leica and P1 had a falling out, but this kind of behavior is just childish.  Maybe Leica owners should just crowd fund some money so that C1 can afford to borrow the lens from a store. Probably be like $10 per each C1 and M user. Or maybe we should write to Leica that it is good business to support C1.

 

Once I do the LCC profiles I will report on their usefulness. An will be happy to share them for the lens I have (75 Summicron APO, 35mm Summicron ASPh, V III).

 

Thanks again for the review!

[colonel]

thanks for taking the time for the review. I always appreciate personal reviews

 

sorry to hear about your focus issues. I have found the reverse, that the M240 is almost bullet proof compared to the M9 (which was not bad). Certainly the 4 cameras I have used have all been tack on. Glad it was sorted out!

 

I don't concur with your issues, but its all personal taste:

• Perfect or near perfect auto-white balance
  • Mostly fine for me, a slight slide in LR doesn't cost
• Great skin tones and colors out-of-the-box
  • I am bemused by the skin tone issues that others raise as well, although understand taste and processing are a part. I think the skin tones are general fine. Even in flood lit with difficult white balance and everything default out of the camera is mostly good, if I remember what I saw:
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• Excellent metering
  • If you are used to Leica metering its spot on
• No banding at medium to high ISO
  • I never have this problem unless I push the exposure, and then only in 3200 and very slightly in 1600. Nothing that can be seen if done sensitively and can be removed
• Flawless and accurate focusing
  • I maintain that the RF focusing system is my number one focusing system bar none
• Flawless mechanical and electronic operations
  • My experience with the M240

best rgds

[sdk]

I've used the X-rite Color Checker Passport and the LR plugin for making custom color profiles for my M-P. It's fairly easy to do, and improves color rendition considerably, though I still find the greens a bit oversaturated with the new custom profile. So on import into LR6, I have a development setting that applies my preferred tweak of desaturating green -5, a bit of sharpening and de-noising, and the custom color profile. I still have to tweak many images' white balances, and sometimes desaturate blue too.

 

I have not done it yet, but you can make a dual illuminant profile, for tungsten plus daylight for example, by shooting the target twice under both light sources, then using two DNG files in the calibration export (unlike most LR plugins, the Color Checker Passport is an Export plugin, not a Plugin Extras one).

The only pain about this is the exported profile has to be put on any computer you use with your LR catalog, so if you have the catalog and files on an external drive you have to find and copy the profile, which isn't straightforward, but isn't too hard either (also LR camera profile location varies between Mac and Windows).

[sdk]

Surely Phase 1 could afford to rent the Leica lenses. It's not that expensive, even if it might take a while for rental agencies to have them available, calibrations could be done by Phase 1 eventually.
 

That is very odd on many levels. I heard Leica and P1 had a falling out, but this kind of behavior is just childish.  Maybe Leica owners should just crowd fund some money so that C1 can afford to borrow the lens from a store. Probably be like $10 per each C1 and M user. Or maybe we should write to Leica that it is good business to support C1.

Once I do the LCC profiles I will report on their usefulness. An will be happy to share them for the lens I have (75 Summicron APO, 35mm Summicron ASPh, V III).

Thanks again for the review!

[Adam]

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Surely Phase 1 could afford to rent the Leica lenses. It's not that expensive, even if it might take a while for rental agencies to have them available, calibrations could be done by Phase 1 eventually.

 

Of course! I was speaking partially in jest. You pay $300 for the software, so they have the money, they just do not want to spend it.  It is ludicrous that Leica and Phase 1 are not cooperating. I chose C1 over Lightroom because it gave better results on some of my cameras. But the lack of lens profiles for M lens will make it hard for me to justify upgrading the software once a new version comes out, unless they add the profiles.

[lct]

Never felt the need to have lens profiles with C1. What are they supposed to bring that is not adjusted by 6-bit coding? Just curious.

[indergaard]

Never felt the need to have lens profiles with C1. What are they supposed to bring that is not adjusted by 6-bit coding? Just curious.

 

Distortion correction.

[lct]

Ah yes thanks but i prefer manual correction personally. YMMV.

[Adam]

Ah yes thanks but i prefer manual correction personally. YMMV.

 

That is what i do in C1, I use the generic profile. However, the Leica lens have small distortion, so it is hard to control in the C1 slider. I also sometimes find it hard to control manually for light and sharpness falloff. I am also not certain of Chroma correction would not be better on a calibrated profile vs generic.

 

Finally, I think it is hard  to do both pincushion and barrel manually, although I have not had lens that had that problem.

 

Bottom line, I think an automated option should be there at least for the major lenses, you can always override manually.

[MOZ]

Great review !

I have been working with the MM1 for some years and switched lately to the MM 246 (corrosion sensor problem on the 1)...

I tried the M-P 240 last week and found it just "brilliant"...

Now I'm thinking to switch to the M-P (I love working with film/M6 and medium format for B&W) and your review helps me make my choice I think.

Thanks a lot !