Long exposure noise reduction... what the hell

[Stevejack]

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Is there no way to disable long exposure noise reduction? It's infuriating that it shuts down the camera for the length of the initial exposure.

Taking photos of lighting the other night, I missed so many strikes because the camera was unusable until the LENR was complete after each shot.

 

[adan]

My threefold response:

1) No, Leica doesn't provide control of the LENR, and yeah, if they are going to include it, it should be user-optional.

2) You might want to know just how bad the noise is, before wanting to eliminate noise reduction (Be careful what you wish for ).

3) It is a hint to the basic Leica M ethos - "We engineer the M to take any picture Henri Cartier-Bresson, Larry Burrows or David Douglas Duncan might have taken - if you want more than that, you're on your own."

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[Lee Rust]

The 'dark frame' exposure can be very frustrating, but I haven't heard of any way to disable it. It certainly would be nice if it was optional.

[Stevejack]

Yeah, many years back with a Canon DSLR I used to take my own darks on occasion after a series of long exposure shots, but it never interfered with my shooting. 

To render the camera unusable for the length of each shot, after every shot, without a means to disable it... is just insane.

I'm shocked that Leica does this, it's not even something I considered when buying the camera. I get all the reasons for doing it, but it really needs to be optional. I'll make a firmware request, but doing some reading this "feature" has been present for many years. I'm sure if they were going to change it they would have done so by now.

 

[raadoo]

Currently, the only camera in Leica's stable that allows LENR to be turned off is the SL2, as far as I know.

Not suggesting you switch to the SL2, but it may be a hint of things to come for future M cameras, as well.