M10 Monochrom - almost too much DR?

[Musotographer]

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As I got my M10M only shortly before lockdown I haven't yet had all that many opportunities to use it. But so far I am finding that processing the files can be rather cumbersome in high contrast situations. With dull or low light, interiors and portraits it's sublime and the files I find very easy to manage; but on a sunny day, with a bright sky and deep shadows, the dynamic range seems to be so extreme that getting a decent balance  can be difficult. I usually expose for the highlights which can mean that the shadows are initially inky black, and though there is so much information in them that they are unlikely to break up, it can take a lot of work to achieve what I want. Does anyone else find the same? - or am I doing something wrong? In these situations the files from the first Monochrom were much easier to cope with.

[Jeff S]

The tone curve is a powerful tool.

Jeff

[onasj]

I find the opposite, but I always prefer having the information to recover should I choose to do so, rather than losing the information and having no option to recover shadows (or highlights).  For me, highlight recovery, as with all Leica M DNG files I’ve processed before, is modest, but shadow recovery can be very robust—4+ stops!  Of course, if you are exposing to avoid blown highlights in a high-contrast scene then you can push the M10M files harder than previous M files due to outstanding DR and low noise at high effective ISO values.  For me, that’s a wonderful thing!

[FrozenInTime]

No such thing as too much dynamic range 🙂  as long as there is sufficient bit depth , and the M10M certainly seems to do better than any prior M.

The tone curve alone can be a bit of a blunt tool, so often Luminance range masking is needed for local fine control equivalent to darkroom dodge , burn and split grading.

Donald.

[Musotographer]

Thanks everyone - I'm clearly in a minority of one here!  I think I'l try, in high contrast situations, cosseting the highlights a little less and see what happens - I suspect that there may be more there than I'm allowing for. The tone curve has only become my friend in the last few months - I should have been using it long ago. I'm still on LR6 so have no luminance range masking as yet.

[Ken Abrahams]

Yes, I have been saying the same things about the M10M "blacks" in contrasty lighting. One just has to scroll through the images here to see how predominant the blacks are in most  lighting condition. Looking after the highlights doesn't mean that the darker areas of the image fall into place. It's harder to produce a lighter toned monochrome image using the M10M.

 

The first Monochrom changed the way I thought about and worked with black and white images and now the M10M has done this again. In contrasty lighting scenes the background can almost overwhelm the subject of the image. Usually its been a process of building up the subject (contrasts etc) to isolate it from the background but the M10M files requires a different approach and different treatments. 

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Ken Abrahams

[Jeff S]

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14 minutes ago, Musotographer said:

Thanks everyone - I'm clearly in a minority of one here!  I think I'l try, in high contrast situations, cosseting the highlights a little less and see what happens - I suspect that there may be more there than I'm allowing for. The tone curve has only become my friend in the last few months - I should have been using it long ago. I'm still on LR6 so have no luminance range masking as yet.

Local (and global) adjustment tools have improved significantly since LR6.  But even with the perpetual version there are many ways to attend to contrast and tonality.  If the tone curve is new to you, there could well be other control options that you’re not using to full advantage.  You may want to explore some books, video tutorials and/or workshops to better optimize your approach. There are loads of them, some free.  The tools are easily learned; the harder part is always determining when, where and to what degree to deploy the techniques.  Same as in darkroom days; only the tools have changed.

Jeff

[setuporg]

So I got the M9M last after doing thousands of shots with M246 and then M10M in the last three months.  The M9M is amazing out of camera (OOC) and certainly has a character all of its own.  I almost feel like picking one of these as if they were different films.  The M246 has a quirky B&W FD video and subdued OOC, the M10M has a crazy ISO and sometimes great sometimes dark OOC, and the M9M has the easiest OOC flow.

Edited June 22, 2020 by setuporg

[John Miranda]

Are you shooting in RAW?  If so, have you used RAW image import tools to create black and white clipping as desired, and compress the dynamic range before working on an image?  

[Robert Blanko]

Playing with the tonality curve (I hope this is the correct terminology in Adobe Lightroom) may help, as already noted in the thread.

As a matter of things, this is by the way almost always required in practice, as it is not possible to 1:1 display a digital photo having a dynamic range of about 13-14 or with the m10 Mono of even about 15 f-stops on any available display media which at best may have about 10 f-stops of dynamic range (cf. for instance here for ballpark numbers, if you scroll down, see the table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range ). 

Instead of simply clipping dark or bright parts of the photo, it might be advisable to non-linearly scale the dynamic range of your camera to map to the insofar reduced dynamic range of the display medium.

The M10 mono increases said challenge by let‘s say 1 f-stop as compared to what we were used to before.

[strohscw]

vor 13 Stunden schrieb Musotographer:

As I got my M10M only shortly before lockdown I haven't yet had all that many opportunities to use it. But so far I am finding that processing the files can be rather cumbersome in high contrast situations. With dull or low light, interiors and portraits it's sublime and the files I find very easy to manage; but on a sunny day, with a bright sky and deep shadows, the dynamic range seems to be so extreme that getting a decent balance  can be difficult. I usually expose for the highlights which can mean that the shadows are initially inky black, and though there is so much information in them that they are unlikely to break up, it can take a lot of work to achieve what I want. Does anyone else find the same? - or am I doing something wrong? In these situations the files from the first Monochrom were much easier to cope with.

Well for me the DR can never be big enough, because this gives me the possibility to decide by myself from which point on the black should be absolute black or not, this can be easily done by the contrast curve or the contrast slider depending on the output media DR.

I normally have an eye on the brightest parts I do not want to be completely white. And down from this point I am happy for every fstop of DR that gives me the possibility to decide by myself if I want to be completely black or have some signs of dark greytones. (Sorry I am missing the right words to explain this correctly).

In former times we used HDR with several exposures or graduated ND filters to compress the "reality" into the DR of the media.

Therefore, I am so happy to have a sensor with such a high DR. For sure you will need a different approach because now You are in the position that the DR of the sensor is much bigger than that of the output media, but I prefer this to the opposite.

And in addition to that I have in the M10M a sensor that is fully useable up to 25000 ISO which took from me the need for the summiluxes if I do not need them for a small DOF.

My two or three cents

Wolfram

[Musotographer]

11 hours ago, Ken Abrahams said:

Yes, I have been saying the same things about the M10M "blacks" in contrasty lighting. One just has to scroll through the images here to see how predominant the blacks are in most  lighting condition. Looking after the highlights doesn't mean that the darker areas of the image fall into place. It's harder to produce a lighter toned monochrome image using the M10M.

Thanks again everyone, lots of food for thought there - and it's good to know that there's at least one member here whose experience chimes with mine!

That said though, and after making a few test shots this morning and revisiting my M10M files of the last few weeks, I do think I've been under-exposing a bit TOO much to protect the highlights. And it's clearly time to bite the bullet and upgrade from LR6 - even though that means upgrading Sierra and my Nik plugins too. Sigh.

[Keith (M)]

Maybe I am not pushing the M10M's capabilities hard enough as I can't say I have any particular problem in quickly post-processing them in LR Classic.  On the other hand, perhaps I could achieve better quality output if I spent more time making use of LR's (and PS's) capabilities.  But there again, the pleasure is in the taking, not sitting at a computer...

[Musotographer]

7 minutes ago, Keith (M) said:

Maybe I am not pushing the M10M's capabilities hard enough as I can't say I have any particular problem in quickly post-processing them in LR Classic.  On the other hand, perhaps I could achieve better quality output if I spent more time making use of LR's (and PS's) capabilities.  But there again, the pleasure is in the taking, not sitting at a computer...

Keith, I don't really see how you could produce better quality than you do already. Your latest Wiltshire shots are splendid - I wish I lived there!

[Ken Abrahams]

In the old days and for those using film nowadays, we would need to think about how the lighting and film choice works in conjunction with processing technique to achieve a certain result that will be then printed on a particular grade of paper. Exposure bracketing sure helped to hit the right spot when working on a desired outcome. Shooting white goods on 4x5 view camera could be particularly difficult when the finished print was scanned for halftone screen and then to be printed in newspaper. 

Exposing to the right is the digital way and getting the histogram right isn't that hard. One wouldn't want to expose too far to the right with M10M for the fear of highlight sensitivity. One thing my photographer Grandfather told me was to shoot with the sun behind ay back. A universal rule that is not necessarily adhered to thee days but worth thinking about when using the M10M. 

I love a good deep black image tone as much as anyone and they're certainly not lacking in the M10M files. I think using layers in PS is a good way to level out midtowns and draw on the darker tones - bringing them back, in appropriate areas of the image is a good idea. I wouldn't want to adjust them out of the image however have them available to rub back in if required, Thats what I aim for in my workflow while at the same time having ways to produce less darker toned images in the same way when using lighting and exposure film to produce a high key effect.  There are a few ways to do this in photoshop including the use of "Blend if" function.    

[Peclet]

I have been testing my M10M for one week now (raw files, processed with latest LR edition). I don't think the files "out of the box" are too contrasty, - the opposite is the case for me: they are very soft, even softer when uploaded on LR than they appear on the control screen of the camera. The exposure curve in LR shows almost 25% reserve on the left (black tones) and almost 20% on the right (highlights), which I find a bit strange. Of course, there are plenty of tools to extend the dynamic curve and work the details in the shadows, but I think you have to do it too systematically. Does anybody else experience the same thing? Is it different with another software like Capture One? This being said, the tonal ranges you get from the M10M are superb. 

Jean-Claude Péclet

www.pecletphoto.com

[Jeff S]

11 hours ago, Peclet said:

I have been testing my M10M for one week now (raw files, processed with latest LR edition). I don't think the files "out of the box" are too contrasty, - the opposite is the case for me: they are very soft, even softer when uploaded on LR than they appear on the control screen of the camera. The exposure curve in LR shows almost 25% reserve on the left (black tones) and almost 20% on the right (highlights), which I find a bit strange. Of course, there are plenty of tools to extend the dynamic curve and work the details in the shadows, but I think you have to do it too systematically. Does anybody else experience the same thing? Is it different with another software like Capture One? This being said, the tonal ranges you get from the M10M are superb. 

Jean-Claude Péclet

www.pecletphoto.com

Having high dynamic range capability often yields flatter out-of-camera files, until the user (or default software) shifts those tones on the desired curve. Of course initial subject DR, tonality and lighting matter. One can apply presets or default settings to obtain a starting point yielding more contrast. I prefer, however, to use all that DR to individually adjust my pics and prints to taste (in my case using an M10 and first gen Monochrom). 

More discussion here...

Jeff

Edited July 6, 2020 by Jeff S