base and high practical ISO for M10 and M10R

[ymc226]

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Asking for the M9 on the respective forum as well.  I have several cameras and want to have quick notes on what the base and practical high ISO without acceptable noise or picture degradation which I know can vary per personal opinion.  What would be the base on the M10 and M10 R and the high on both cameras?

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[scott kirkpatrick]

Highest usable ISO is so user-dependent and content-dependent that you will get recommendations  from 2400 to 15000.  Base ISO is defined by having the widest range between details in the highlight and details in the shadows and even then, in the shadows, personal preferences arise.  And Auto-ISO users want to set a "base ISO" to be the value they get when there is plenty of light for a fast shutter speed, yet not so low that highlight headroom had been reduced.  That happened with the M10s.  Leica increased the Auto-ISO base to 200 to give more headroom that 100 was providing, and expert opinion holds that there is a bit more dynamic range available at 160 or even 100 as long as you crank in -0.3 or -0.7 stops of exposure correction. 

The M10-R works just fine at ISO 100.

[convexferret]

It does of course depend on your sensitivity to noise, and I don't really case as long as it's not too ugly. I love the look of pushed B&W film for example. When I have a noisy image in front of me I'll often add just enough grain in Lightroom to make the noise less "digital" and look more random. However, in the spirit of this post, I'll categorise the cameras that I've used into "Usable", "Usable with work" and "Unusable". Where "Usable with work" means that a noise-reduction process is needed.

 

Camera                 Usable            Usable With Work            Unusable

M246 Monochrom         320-10,000        12,800-20,000 (banding*)    25,600+ (banding **)

M10                    100-10,000        12,800-20,000 (banding*)    25,600+ (banding **)

M10 Monochrom          160-40,000        51,200-100,000 (banding*)   ---

 

* Banding caused by uneven sensor readout or amplification. Lightroom's noise reduction has no effect but various external NR plugins like Nik DFine 2 can solve this to my satisfaction.

** Banding too heavy to be removed cleanly