Leica Monochrom CCD, Who’s Selling? Why?

[wilfredo]

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15 hours ago, 250swb said:

My biggest mistake was to sell my M9M for the M246. wilfredo is absolutely correct about the near film look from the CCD sensor, such that I stopped using film while I had it. 

It wasn't that the M9M made photographs straight out of the camera that were exciting, they could be dull and lifeless as witnessed by many posted in the forums when it was released. It is how they come alive in post processing and how like the M9 the tones merge into the highlights in a very filmic way. The M246 made a better initial image, but no amount of curves and moving sliders could recreate the magic. The M246 was in fact harder work.

I can relate to this, I'm holding onto my Monochrom Type I, and yes the files require PP, but then again, as Ansel Adams eloquently stated, the print is the equivalent of a musical performance, and in this case our digital file is the equivalent of a musical composition. No two performers will play a musical piece exactly the same way.  I believe that it is part of the Leica mystique to produce a print that is uniquely yours, and in that regard the Monochrom Type I forces you to do that.  I myself enjoy the process, it is akin to watching your print come to life in the developer tray. 

[wilfredo]

15 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

I must admit I was tempted by the M9M when it was released, but I've been a film user for far too long to be convinced by claims that the images are close to 35mm film in character and quality.  They are not, they are clearly digital as the OP's image above illustrates perfectly well.

There is no denying, though, that looking through the Monochrom forums here that M9M images usually have a more pleasing look than M246 and especially the majority of M10M monochrom images, which I agree with others, seem tonally flat and aesthetically dull by comparison.

I wish people would stop trying to make these comparisons with film.  If you want a film look, shoot film!

I appreciate your comments.  Making comparisons to film doesn't mean that the Monochrom M looks exactly like film, it doesn't.  In terms of tonality, it's very similar, but not the same. Personally, I'm not a fan of grainy photos.  I was first drawn to the Leica CCD digital when the M8 first hit the market.  Before that I shot with a variety of Leica rangefinders.  My experience with the M8, and the converted B&W images I got with that camera, convinced me that the Leica CCD sensor was in a genre of its own.  I still resonate with that genre, and it remains my favorite.

[pippy]

12 minutes ago, wilfredo said:

...our digital file is the equivalent of a musical composition....I believe that it is part of the Leica mystique to produce a print that is uniquely yours, and in that regard the Monochrom Type I forces you to do that...

But this process is not unique to the CCD bodies; the CMOS sensor'd M cameras require just as much care to produce the 'print that is uniquely yours'.

Ansel Adams, BTW, was no lover of visible grain in his prints and did all he could in the various processing stages to negate the effect as much as possible.

Just thought I'd throw that in as you mentioned his name!

Philip.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by pippy

[Jeff S]

Indeed. Most of today's modern digital cameras with high dynamic produce flat out-of-camera files (unless some contrast curve adjustment has been applied by the editing software), typically requiring user adjustment/interpretation. And that's generally just a starting point.  I have never produced a fine b/w print that is suitable for framing, film or digital, that didn't require some form of editing.

Jeff

[wilfredo]

11 hours ago, olegn said:

I'm a hobbie photographier and just few years with leica. I'm not really interested and skilled in detailed technical specifications - so i will speak about feelings and total experience. My first camera was MM and i felt in love with it even before i got one. I just wanted a camera to go and take b&w photos and that what MM did for me. It increased my level of inspiration about phtography.

When M10M came out i was very curious about it and finally got one with a decision to sell one of the monochromes when i understand which one is better for me. M10M was as easy to use as a MM and also it had no limitation of what conditions you need to take a shot. But i found that it changed my photography experience and made it more "conveyor" like. When switch back to MM i felt again that perfect pace and harmony. Then i tried to imagine the situation when i sell the M10M and i felt ok with this. Then i tried to imagine th situation when i sell the MM and i felt sad. That made me a decision) While i found the silent shutter is a huge advantage, the other M10M bonuses - i just dont fit them as a hobbie photographier. I'm like a kid with an adult toy, while MM feels like a part of me. 

So this was my emotional expirience why i'm not selling MM and selling M10M instead.

I can relate.  I'm not a pro, just a serious amateur who occasionally has a photo show, or participates in a show.  I'm starting to offer webinars on the subject of Contemplative Photography.  My connection to photography is for the love of it. I have a day job thankfully.  Your approach in observing your feelings is very revealing and I think a good gauge.  Sometimes I do find some of the images produced by the M10 dazzling (what I've seen online) both color and B&W versions, but I sense I would lose that emotional connection if I parted with my "classic"Monochrom.  The Monochrom still produces my favorite photographs, and I keep it even though my left hand is not 100% functional, making it difficult to focus, and my eyes are not the best anymore.  This camera is the last of the cameras from an era that came and left too fast.  The world is moving at a rapid pace.

[wilfredo]

57 minutes ago, pippy said:

But this process is not unique to the CCD bodies; the CMOS sensor'd M cameras require just as much care to produce the 'print that is uniquely yours'.

Ansel Adams, BTW, was no lover of visible grain in his prints and did all he could in the various processing stages to negate the effect as much as possible.

Just thought I'd throw that in as you mentioned his name!

Philip.

 

 

Yes, it's not unique to the CCD. I've used various CMOS sensor cameras from Olympus, to Canon, to Sony. I currently shoot with a Sony A7RIII which generally speaking has been quite satisfactory.  I also mentioned elsewhere on this thread that I am no fan of grain in film photos, and never have been, not even back in my film days.  The low noise in modern digital cameras is a gift I welcome! 

[250swb]

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9 hours ago, mmradman said:

Short of photographing space aliens everything on earth that is being photographed today from beauty to the beast and anything in between has been photographed in some form or technique since 1820s.

 

and gore and anything in between.

Perhaps I wasn't very clear, sorry. Agreed nearly everything has already been photographed, but better photography is now equated with buying a new camera, testing it against known variables like sunsets, boats bobbing, and maybe a windmill or fields of poppies for two years, and then buying the next new camera to further improve the photographs. It becomes a cycle of redundancy and competing technology, the camera becomes redundant and in many ways the photographs made with it also become redundant because they are improved upon in the next cycle. Let's look at it this way, so far this has been an intelligent thread, agreed (?), but at any other time it could have been entirely possible given the mindset of redundancy culture for somebody to sincerely argue a key point 'how can an 18mp camera make better photographs than a 42mp camera?'

[mmradman]

23 minutes ago, 250swb said:

Perhaps I wasn't very clear, sorry. Agreed nearly everything has already been photographed, but better photography is now equated with buying a new camera, testing it against known variables like sunsets, boats bobbing, and maybe a windmill or fields of poppies for two years, and then buying the next new camera to further improve the photographs. It becomes a cycle of redundancy and competing technology, the camera becomes redundant and in many ways the photographs made with it also become redundant because they are improved upon in the next cycle. Let's look at it this way, so far this has been an intelligent thread, agreed (?), but at any other time it could have been entirely possible given the mindset of redundancy culture for somebody to sincerely argue a key point 'how can an 18mp camera make better photographs than a 42mp camera?'

Thanks for that clarification, completely agree.  The trend of re-photographing is with us as new camera cycle is short and next best thing is just round the corner. 

I have also noticed that a lot of photography one can find online is equipment testing, this has been encouraged by manufacturers and official and unofficial influencers. There are very few essays concentrating on a particular subject or theme with a foot note that such and such camera/lens was used.

I would imagine that HCB or Ansel Adams used the same camera for a bit longer than 4 years. 

[pippy]

1 hour ago, 250swb said:

...better photography is now equated with buying a new camera, testing it against known variables like sunsets, boats bobbing, and maybe a windmill or fields of poppies for two years, and then buying the next new camera to further improve the photographs. It becomes a cycle of redundancy and competing technology...

...at any other time it could have been entirely possible given the mindset of redundancy culture for somebody to sincerely argue a key point 'how can an 18mp camera make better photographs than a 42mp camera?'...

I couldn't possibly agree more.

Philip.

[wilfredo]

I've been enjoying reading the comments posted here; it's been a fruitful and meaningful discussion.  Lot's of deep thinking reflecting meaningful experience has gone into these thoughts, and so I am thankful to all of you who have contributed thus far.  One thing is clear in reading these, a genuine love of photography with our chosen instruments. We're all looking to take  photographs that take our breath away and when we capture these, the feeling is priceless.  If our photographs cause others to pause, look, and explore hidden meanings that may emerge from them, that's an even greater joy.  Keep on keeping on!

Edited September 17, 2020 by wilfredo
Correction

[Ken Abrahams]

I am happy to say that moving forward with the "brave new world" is an exciting prospect. It's like getting old, we tend to take less risks, get stuck in routines and remember the good old days until you decide to do something for the first time and learn something new. I love the rendering of the M Monochrom and I still use it today. I was talking to a photographer the other day how the Leica Monochrom's can uniquely render blurs and out of focus areas. I love using slower shutter speeds to achieve motion and then amplify the grain with the MM1.

The M10M can do it too although I wish it had I.S. (like the SL2) so that everything else but the moving subject was perfectly sharp. Its a bit of a talking point however that I spend money on the Monochrom to get the best quality blurry images but that's what I learned to do achieve with the MM1. The M10M is a new beast and perhaps requires a different approach in the exploration of how it fits into anyones style of work and the scheme of the brave new world or not? The whole photographic landscape is changing anyway. I scroll though hundreds of images every week because they do not grab my eye or is it because I have become jaded and overexposed by social media's constant desensitising process to imagery we once were totally amazed by? Mediocre images abound and some of those are because we settle into our patterns of shooting subjects available on daily walks. Certainly pre Covid times there were at least shots from Saint Tropez, Africa and other exotic travel locations and those images were very good.  

Over and out 

     

[AceVentura1986]

I have an ME that I bought in late 2012 and an M9M that dates from 2015. Of the two, the M9M is by far my favorite. Both have had their sensors changed to the improved version. I had thought to keep both indefinitely but have recently reconsidered my view  

My concern arises from another thread on this forum. In that thread, I read that the OP’s camera developed a vertical line from a stuck pixel but that Leica was NOT able to remap it. This is troubling, as my old M8 developed this problem once as well. A vertical line will ruin an image  a permanent one will make the camera useless. 

If this is indeed true, I might consider selling both and putting the proceeds toward either an M10 or an M10M. 

Does anyone have any insight into the vertical line problem?  

[BrianS]

  

On 9/17/2020 at 5:47 PM, BrianS said:

https://cameraderie.org/threads/leica-m-monochrom.37659/page-37#post-343526

 

I had a line like this show up on my M Monochrom with the new sensor in it. Only happens at High-ISO. I wrote my own DNG processor for the M Monochrom files, so took a look at what was going on. The line was not "dead", it was losing charge while transferring through one pixel. I HACKED a quick piece of code in my DNG code to look for it, and to fix it. I need to know the address of the bad pixel, did not do anything fancy. But- in images taken afterwards, the line is not apparent. It is not averaged out - the software generates a local "fudge factor" to restore the lost charge. I run all my DNG files through this code, ported it to run under Windows. The code applies a Gamma curve, operates over all the files in a directory or on the SD card.

I'm going to quote my answer from the other thread that had this problem.My M Monochrom developed this problem several months back, when I was also converting my custom DNG code to run under Windows (from DOS). I took a deeper look at what was going on.

 

If someone has a DNG file from the original M Monochrom, if you get it to me I'll take a look.

[Likaleica]

You guys are talking about very subtle differences that I cannot see, either on my monitor or in prints up to A2, between the M9M and the M10M.  I have compared the output of these two cameras a lot and the only difference I see is in shadow noise (better with M10M).  I'm not disputing that there are differences, but I can't see them.

For me the M10M is easier to use because of the ergonomics, user interface and improved ISO performance.  I think it has a better dynamic range as well.  Resolution is obvious.  The feel of using it is closer to the film M experience than the M9M, for me.

But in terms of image quality in prints up to A2 I really don't see a difference.

[BrianS]

5 hours ago, AceVentura1986 said:

I have an ME that I bought in late 2012 and an M9M that dates from 2015. Of the two, the M9M is by far my favorite. Both have had their sensors changed to the improved version. I had thought to keep both indefinitely but have recently reconsidered my view  

My concern arises from another thread on this forum. In that thread, I read that the OP’s camera developed a vertical line from a stuck pixel but that Leica was NOT able to remap it. This is troubling, as my old M8 developed this problem once as well. A vertical line will ruin an image  a permanent one will make the camera useless. 

If this is indeed true, I might consider selling both and putting the proceeds toward either an M10 or an M10M. 

Does anyone have any insight into the vertical line problem?  

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/772/1/012002/pdf

 

I linked to another site above, and have copied the link to a technical paper that I found when fixing the problem on my camera by writing my own software. My code corrects the errant line and now runs under Windows. I converted the Fortran-77 code to compile under the Watcom V2.0 F77 compiler, released in 2017.

 

If you have a DNG file from the original M Monochrom that has a bad line that Leica cannot fix, I could take a look at it. My code "batch processes" all of the files on a subdirectory (or a card), simply runs on all of them. There are very likely other programs out there to fix the bad line by averaging over it, I wanted to restore the values as per the technical paper.

[Fontan]

Now that there seems to be a couple of companies other than Leica who can replace corroded CCD sensors, I am more than ever interested in M9M, actually. But I just bought M10 and buying Leica seems too much of an indulgence and just cannot bring myself to, although I have been looking at them on eBay to see what the trend in pricing is at the moment. Market value  of M9M seems to be holding around $3,000 us. 

[AceVentura1986]

16 hours ago, BrianS said:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/772/1/012002/pdf

 

I linked to another site above, and have copied the link to a technical paper that I found when fixing the problem on my camera by writing my own software. My code corrects the errant line and now runs under Windows. I converted the Fortran-77 code to compile under the Watcom V2.0 F77 compiler, released in 2017.

 

If you have a DNG file from the original M Monochrom that has a bad line that Leica cannot fix, I could take a look at it. My code "batch processes" all of the files on a subdirectory (or a card), simply runs on all of them. There are very likely other programs out there to fix the bad line by averaging over it, I wanted to restore the values as per the technical paper.

Wow, that’s great. I don’t have any coding experience, tho, and more than likely by the time this happens in the future I’ll will have forgotten this thread. LOL. 

[geoffreyg]

Got an M9M about 5+ years ago - have enjoyed the camera, and some shots are just lovely. Yet its not easy as other shots don't seem to work well with it. It seems there is a kind of light the camera does really well - Mies' buildings in Chicago on a wintry morning with the 21 SEM was wonderful. An architectural interior handheld, highish ISO (2500?) with shots as good as needed.... but exposing for the shadows meant daylight from the skylight was blown out. Not a big deal, but M10M would have been better. 

There are however some shots that I just can't get right - subtle grey of beach sand, for example. Somehow some landscapes  just don't come through. Not sure what this is.... 

A bit worried about the age on the M9M, and the super slow buffer, although sensor was changed. An M10M could be special....while not as "generous" (an odd term, but seems somehow appropriate for CCD) as the M9M, it has more DR and ability to crop.  Or M10R, with  channels for more BW options? Argh. One could always sit tight and improve the technique....

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[BrianS]

1 hour ago, AceVentura1986 said:

Wow, that’s great. I don’t have any coding experience, tho, and more than likely by the time this happens in the future I’ll will have forgotten this thread. LOL. 

Thankyou. "on my list of fun coding projects"- I'll make the program more flexible by reading in a simple text file that gives the location of the faults, and have it apply corrections. Of course it is free, and I like to share Source Code and executables. 

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[mmradman]

20 hours ago, BrianS said:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/772/1/012002/pdf

 

I linked to another site above, and have copied the link to a technical paper that I found when fixing the problem on my camera by writing my own software. My code corrects the errant line and now runs under Windows. I converted the Fortran-77 code to compile under the Watcom V2.0 F77 compiler, released in 2017.

 

If you have a DNG file from the original M Monochrom that has a bad line that Leica cannot fix, I could take a look at it. My code "batch processes" all of the files on a subdirectory (or a card), simply runs on all of them. There are very likely other programs out there to fix the bad line by averaging over it, I wanted to restore the values as per the technical paper.

It is my understanding that Leica is unique camera manufacturer that requires sending M cameras (can't state for other models) for service for dead pixels/dead column, other makes have this auto corrected.  Dead pixel column happened to me with M240 shot at ISO 640 which was common problem at the time, to say i received good service would be over-egging it as other makes have it auto corrected.