Leica M9 yes or no? That's the problem...

[jaapv]

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I used to be blown away by CibaChrome. No DR to speak of- but such beautiful prints. I never got negative colour prints exactly to my taste. I managed to print them OK, but never close to CC.

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[pippy]

4 hours ago, Ko.Fe. said:

And almost every well exposed, developed picture on bw negative and good wet printed is awesome! And only few Monochrome pictures are so.

What a load of nonsense.

Philip.

Edited September 25, 2020 by pippy

[pippy]

3 hours ago, jaapv said:

I used to be blown away by CibaChrome. No DR to speak of- but such beautiful prints. I never got negative colour prints exactly to my taste. I managed to print them OK, but never close to CC.

CibaChromes were amazing things! Something very metallic about their look.

We were fortunate, as students 35 years ago, to have a fully set-up Ciba processing unit in college which was the private reserve for Final Year degree students only. Learning how to extract the best from transparency and paper was a major lesson in itself. I still have a dozen or so 20" x 16" from that time in a folio case somewhere upstairs.

Shame it went by the wayside.

Philip.

Edited September 25, 2020 by pippy

[pedaes]

41 minutes ago, pippy said:

CibaChromes were amazing things!

Agree! The two things for me were the incredibly high gloss and how delicate they were when wet. It was easy to catch an edge on large prints and smudge the emulsion to reveal the blue paper on the print side. Mine were ok, but professionally done for exhibitions they were superb. Still use a couple of the strong chemical boxes for storage.

[pippy]

1 hour ago, pedaes said:

Agree! The two things for me were the incredibly high gloss and how delicate they were when wet...

Ah, well; I don't know which one of us had the greater benefit from the experience, pedaes. You had the undoubted pleasure of 'full immersion' whereas I had the relative luxury - although without the complete processing experience - of "DiDo" : Dry in; Dry out. Once our paper had been exposed it was simply a case of putting it in one end as a piece of white paper and it came out the other end fully finished and bone dry final print. Test strips were very much the order of the day and a full scrutiny of everything learned from the test shaped our image manipulation at the enlarger stage.

Ciba paper was FAR too expensive (for a Scotsman) to waste so although I always enjoyed the 'Wet Side' of things with monochrome I have to say that as far as Cibachromes were concerned the DiDo routine suited me perfectly!

Philip.

Edited September 25, 2020 by pippy

[Ko.Fe.]

6 hours ago, pippy said:

What a load of nonsense.

Philip.

Meh... 

It is about different taste among photogs I'm close with. I have one and only book with M9M photos. Came from true and rare professional. Not a typical forum warrior  , but person who spends days and hours on the streets after paid work week (as photographer). He told me if he would still have darkroom, he would still use bw film.

Most of Monochrome pictures I have seen here and where reminds me negatives developed in HC-110 and then scanned. Nothing but grey. And only after negatives were wet printed from, the image looks like BW. So many Monochrome pictures are just not finished, but left on developing stage... 

[pippy]

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4 hours ago, Ko.Fe. said:

...It is about different taste among photogs I'm close with. I have one and only book with M9M photos. Came from true and rare professional. Not a typical forum warrior  , but person who spends days and hours on the streets after paid work week (as photographer). He told me if he would still have darkroom, he would still use bw film.

Agreed it's about taste. It's also about ability to print - whether that be in a darkroom or with digital media - so anyone who can only produce "nothing but grey" images from a digital file is, to my mind, simply a very poor craftsman. As for myself? Happily I'm a superb craftsman and my digital prints - especially those made on Hahnemuhle stock - are spectacularly good.

YM, of course, MV.

Philip.

Edited September 26, 2020 by pippy

[pedaes]

5 hours ago, Ko.Fe. said:

Nothing but grey

A little off topic but relevant to what you have said.

It is not difficult to get a pure black and a pure white in a digital b&w print converted from a colour original, and all shades of grey in between. The attached from a M10.

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[Ko.Fe.]

4 hours ago, pedaes said:

A little off topic but relevant to what you have said.

It is not difficult to get a pure black and a pure white in a digital b&w print converted from a colour original, and all shades of grey in between. The attached from a M10.

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Top of the image has blown out highlights with loss of the details. I would try to recover it with highlights bar or temp, tint. But if no information was recorded to recover, I would just cut this part with blowout highlights off.

Monochrome might give "sharper" image, I think.

[analog-digital]

vor 5 Minuten schrieb Ko.Fe.:

Monochrome might give "sharper" image, I think.

sharper really has nothing to do with the gradations in the gray areas.

But you are right in this respect, the images of the monochrome M's cannot be compared with the converted ones. Especially the CCD's 😇

[pippy]

7 minutes ago, Ko.Fe. said:

Top of the image has blown out highlights with loss of the details...

Not on either of my (calibrated) monitors they aren't. Perhaps your monitor / screen needs attention in this respect? That could well be the reason you get nothing but a field of greys in your  prints as you might not be using the full dynamic range of your files - thinking the shadows are blocking-up and the highlights are blowing out when, in actual fact, there is still plenty of detail there.

Just a thought!

Philip.

[Ko.Fe.]

8 minutes ago, pippy said:

Not on either of my (calibrated) monitors they aren't. Perhaps your monitor / screen needs attention in this respect? That could well be the reason you get nothing but a field of greys in your  prints as you might not be using the full dynamic range of your files - thinking the shadows are blocking-up and the highlights are blowing out when, in actual fact, there is still plenty of detail there.

Just a thought!

Philip.

 I never wrote anything about fields of grey on my prints. If I have problems with prints, I'm able to correct it.

I was commenting on limited dynamic range of M9 sensor and slide film scans.  Has nothing to do with card, monitor.

As for blown highlights notice, thanks for reminder. I saw this image first on apple tablet, then on old laptop. Will check, on my dedicated to photography set later on. 

 

[Ko.Fe.]

28 minutes ago, analog-digital said:

sharper really has nothing to do with the gradations in the gray areas.

But you are right in this respect, the images of the monochrome M's cannot be compared with the converted ones. Especially the CCD's 😇

Yes, Monochrome is unique.

I have seen how converting of image to bw and manipulating with it in PP is reducing sharp representation of original image.

 

[pedaes]

39 minutes ago, Ko.Fe. said:

 I saw this image first on apple tablet, then on old laptop.

Perhaps you should look properly before you comment. Remember also low resolution on this Forum.

This was posted in relation to your statement about "Nothing but grey" as I made clear - so highlights not relevant .

 

Edited September 26, 2020 by pedaes

[pedaes]

1 hour ago, analog-digital said:

compared with the converted ones.

I happened to be in Leica Solms just after the original (CCD) Monochrom had been launched. They had commission a professional photographer in Frankfurt to take identical pictures with a M9 and the Monochrom. There were two A2 prints in b&w from each camera for comparison. Both looked superb, and they had a transparent overlay marked  to highlight the subtle  detail differences. They were there, but not jumping out at you. 

I think the Monochrom is as much about a mindset and 'seeing' in b&w as it is about differences in the final print.

[pippy]

2 hours ago, pedaes said:

There were two A2 prints in b&w from each camera for comparison. Both looked superb, and they had a transparent overlay marked  to highlight the subtle  detail differences. They were there, but not jumping out at you. 

I think the Monochrom is as much about a mindset and 'seeing' in b&w as it is about differences in the final print.

As far as the second paragraph goes with adopting a different mindset I agree with you 100%. Even although almost all my snaps from my 'colour body' are converted to monochrome the fact that there is no choice to 'keep the image in colour' when using the M Monochrom makes adopting a slightly different mental approach beneficial.

I would have been very interested to see the pairs of comparison prints shown at the launch - especially in terms of the chosen subject matter. In the midst of my time with my M9-P I borrowed an M Monochrom from a friend and even I, a novice to the new camera, could see where the Monochrom could outperform my own body; most of which was (almost certainly) down to the absence of the Bayer array if I was critically appraising 100% crops. Whether these differences would be very noticeable in final prints, however, is open to debate. Ultimately the M9-P made way for the M-D Typ-262 and an M Monochrom was brought in to augment the herd.

FWIW by far the greatest difference I've found when printing from digital files is choosing the right paper stock......but that is a whole new can of worms.

Philip.

Edited September 26, 2020 by pippy

[pedaes]

1 hour ago, pippy said:

especially in terms of the chosen subject matter.

It was a large wooden dresser well loaded with a great variety of items, and I suspect a tripod was used.

I don't know if a copy of the prints etc were made available to dealers, but if they were they have probably been thrown out by now.  David Stevens (Leica Manchester) was there and had a Monocrom with him. In danger of straying off topic again, below is a snap of David showing it to Knut Kuhn-Leitz (who sadly died earlier this year) in Haus Friedwart.

The start of my fascination with the camera!

M9 / 35mm Summilux FLE

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[M9reno]

11 minutes ago, pedaes said:

...Knut Kuhn-Leitz (who sadly died earlier this year) in Haus Friedwart...

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What sad news about his death.  He was such a nice and generous man - I was lucky to join one of his tours of Haus Friedwart and it was unforgettable.

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[pippy]

What a great snap! I love it!

"Chapeau!" as they say. What does it look like in monochrome?....

Philip.

[pedaes]

3 minutes ago, M9reno said:

He was such a nice and generous man

I agree wholeheartedly. As the last member of the Leitz family to have been part of 'the management' there seems to have been little said. I know Frank (Dabba-Smith) is doing an obituary for the TLS magazine, and there is one on the LHSA website. May he Rest in Peace.

Those of us who have visited the Haus in his company are fortunate.