M10M & ISO 64000 - Practical Uses?

[Keith (M)]

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Sitting at my desk one evening  & reading a thread about the M10M's hi-ISO capabilities, I picked up the camera (+ 50mm Summilux-M ASPH) and turned to my left take a photo diagonally across the room, the only light being a 40W desk-lamp behind my right shoulder. The result below is at ISO 64000 (yes 64000 not 6400!) - amazingly clean. Minimal post-processing - imported into LR Classic, 'auto' clicked and the noise-reduction luminance slider increased from the default 25 to 50.  Exported as a 2480px .jpg.  

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This morning rain stopped play (again!), so I looked for more potential subjects.  Having neither a black cat nor a coal cellar, I resorted to things lurking in dark corners of the garage.    Same ISO & post-processing.

So, ISO 64000 is eminently useable but aside from the proverbial black cat / coal cellar scenario, are there real-life practical uses?  Even the photo below taken through a window on a dark and rainy night only required ISO 12500.

Thoughts?

 

[Charles Morgan]

I bought a Sony A7s for low light shooting in old churches where I certainly needed very high ISOs with the zooms I was using. That however did not produce the results you are getting. 

Superb results!

[250swb]

Thought's? I suppose you could take the example above about churches. Is the atmosphere and feeling of an old building and what you feel about it due to the ambient light levels, if so photograph the ambient light. If you are interested in recording architecture boost the ISO and make the corners look like daylight. There is a lot of subtly between the two but I think you should decide where your feeling for the subject leads and don't use technology just for the sake of using it.

There is a lot of novelty still with new sensors being able to defy the bounds of nighttime, and is anybody really photographing nighttime if it now looks like daytime? But photographers went through this when HDR was a fashion and it wasn't too long before they got it out of their system, people saw the general falseness of it on one front, but for a few specialists it remains invaluable.

[Keith (M)]

Having carried out the above quick tests and seen that 64000 is useable, the knowledge will be tucked away in the memory bank.  The advantage such knowledge gives is that one can (with auto-ISO set to 'max 64000') take photos inside churches, cathedrals or whatever with an aperture set for greater depth of field than one would normally be able to achieve (and without concern regarding shutter speed), whilst still capturing the ambience of the interior.  Ditto regarding DoF and shutter speed for night-time street scenes. Not that I would envisage the camera selecting 64000 except in extreme circumstances - after all, the 'dark & wet night' photo required 'only' 12500.

Now I just need some opportunities...

[Charles Morgan]

I found that with a longer lens (I was using a 60 - 300 mm f5.6 zoom) really needed the speed boost to get a good shutter speed to hold by hand. Obviously a different type of application, but shooting down a tin mine with a Leicaflex SL2 and a heavy Summilux 80mm I was able to get good results at 3200 wide open on film. 

The key to me is that is a stunning result for something at those speeds with the Monochrom M10. It is on my serious list for when I get moved.

[Dennis]

Maybe the M10 @ 6400 looks the same as M10M @ 64000 🤷‍♂️
I'm super happy about 3200 performance on my M10 and reasonably satisfied at 6,400 ... Which is my limit on that camera. Only in cases of extreme emergency 12,800, but it's very noisy and probably banding issues.

Regarding ISO, the M10M is similar to the M10R, and these extra two stops are beneficial. I would love to shoot @ f/5.6 all night long, at 12,800, and have the same performance and low amount of noise at 3200 ISO on my M10. Does it make sense? I guess the M10M has around two stops advantage over the M10 regarding ISO performance, right?
But at 3,200, if one is not afraid of the dark exposures (when is necessary to save highlights), and can shoot handheld at 1/15 or similar, there is so much we can do. I'm ready and open to receive a better ISO performance (these two extra stops) soon, but I know I have so far enough to play around with.

[colint544]

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Although I'd very much like to have an M10M - for the handling and speed of operation as much as anything - I'm still persevering with my M9M. It has the feel of a prototype camera. It's idiosyncratic, and occasionally it locks up for no good reason, and I have to pull the battery. The buffer fills up after only a few shots. I daren't go above 2500 ISO with that, because I find the results at higher ISOs too gritty and noisy, and I'm forced to use fast lenses wide open when the light is poor.

So the potential to set auto ISO (max 64,000) and shoot indoors and out - using pretty much any aperture  - opens up a whole new way of shooting the M Monochrom. Traditionally, photographs taken in poor light always have that characteristic look of having been shot with a fast lens at maximum aperture. So there is more flexibility, more you can do with the M10M.

It makes you wonder how Leica could ever improve on such a machine.