Color rendition of M 240 vs M 262

[Cobram]

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As a ME-220 owner I'm thinking to try M262 as M-E220 is not supported any more.

M262 seems reliable (quality wise) and color rendition, I don't know why, seems to sit between M240 and M10. I was just looking through flickr photos and I'm aware that by specification M240 and M262 color rendition should be the same. But browsing Flickr I can detect some variation... Just me?

 

 

[jaapv]

Even if so, ity is hardly relevant. Any new camera I get will have a  colour profile assigned to it. I detect even differences between cameras of the same series.  I always get out my colour target and set it up in Photoshop/Lightroom before taking one serious photograph.

 

 

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[Cobram]

42 minutes ago, jaapv said:

Even if so, ity is hardly relevant. Any new camera I get will have a  colour profile assigned to it. I detect even differences between cameras of the same series.  I always get out my colour target and set it up in Photoshop/Lightroom before taking one serious photograph.

 

 

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Dear Jaapv, thank you for your answer.

So you recommend to check colors by using colorchecker. I have to check  information on the internet because I'm totally novice in this regard. Thanks for input.

Can anyone comment on M 262. Are you satisfied with color rendition, sharpness and response of the camera?

[elmars]

The M262 ist lightweight (100g less), very fast (as fast as the M240 and M10) with very good image quality. High ISO up to 3200 without problems. The M10 has one stop more. Color rendition is as good as in the M240. The skin tones are a bit too red for my taste (like in many other cameras, so I think it is an Adobe caused problem), but setting the red hue slider in Lightroom a bit to the right makes them very pleasing.

The M262 ist the best M after the M10.

[adan]

"Everybody has won, and all must have prizes!" - The Dodo, Alice in Wonderland.

Jaap is of course correct - it is mostly (if not all) about the profiling.

I also agree with Cobram - Leica tweaked their own "Embedded" profile for the M (typ 262) as compared to the M (typ 240). Removing a slight red bias, in my evaluation.

I happen to be a fanatic about greens and cyans, especially darker or less-saturated "architectural" greens and/or evergreen foliage. I hate it when they get muddied to gray, or even brown.

And related colors - caucasian skin that is tanned, not sunburned; greenish auto and building glass; skies that are cyan, not purple.

I have been rebelling against a "magentification" of photographic color rendering dating back decades. It's why I liked Fuji slide films, and also dumped first my Nikkors ("As magenta as Hell." - David Alan Harvey, 1999) and then Zeiss/Kyocera/Contax lenses. And was drawn to the Leitz Canada "Mandler" lenses of the early 1980s (and, long ago, the 1970s Canon FD lenses).

Anyway, in late 2016 I was ready to move on from certain limitations of the M9 (color not being one of them) and noticed myself that M262 pictures seemed to be natively (straight out of the box) a bit more to my taste. But before I could pull the trigger, the M10 was announced. And I checked its color rendering via the first online .DNG samples, and saw the same thing (as well as other advantages).

A dumb picture - but a good test (for me) of "systemic" color rendering. Sensor, profile, lens. (M10, "straight" Leica M10 embedded profile, 1980 Leitz/Canada 90mm Summicron v.3)

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[jaapv]

3 hours ago, Cobram said:

Dear Jaapv, thank you for your answer.

So you recommend to check colors by using colorchecker. I have to check  information on the internet because I'm totally novice in this regard. Thanks for input.

Can anyone comment on M 262. Are you satisfied with color rendition, sharpness and response of the camera?

I was very happy with the colour rendition of the 240 but is was a camera that really needed setting up to give its best.  With that in mind I would strongly recommend getting a ColorChecker Passport and using that (very simple) system to set up profiles for all your cameras. If you need help you can PM me. 

[Cobram]

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2 hours ago, adan said:

"Everybody has won, and all must have prizes!" - The Dodo, Alice in Wonderland.

Jaap is of course correct - it is mostly (if not all) about the profiling.

I also agree with Cobram - Leica tweaked their own "Embedded" profile for the M (typ 262) as compared to the M (typ 240). Removing a slight red bias, in my evaluation.

I happen to be a fanatic about greens and cyans, especially darker or less-saturated "architectural" greens and/or evergreen foliage. I hate it when they get muddied to gray, or even brown.

And related colors - caucasian skin that is tanned, not sunburned; greenish auto and building glass; skies that are cyan, not purple.

I have been rebelling against a "magentification" of photographic color rendering dating back decades. It's why I liked Fuji slide films, and also dumped first my Nikkors ("As magenta as Hell." - David Alan Harvey, 1999) and then Zeiss/Kyocera/Contax lenses. And was drawn to the Leitz Canada "Mandler" lenses of the early 1980s (and, long ago, the 1970s Canon FD lenses).

Anyway, in late 2016 I was ready to move on from certain limitations of the M9 (color not being one of them) and noticed myself that M262 pictures seemed to be natively (straight out of the box) a bit more to my taste. But before I could pull the trigger, the M10 was announced. And I checked its color rendering via the first online .DNG samples, and saw the same thing (as well as other advantages).

A dumb picture - but a good test (for me) of "systemic" color rendering. Sensor, profile, lens. (M10, "straight" Leica M10 embedded profile, 1980 Leitz/Canada 90mm Summicron v.3)

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Thank you for your insight. I have similar opinion regarding magenta, caucasian skin and greenish scenery. Browsing through Flickr M10 photos (again🙂) I noticed sometimes red nose and redish skin tones. But again not scientifically proved. Just my personal observation. On the other hand M262 skin tones appear more realistic, maybe tanned as you said. On the other hand landscape photos appear much reacher on M10 photos...

Confused 🙂

Can you give me any comment regarding M 262 vs M9? 

[jaapv]

The only comment I can give is that 80% of photographs on Flickr exhibit abysmal colour processing. It is just about the last place I would go to  judge a camera. Not to mention the pervasive atrocious (over)sharpening. It is indeed possible to process lovely Kodak-like colours out of the M9 and M8 due to the CCD with its Kodak- designed Bayer filter.

[Jean-Michel]

I have and use both an M9 and M-P. I made some presets to correct (to my liking) caucasian skin tones in M9 files, and a separate similar sets for the M-P. Other than that, the LR profiles are just fine – I made some profiles using Colot-Checker, but found that the LR profiles were just as good or better than mine. As to difference in colours between the M9 CCD and M-P cmos, and just about any other digital camera on the planet, there are NONE that stand up to scrutiny after any basic development of the files. Digital files are not like film, when he colour rendition of transparencies was basically baked-in the formulation of the emulsion, colour negatives allowed some adjustment in the darkroom, but only so much. Digital raw  files allow us to tweak them at will! David Farkas went as far as posting this to make that point: https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2015/02/the-great-debate-ccd-vs-cmos-part-1/

At the end, the only colours that count are the ones that show up as ink on paper. Because, if you do not print it, it does not exist.

[Cobram]

31 minutes ago, Jean-Michel said:

I have and use both an M9 and M-P. I made some presets to correct (to my liking) caucasian skin tones in M9 files, and a separate similar sets for the M-P. Other than that, the LR profiles are just fine – I made some profiles using Colot-Checker, but found that the LR profiles were just as good or better than mine. As to difference in colours between the M9 CCD and M-P cmos, and just about any other digital camera on the planet, there are NONE that stand up to scrutiny after any basic development of the files. Digital files are not like film, when he colour rendition of transparencies was basically baked-in the formulation of the emulsion, colour negatives allowed some adjustment in the darkroom, but only so much. Digital raw  files allow us to tweak them at will! David Farkas went as far as posting this to make that point: https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2015/02/the-great-debate-ccd-vs-cmos-part-1/

At the end, the only colours that count are the ones that show up as ink on paper. Because, if you do not print it, it does not exist.

I have to agree with you. Thank you for the link.

Farkas is a genius in post processing🙌. I wish he develops similar presets / Styles for Capture One. This will be perfect! Rendering he achieves with M240 is marvelous. 

[Adam Bonn]

Jim Arnold wrote of review of the 262 v the m9 and included dng samples from each for download and review 

https://www.jimarnold.org/blog/2015/12/leica-m-typ-262/

As others have noted, there’s a lot of variance and scope for adjustment in a digital workflow.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the lens rendering in there either!

If one is unhappy with the colours, they can be tweaked, from using a colour checker and creating a lcc/dcp file or on an image by image basis during PP

I think everyone agrees colour grading to ones taste is important, but do note that not everyone agrees on what to do.. for example I’ve seen it said on here that the embedded/adobe profiles for the 240 are dreadful. But someone else said (in this very thread) that the adobe profile with a tweak was better than they could get from a custom colour checker profile

what does that tell you?

Nice colours / nicer colours / accurate colours - as simple as these things sound, they’re actually quite arbitrary concepts* like asking folk to agree on the best song or the nicest tasting chocolate.

It will always come down to what you* want or like and what you’re prepared to do work wise to achieve it.

and finally... as tool like as cameras are they tend to be quite emotive purchases. So make sure you get the one you want, not the one that screams “this’ll do” as buyers remorse is a horrible thing! 

All evidence, both tangible and empirical, points to the m10 being the nicest M for colours since the M9. #justsayin 😉

*for clarity I’m not talking about colour critical work such as product, fashion, food etc whereby everyone involve really needs to sing off the same colour song sheet!

[LeeUK]

I think the embedded 240 & 262 profiles are the same, can somebody post a link to a 262 dng and I will check?

Leica's embedded profiles are not complete as they do not include the correct forward matrixes, I can post corrected profiles if I can get hold of a 262 DNG. This makes a subtle but noticeable difference to reds as the colour temp decreases...

 

[boojum]

Is it possible that we have individually different perceptions of colors?  That we might see the same color differently?  We know it happens with the "color blind."  So I wonder do we see colors differently rather than all in a uniform and predictable manners?

[Adam Bonn]

22 minutes ago, LeeUK said:

I think the embedded 240 & 262 profiles are the same, can somebody post a link to a 262 dng and I will check?

Leica's embedded profiles are not complete as they do not include the correct forward matrixes, I can post corrected profiles if I can get hold of a 262 DNG. This makes a subtle but noticeable difference to reds as the colour temp decreases...

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xycvyh6a4f5bk37/01-L1000281.dng?dl=0

 

try this, this is one Jim Arnold's - he shared this on his site so I'm assuming we're all cool and gang about me sharing it here

[Adam Bonn]

do you mean this @LeeUK?

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[Adam Bonn]

It's very possible I've not done this correctly, but when I strip out the embedded profile from the 262 file and use it on an M240 image, then compare that image with the same image but with the proper 240 embedded profile...

....I don't really see a difference

(I appreciate that this is just a screen grab)

If there is a difference it's very subtle!

 

(copy1 is the 262 profiled file!)

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[LeeUK]

Thanks Adam.

As I thought they are identical.

M240:-

<ColorMatrix1 Rows="3" Cols="3">
    <Element Row="2" Col="2">0.759100</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="1">0.160100</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="0">-0.035700</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="2">0.106200</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="1">1.314500</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="0">-0.417100</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="2">-0.022300</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="1">-0.224900</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="0">0.757100</Element>
</ColorMatrix1>
<ColorMatrix2 Rows="3" Cols="3">
    <Element Row="2" Col="2">0.722600</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="1">0.241600</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="0">-0.088100</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="2">0.092900</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="1">1.330300</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="0">-0.422100</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="2">-0.061100</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="1">-0.148600</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="0">0.665300</Element>
</ColorMatrix2>

M262:-

<ColorMatrix1 Rows="3" Cols="3">
    <Element Row="2" Col="2">0.759100</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="1">0.160100</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="0">-0.035700</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="2">0.106200</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="1">1.314500</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="0">-0.417100</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="2">-0.022300</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="1">-0.224900</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="0">0.757100</Element>
</ColorMatrix1>
<ColorMatrix2 Rows="3" Cols="3">
    <Element Row="2" Col="2">0.722600</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="1">0.241600</Element>
    <Element Row="2" Col="0">-0.088100</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="2">0.092900</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="1">1.330300</Element>
    <Element Row="1" Col="0">-0.422100</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="2">-0.061100</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="1">-0.148600</Element>
    <Element Row="0" Col="0">0.665300</Element>
</ColorMatrix2>

I will calculate the correct forward matrix that is missing and post the profiles if anybody is interested.

[jaapv]

5 hours ago, boojum said:

Is it possible that we have individually different perceptions of colors?  That we might see the same color differently?  We know it happens with the "color blind."  So I wonder do we see colors differently rather than all in a uniform and predictable manners?

Colour is even culture determined. Just see the differences between Japanese, American and European slide films. Actually, the Japanese language is rather confused when differentiating between blue and green. http://www.japaneseprofessor.com/lessons/beginning/colors-in-japanese/

[jaapv]

4 hours ago, Adam Bonn said:

It's very possible I've not done this correctly, but when I strip out the embedded profile from the 262 file and use it on an M240 image, then compare that image with the same image but with the proper 240 embedded profile...

....I don't really see a difference

(I appreciate that this is just a screen grab)

If there is a difference it's very subtle!

 

(copy1 is the 262 profiled file!)

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I certainly do see a difference on my calibrated Eizo CG screen. The righthand image is clearly more saturated, especially in  red and blue/cyan. The black is deeper on the lefthand image. I think the best result would be to use the righthand image, desaturate Cyan 5 points, reduce red brightness a tad and raise the blackpoint slightly.

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Look here: Leica M

[LeeUK]

7 hours ago, jaapv said:

I certainly do see a difference on my calibrated Eizo CG screen. The righthand image is clearly more saturated, especially in  red and blue/cyan. The black is deeper on the lefthand image. I think the best result would be to use the righthand image, desaturate Cyan 5 points, reduce red brightness a tad and raise the blackpoint slightly.

They are exactly the same??? As posted above they use the same profile.