Considering the M11

[colint544]

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12 minutes ago, idusidusi said:

I much prefer Capture One, I did not get on with Adobe products and their interface plus I don't like subscriptions. Fortunately, this is true "Capture one has 6 different grain look and they are best in industry for recreating realistic film looks." - there are also some excellent custom styles too (Overgaard and Cobalt).

I'm not familiar with Capture One. I'm a bit of a dyed-in-the-wool dinosaur, and have doggedly stuck with Photoshop since about 1995. I don't like the subscription model either, but I can see why they had to introduce it. So many people had knock-off copies of PS, that they had to keep putting the price up and up and up. I've heard good things about Capture 1 though.

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[fsprow]

I have an M11 and really like it.  However, for black and white (about half of what I do) I much prefer film, either in an M4 or a Nikon F2AS.  So I usually carry both cameras and use them for different purposes. I found color film work a bit burdensome but shooting slide film undoubtedly made me a better photographer as my digital images require very little post processing (and I know it’s sacrilegious but I usually use JPEG in the M11 - and have made beautiful large prints from the files).  

[Kwesi]

1 hour ago, fsprow said:

I have an M11 and really like it.  However, for black and white (about half of what I do) I much prefer film, either in an M4 or a Nikon F2AS.  So I usually carry both cameras and use them for different purposes. I found color film work a bit burdensome but shooting slide film undoubtedly made me a better photographer as my digital images require very little post processing (and I know it’s sacrilegious but I usually use JPEG in the M11 - and have made beautiful large prints from the files).  

What you say about shooting slide film making you a better photographer technically is so true. I grew up on an M3 and M4 shooting Tri-x, Kodachrome and Fujichrome without a meter. You get to know your light and your film real quick and the skill translates to digital. Making it very easy to have 99% of your work done in camera. 

[fil-m]

Couldn't agree more. In addition, I don't feel my macbook is "burning" when I use it compared to LRC. More efficient, productive, predictable when you master it (though tough learning curve, especially for those who were used to LRC like I was - but worth the effort). Turned the Adobe page independently of subscription model. 

[fsprow]

1 hour ago, Kwesi said:

What you say about shooting slide film making you a better photographer technically is so true. I grew up on an M3 and M4 shooting Tri-x, Kodachrome and Fujichrome without a meter. You get to know your light and your film real quick and the skill translates to digital. Making it very easy to have 99% of your work done in camera. 

Love your town, Wellesley.  Have done the Boston Marathon several times and glad to see the “scream tunnel” back in force last year !!

Edited April 27, 2022 by fsprow

[Herr Barnack]

@colint544 as others have observed, grain can be added in post processing. 

Another approach with the M11 could be to put a -10EV neutral density filter on your lens and shoot with the M11's ISO set to 25,000. 

[hdmesa]

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7 hours ago, colint544 said:

It is an interesting debate. It's one that all too often ends with someone saying, 'If you like the film look, just shoot film. Simple', and I'm so glad nobody has said that here.

And, as much as I find it time consuming to have film developed, then scan it, the resulting images need little to no work done on them. They look nice right off the bat. When I first got my  M9M, it took a long time to find a way to make the pictures look consistent. The files were so malleable, that you could bend them in different directions, to the point they looked unrealistic. You can really disappear down a rabbit hole with editing, and this almost undoes the advantage of digital over film. Editing can take up a lot of time.

The Guardian photographer Sarah Lee shoots on both an M10, and an M11, and she is a prolific poster on Instagram. If anyone doesn't know her work, you can see it here. I don't know what special sauce she uses in the edit, but her images are wonderful. Mostly down to her skill as a photographer, of course, but she certainly proves that pictures shot digitally need not have high contrast, blown highlights, and lurid colours.

Just a reminder that film has long been used to produced extreme color via cross-processing, and digital merely follows in its footsteps. It’s the failure to saturate color with finesse that makes it lurid. 
 

4 hours ago, Photoworks said:

Most negative look grainy when you scan them. Negative film is meant to be projected on paper and that process of soft light reduces the grain effect becoming a good image, similar to what you get with digital.

Film has other qualities too, exposure range, such in process, and print in different ways. 
The benefit of digital is that you start with a very neutral look, with film photography you are set and constrained by the emulsions look, color and contrast.

Few people attempt to make preset for the Cine film.

https://jamiewindsor.com/presets4

 

If you are interested in getting the gain into you photos I would suggest using Capture one pro over Lightroom. Lightroom has only one option , Capture one has 6 different grain look and they are best in industry for recreating realistic film looks.

The grain effects in C1 are indeed very close to scanned film. I hope for the next version of C1 that they add sky and subject detection like Adobe just did. That’s a huge feature that’s now missing in C1. The back and forth competition between C1 and LR is good.

[SrMi]

4 hours ago, Herr Barnack said:

@colint544 as others have observed, grain can be added in post processing. 

Another approach with the M11 could be to put a -10EV neutral density filter on your lens and shoot with the M11's ISO set to 25,000. 

Film grain is not the same as digital noise. Digital noise is ugly, IMO.

[Herr Barnack]

19 hours ago, SrMi said:

Film grain is not the same as digital noise. Digital noise is ugly, IMO.

True, it's not the same. 

From what I have seen, the M10 Monochrom seems to be able to do a fairly decent job of creating high ISO "grain" (noise) that is not objectionable.

Color cameras are a different matter altogether.

Edited April 28, 2022 by Herr Barnack

[hdmesa]

41 minutes ago, Herr Barnack said:

True, it's not the same. 

From what I have seen, the M10 Monochrom seems to be able to do a fairly decent job of creating high ISO "grain" (noise) that is not objectionable.

Color cameras are a different matter altogether.

High-ISO noise on the M10M is very nice, but it's so much smaller than film grain that it's hard to compare them.

[Jon Warwick]

I’d never try to emulate “film grain” via high ISO “noise”. But the opportunities for adding film-like grain in Photoshop / C1 are extensive and moreover convincing IMHO, which I variedly choose to match across to 35mm / 120 / 4x5 depending on what I want.

[IkarusJohn]

On 4/27/2022 at 2:02 AM, colint544 said:

I have an M9M camera, and three classic Wetzlar era cameras - M2, M4, and M5. Not been using the M9M a great deal lately, but I will get back to it. I am shooting a lot of colour film, using the M2, at the moment. It's proving to be both costly and time-consuming.

So I'm considering the M11. Wondering about it. I've watched each generation of digital M camera improve on the previous one. The M11 platform looks light years ahead of the M9 platform I'm accustomed to. I just wonder if the files from a colour digital M can ever be special, in the way that colour film can be. The M11 is an expensive camera, albeit one that can be used for many, many years. My M9M was also expensive, but it's still going, ten years later, and I consider it to have paid for itself by now. 

The attached picture, I shot recently. It's from a long-term project I've been working on. I took it using the M2, 28mm Summicron ASPH, and it was shot on Cinestill 800T. I like the grain, and the atmosphere. I know I could take the same shot on an M11, and it would be grainless. It would be exquisitely detailed. Would it be as nice, I wonder?

I've looked at some superb M11 images over on Leica Master Shots. And a few overly processed ones. And one or two with that digital look of blown highlights. Are the M11 files any different really from any other modern digital camera? Or is the whole thing merely about the form factor?

I'd be fascinated to know what anyone else thinks..

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Hi Colin,

I’m not sure the grain is essential to this fabulous photo.  For me, the attraction is its composition, the muted colours, the mist all giving it an other-worldliness.  I try to imagine it without the grain, with limited success.  But, I find the grain a little distracting.

I have my Monochrom set with Auto-ISO, happy with the grain even in the rare occasions when I take a picture in low light with ISO running up towards 10,000.  For colour, I dislike what digital does with “grain” - too often it just looks like nasty noise.

All that said, were I in your position, I would definitely (or even defiantly … 🙄) keep the Monochrom - it’s a special camera, even if you’re not currently using it much, and either look at M10-R or wait to see what the next M11 variant is.

John

[PeterGA]

@colint544 the M11 is a huge step in the direction of (perhaps) making the need for a dedicated Bayer less sensor - redundant. The B&W conversion of the raw files is far more convincing than in previous lower MP chips - the colour output from the camera speaks for itself. There is no getting around the need to post process though - that is the price that is paid for the convenience of creative elbow room. I was unhappy with all M camera rendering after the M9/MM - even though I bought and used most of them - early days since I've only had the M11 for a week or so- but I am happy. Looking at your work - I think you would enjoy what the camera provides.

[colint544]

8 hours ago, IkarusJohn said:

Hi Colin,

I’m not sure the grain is essential to this fabulous photo.  For me, the attraction is its composition, the muted colours, the mist all giving it an other-worldliness.  I try to imagine it without the grain, with limited success.  But, I find the grain a little distracting.

I have my Monochrom set with Auto-ISO, happy with the grain even in the rare occasions when I take a picture in low light with ISO running up towards 10,000.  For colour, I dislike what digital does with “grain” - too often it just looks like nasty noise.

All that said, were I in your position, I would definitely (or even defiantly … 🙄) keep the Monochrom - it’s a special camera, even if you’re not currently using it much, and either look at M10-R or wait to see what the next M11 variant is.

John

Thank you for that, John.

I think you might very well be right about the grain being distracting in that photo. The ability to shoot different film stocks is, to me, appealing. But Cinestill 800T is a bit of a novelty film. The look of it is strong, and I couldn't ever see myself shooting an entire project on it. I guess that's one plus point for having a single digital camera - an M10, say. If you shoot a project on that, you will have a consistent look throughout all of your images.

My M9M I would never sell. It's like an old friend, and it's taken years to figure out how to get the best from it. Only last year, I made an A2 print from it - a picture of a horse in low evening light, against a darkening sky. The quality of the image is incredible. It really is a special camera, if you can work around its quirks.

Cheers

[colint544]

7 hours ago, PeterGA said:

@colint544 the M11 is a huge step in the direction of (perhaps) making the need for a dedicated Bayer less sensor - redundant. The B&W conversion of the raw files is far more convincing than in previous lower MP chips - the colour output from the camera speaks for itself. There is no getting around the need to post process though - that is the price that is paid for the convenience of creative elbow room. I was unhappy with all M camera rendering after the M9/MM - even though I bought and used most of them - early days since I've only had the M11 for a week or so- but I am happy. Looking at your work - I think you would enjoy what the camera provides.

Thank you. The M11 does look like all the camera anyone could ever need - well, if it's an M camera they want. The M8/9/240 types - you could always see where the weak points of those were, where they could be improved. But with the M10/11 platform, it's getting harder and harder to find fault. It really seems to be a mature product now, with a long lineage. Can definitely see myself at some point soon with a variant of the M11. 

[Ouroboros]

On 4/26/2022 at 3:02 PM, colint544 said:

 

.....The attached picture, I shot recently. It's from a long-term project I've been working on. I took it using the M2, 28mm Summicron ASPH, and it was shot on Cinestill 800T. I like the grain, and the atmosphere. I know I could take the same shot on an M11, and it would be grainless. It would be exquisitely detailed. Would it be as nice, I wonder?

 

You'd have to ask a non-photographer for a completely unbiased and purely subjective answer based on a side by side comparison of two prints......and then what?  Ask someone else the same question of the same two prints?  

Personally I think you're too good a photographer to become distracted with pointless debates about adding noise, trying to emulate film or which editing software is best.  You know as well as I do that an M11 will not produce images to match the aesthetic of the 800T image you posted above.   But that's just my opinion, as a photographer.

As a photographer, I'd make the effort to travel to Glasgow to see an exhibition of work of that quality if it were made with film.   If it was made with an M11, I might visit the exhibition if I was passing.  I recently visited Brian Sweeney's Great Stadiums of the North exhibition in Stornoway.  Most of the work was photographed on large format over 20 years ago, Sweeney didn't need to wait for an M11.  That will seem flippant to some here but as a photographer it's the methodology and the arguably superior outcome that adds something of value for me.  That might resonate with you, it might not. 

You can buy a lot of Portra, Tri-X and 800T for £7.5k, even though the cost those films is hard to swallow (a significant reason for you starting this thread). 

It's difficult to hedge around the thing you didn't want to hear, I'm afraid.  Sorry, can't help you.

 

[colint544]

32 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

You'd have to ask a non-photographer for a completely unbiased and purely subjective answer based on a side by side comparison of two prints......and then what?  Ask someone else the same question of the same two prints?  

Personally I think you're too good a photographer to become distracted with pointless debates about adding noise, trying to emulate film or which editing software is best.  You know as well as I do that an M11 will not produce images to match the aesthetic of the 800T image you posted above.   But that's just my opinion, as a photographer.

As a photographer, I'd make the effort to travel to Glasgow to see an exhibition of work of that quality if it were made with film.   If it was made with an M11, I might visit the exhibition if I was passing.  I recently visited Brian Sweeney's Great Stadiums of the North exhibition in Stornoway.  Most of the work was photographed on large format over 20 years ago, Sweeney didn't need to wait for an M11.  That will seem flippant to some here but as a photographer it's the methodology and the arguably superior outcome that adds something of value for me.  That might resonate with you, it might not. 

You can buy a lot of Portra, Tri-X and 800T for £7.5k, even though the cost those films is hard to swallow (a significant reason for you starting this thread). 

It's difficult to hedge around the thing you didn't want to hear, I'm afraid.  Sorry, can't help you.

 

Yes, I saw Brian's Great Stadiums exhibition when it was in the SOGO gallery in Glasgow. Good stuff, and he's worked on that for decades, using a variety of formats, both film and digital. Clearly, buying a camera is no panacea for anything, but this being the Leica forum, and Leica making such desirable products, I thought I'd get a discussion going, especially about consistency across a body of work.

You're right, we can wait forever for the perfect camera and, of course, it doesn't exist. Meanwhile, we ought to get out there and create what we want, while we can. I'm close to finishing a long term project on the Wyndford estate in Glasgow. I've shot the whole thing on colour negative film, mostly using a Plaubel Makina 67, but also a Leica M2 for some of the tighter spaces. It's coming out as a zine later this year, and I hope to turn it into an exhibition some time after that. It's a subject close to my heart, and I want it to be seen. 

Appreciate your comments, thank you.

[PeterGA]

 Worth watching if only for his thoughts on what kinds of images he can make today - that he feels he couldn't have made even ten years ago with available technology then.  Interestingly ( for me anyway) Alan is a dedicated monochrom only shooter and judging by his own admission pretty much shoots most of his work with a Leica Monochrom and a 24. I like his take on building on the past but extending the scope of work by using what technology affords today.  I was particularly interested in his thoughts on what film doesn't allow him to do - backed up by examples of his work.

I have all my cameras EVF viewfinders set up to show the world in B&W and most times in 3:1 format where possible - a facility I wish the Leica M11 should allow ( when usingEVF )  as they do for the SL2 camera and all Fuji cameras.

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[colint544]

7 hours ago, PeterGA said:

 Worth watching if only for his thoughts on what kinds of images he can make today - that he feels he couldn't have made even ten years ago with available technology then.  Interestingly ( for me anyway) Alan is a dedicated monochrom only shooter and judging by his own admission pretty much shoots most of his work with a Leica Monochrom and a 24. I like his take on building on the past but extending the scope of work by using what technology affords today.  I was particularly interested in his thoughts on what film doesn't allow him to do - backed up by examples of his work.

I have all my cameras EVF viewfinders set up to show the world in B&W and most times in 3:1 format where possible - a facility I wish the Leica M11 should allow ( when usingEVF )  as they do for the SL2 camera and all Fuji cameras.

I'm a fan of Alan Schaller's work. Seems like a nice guy as well. I think you're right, he mostly shoots a 24mm, and sometimes a 50mm. He's got a strong look to his work, you can usually tell it's one of his pictures immediately.