M10 vs M10-R dynamic range

[thrid]

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Plenty of reviews out there for either camera, but I do not seem to be able to find a direct comparison between the M10 and M10-R for dynamic range.

The most common comment I see is that the M10-R is less prone to blowing the highlights, which would indicate a greater exposure range. I do know that they use different sensors, but it could also be due to other factors like the metering system, firmware etc.

If someone knows of such a review, can you please point me to it?

thx

 

[a.noctilux]

As M10 user since it's availability,

I don't need more pixels and happy with the M10, for me good enough.

You may find some sensor related data in this website

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Leica M10,Leica M10-R

Sorry not providing "real" comparisons, maybe somebody will do.

 

[thrid]

Thanks, but I'm not asking about more pixels. I have an M10 and am content with 24MP. The fact that the M10R has 40MP is irrelevant to me.

But what I am curious about is the difference in dynamic range. 
 

Given that chart I am curious why many people claim that the 10R holds on to highlights better than the M10.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by thrid

[pedaes]

21 minutes ago, thrid said:

why many people claim

I would back the measured results in the graph. People 'claim' all sorts of imagined benefits with their latest and greatest.

[a.noctilux]

20 minutes ago, thrid said:

Given that chart I am curious why many people claim that the 10R holds on to highlights better than the M10

Maybe lightmeter calibrated differently (toward underexposure on R) ?

Or "better" sensor using ?

Or different users, different metering methods.

Self suggestion ?

Placebo ?

[Adam Bonn]

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2014/05/11/difference-dynamic-range-latitude/

Or in my own words.... (so REALLY read the article)

DR is how much light the camera can capture, exposure latitude is how much you can move that light round when you edit.

Just remember... if a camera came on the market place that had 0.0001 stops of highlight recovery and 18 stops of shadow recovery (!!!) within a day the online forums would be claiming that said camera has clucking shit dynamic range 

Own an M10, only ever played with M10R DNGs from the internet.

Indeed M10R files appear more malleable (than the M10)

As a fairly hard and fast rule.... cameras don't clip highlights, camera operators do.

'You' get a new camera, you learn to get the best from it... learn the meter, learn the colours in posts, it either doesn't work for you and you move or it does, and eventually GAS strikes and you move on anyway !!!

Interestingly (or perhaps not) My M10 at ISO200 will almost without exception select the same exposure time as my M9 at ISO160 and often turn out a darker exposure (despite the ISO difference)

Also when the M10 landed it was lauded as having an ISO of 100. A lot has been written about this so I'll be brief... that was a bare face clucking lie and various 'really it's 120 or 160' figures have touted about... but the bottom line is that folks shot iso100 and wondered why the highlights were unrecoverable and the M10 got a rep for bad highlights (not entirely unfairly)

[Jeff S]

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M10-R improved sensor architecture (derived from S3) yields about one stop improvement in dynamic range, despite higher pixel count.

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2020/07/leica-announces-m10-r-with-40-megapixels/

Jeff

[thrid]

18 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2014/05/11/difference-dynamic-range-latitude/

Or in my own words.... (so REALLY read the article)

DR is how much light the camera can capture, exposure latitude is how much you can move that light round when you edit.

Just remember... if a camera came on the market place that had 0.0001 stops of highlight recovery and 18 stops of shadow recovery (!!!) within a day the online forums would be claiming that said camera has clucking shit dynamic range 

Own an M10, only ever played with M10R DNGs from the internet.

Indeed M10R files appear more malleable (than the M10)

As a fairly hard and fast rule.... cameras don't clip highlights, camera operators do.

'You' get a new camera, you learn to get the best from it... learn the meter, learn the colours in posts, it either doesn't work for you and you move or it does, and eventually GAS strikes and you move on anyway !!!

Interestingly (or perhaps not) My M10 at ISO200 will almost without exception select the same exposure time as my M9 at ISO160 and often turn out a darker exposure (despite the ISO difference)

Also when the M10 landed it was lauded as having an ISO of 100. A lot has been written about this so I'll be brief... that was a bare face clucking lie and various 'really it's 120 or 160' figures have touted about... but the bottom line is that folks shot iso100 and wondered why the highlights were unrecoverable and the M10 got a rep for bad highlights (not entirely unfairly)

 

I'm not exactly a newbie when it comes the technical end of these things, being a visual effects supervisor by trade and having worked in digital imaging for movies and commercials for nearly 30 years.

In my end of the business we generally tend to think of dynamic range as the amount of information captured between black and white and latitude as the bit depth of a file.

I was mainly looking for some measurement and user feedback on the M10 vs 10R sensor.

But thanks for the link to your article.

[thrid]

11 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

M10-R improved sensor architecture (derived from S3) yields about one stop improvement in dynamic range, despite higher pixel count.

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2020/07/leica-announces-m10-r-with-40-megapixels/

Jeff

Thanks, Jeff.

[Adam Bonn]

26 minutes ago, thrid said:

But thanks for the link to your article.

I didn’t write it

The highlight end of the M10 is more or less fixed where you shoot it. The 10R you can move it about more

I’d guesstimate about 0.5stops of M10 highlight recovery at 200 iso

 

[Chimichurri]

From my experience I can tell you that the raw files from the M10R are a lot more flexible than the ones from the M10. You can bring back things that appear to be completely gone into pure whiteness. That was the first thing that shocked me when I got the 10R. I didn’t know much about the 10R other than it had more megapixels so I wasn’t expecting that. 

I know the standard thing to say is “I don’t need more megapixels”. I don’t think anyone needs more megapixels. But the 40MP sensor on the M10R is in fact a better sensor, not just one with more megapixels. That’s all there is to it really. 

that’s the other thing. The M10R sensor is native 100ISO whereas the M10 is 200ISO. The 100ISO setting is a forced pull setting on the M10.

If you just only look at the numbers you would think it’s the same, but it isn’t. The M10R is in fact a lot more forgiving than the M10 sensor when it comes to blowing out highlights, it’s not something we made up.

Amazingly, on the M10R, as you go up the ISO at ISO400 the noise dips back down to basically stay at the same noise as the M10  

Green M11, Blue M10R, Black M10

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The M11 new sensor from Sony blows them both out of the water technically. But then you see a lot of people saying they don’t really notice any significant difference between their M10R and the M11. Here in this forum we’ve seen people sell the M11 to go back to the M10R.

Anyway. I guess it’s more about our experiences than any of these charts. 

 

I guess it also shows why the D850 is the GOAT. 
 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Chimichurri

[Adam Bonn]

https://photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Leica M10,Leica M10-R
 

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according to P2P it’s no where near a stop of DR

But that’s the point, DR and exposure latitude aren’t the same thing.

Interestingly… in DxO’s M10 iso test shows that what Leica calls 200 they rate as basically 100 anyway. Annoyingly they never tested the 10R

[Adam Bonn]

7 minutes ago, Chimichurri said:

Also the 40MP sensor is ISO invariant whereas the M10 sensor isn’t. Noise goes up as ISO goes up. In the 10R it goes up to ISO400 and then when it hits 400 the noise goes down back again to ISO100.

Noise always goes up with ISO. The M10 is ISO invariant, what that means is that raising ISO occurs post ADC, ie the same as doing it on your computer (this is true of most sensors this side of about 2014)

The M10R has a dual gain sensor (this isn’t new tech) 

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1570070253/what-is-dual-gain-and-how-does-it-work

or 

https://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/2016-newsview/jan-mar-2016-newsviews-2/dual-gain-becoming-the-norm.html

 

[Chimichurri]

18 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

Noise always goes up with ISO. The M10 is ISO invariant, what that means is that raising ISO occurs post ADC, ie the same as doing it on your computer (this is true of most sensors this side of about 2014)

The M10R has a dual gain sensor (this isn’t new tech) 

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1570070253/what-is-dual-gain-and-how-does-it-work

or 

https://www.sansmirror.com/newsviews/2016-newsview/jan-mar-2016-newsviews-2/dual-gain-becoming-the-norm.html

 

On the M10 as the ISO goes up, so does the noise. Evenly. 

on the M10R there’s a huge dip at ISO400 and the noise levels stay basically the same as the 24MP M10. 

For anyone who thought more Megapixels would make it a lot noisier.

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Edited November 4, 2022 by Chimichurri

[Jeff S]

As noted, the M10-R (and M10-M) sensor architecture was derived from the S3 wafer.  This created economies of scale for the large and expensive S sensor.
 

Stefan Daniel said in an interview that besides higher MP (40.89), the sensor incorporated dual gain architecture, increased light/photon gathering surface by relocating sensor electronics, and even improved pixel shape.  There’s a lot more to these things, obviously, than number of pixels, and that’s even before cover glass, filters, color tweaking and much more.

Regarding high ISO/low noise performance, the M10 Monochrom remains the king of the M portfolio.

https://www.reddotforum.com/content/2021/02/bw-iso-showdown-2021-leica-q2-monochrom-vs-m10-monochrom-vs-q2-vs-m10-r/
 

Jeff

 

[Adam Bonn]

32 minutes ago, Chimichurri said:

the M10R there’s a huge dip at ISO400 and the noise levels stay basically the same as the 24MP M10. 

Yes. This is called dual gain technology. Links in my post above 

 

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Fuji (amongst others) were doing this 6 years ago

(edit, sorry wrong chat 🙄) 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Adam Bonn

[Chimichurri]

17 minutes ago, Adam Bonn said:

Yes. This is called dual gain technology. Links in my post above 

 

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Fuji (amongst others) were doing this 6 years ago

(edit, sorry wrong chat 🙄) 

 

What is relevant to this conversation is that the M10 goes up linearly and the M10R dips at ISO400 giving the camera basically the same noise as the M10. That’s all there is to it.

The point is the M10R was the first Leica M to have a dual gain sensor. 

I said ISO invariant and I deleted it because I’m confusing 2 different things. And yes, changing the exposure in post or ISO on the dial pretty much gives you the same result on both. Agreed.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Chimichurri

[Chimichurri]

26 minutes ago, Jeff S said:

Regarding high ISO/low noise performance, the M10 Monochrom remains the king of the M portfolio.

 

Well yes. Monochrome sensors will always be noise free for all practical purposes. Personally I don’t care about noise.

[Chimichurri]

2 hours ago, thrid said:

I was mainly looking for some measurement and user feedback on the M10 vs 10R sensor.

Check the screenshot from PtoP website I posted. The readings don’t show much difference between the 2 if you just want to see the raw numbers.

But my experience is like the Reddotforum article they posted for you. You see something you think, oh that’s gone. You open the RAW and you can recover noticeably more than on the M10. Honestly I’m at the point I don’t even worry about it much because I know I’ll be able to recover in post if it’s too hard to expose.

Edited November 4, 2022 by Chimichurri

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Hallo,

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[jankap]

Two more to compare.😜

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Edited November 4, 2022 by jankap