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vor einer Stunde schrieb pedaes:

Is it incorrect, or a calibration that doesn't suite everyone. The number of M11 owners raising issues here must be way less than 1% compared to total cameras sold.

It is both, it is incorrect and it does not suite everyone. ;)

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What really counts is that Daniel got his issue fixed. Congratulation, Daniel. I am happy for you. Your patience and persistence paid off.

At the same time Daniel could show that there is indeed a solution ready at Leica for those who have big problems with that color cast. And as I understood it was even not necessary to send the camera to Germany.

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vor 1 Stunde schrieb M11 for me:

At the same time Daniel could show that there is indeed a solution ready at Leica for those who have big problems with that color cast. And as I understood it was even not necessary to send the camera to Germany.

That's correct. Since the first transfer from Switzerland to Germany was not only time-consuming but also unsuccessful — likely because my request wasn't properly understood — another solution was found. For the second attempt, instructions were provided to the service center in Switzerland, enabling technicians there to calibrate the white balance themselves using the correction data supplied by Wetzlar. Therefore, my experience regarding the total duration is not representative of future requests from other countries. My impression throughout this process was that Leica is genuinely striving to improve its service procedures. Of course, I cannot comment on how quickly or effectively this will work in other countries or for other customers. However, I believe I have contributed to something that may help not just me.

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I'm sorry in advance if I didn't read every post. My first 50 photos were too dark and too magenta. The first thing I did to fix this was to change the metering to Multi-field from Highlight-weighted. Then I set the white balance to daylight. Then I shot this color checker chart in daylight.

Looking back to my art repro days, I opened this capture and checked white, black, and middle grey patches with the eyedropper tool. The white patch should read 240/240/240 for detailed highlights. This can be pushed up to 255/255/255 for specular highlights or set anywhere in-between to taste. The black patch should read 30/30/30 and middle grey should read 140/140/140. The M11 did reasonably well with the multi-field/daylight settings.though the contrast was low and there definitely was a magenta bias. Note, these numbers don't exactly translate into LRC.

But setting the WB to 5150 and the tint to 10-15 in LRC did fix the magenta cast. Contrast was improved by adjusting the white and black sliders by +25 and -25. I plan to write a new profile as soon as I find my Color Checker Passport... I keep leaving it behind in artist's studios. But for now, I'm just going to make this my preset.

BTW: those WB and tint numbers were Elmar's idea. Just giving credit where it's due.

http://www.barefootinkauai.com

 

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Edited by Printmaker
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40 minutes ago, Printmaker said:

Looking back to my art repro days, I opened this capture and checked white, black, and middle grey patches with the eyedropper tool. The white patch should read 240/240/240 for detailed highlights. This can be pushed up to 255/255/255 for specular highlights or set anywhere in-between to taste. The black patch should read 30/30/30 and middle grey should read 140/140/140. The M11 did reasonably well with the multi-field/daylight settings.though the contrast was low and there definitely was a magenta bias. Note, these numbers don't exactly translate into LRC.

You got it close

white .05  is 243/243/242

Black 1.50 is 52/52/52

and neutral 6.5 160/160/160

 

Don't get so dependent on the Color Checker Passport, it is not great to limit your calibration to 24 Patches, what you have up there is much better.

Keep in mind that even exposure can change your colors in the M11, I have noticed a blue shift when you underexpose, so it is best to adjust in post.

LrC applies a preset that should make the image look better, but it is not linear and does not always produce good results.  Every program will apply a different initial preset or profile to your images.

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20 hours ago, Printmaker said:

The first thing I did to fix this was to change the metering to Multi-field from Highlight-weighted.

I don't know why, but this surprised me.  Now I'm going to have to play around with my camera to see the differences between the metering modes.

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  • 3 months later...

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I have 4 M11 in various editions and no matter what I do they all have magenta/purple tint. I sent in 2 of my them for color-calibration and it came out magenta free. Now the color is amazing and much better than my previous M in my opinion. The color is very close to my Hasselblad X2d on the same scene.

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51 minutes ago, jirapatpum said:

I sent in 2 of my them for color-calibration and it came out magenta free

The first picture has more magenta shift in the sky than the second one. 

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vor 59 Minuten schrieb jirapatpum:

I have 4 M11 in various editions and no matter what I do they all have magenta/purple tint. I sent in 2 of my them for color-calibration and it came out magenta free. Now the color is amazing and much better than my previous M in my opinion. The color is very close to my Hasselblad X2d on the same scene.

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Its good to hear again and get confirmed that Leica can fix this. Leica evidently can implement a version that is better/different regarding magenta. Seemingly they do not tough the firmware. They do evedently something on a deeper level than the firmware. 

I wrote it somewhere else: It would be great if ALL Leica cameras had the same color calbration or had at least a profile that we could load and install by ourselves. 

Enjoy your M's now!!

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16 minutes ago, justj said:

The first picture has more magenta shift in the sky than the second one. 

Indeed. The first picture is from Hasselblad X2D, using Lightroom camera matching profile to eliminate external factor that can influence the comparison as much as possible. To be honest, the actual scene has slight purplish tint as seen in Hasselblad picture. In any case, the difference is mostly attributed to white balance and actually very small.

 

The purple cast from M11 without calibration is much more severe and has different character. In that case, the cast is all over the picture and not just specific part/color scheme. I also tested them side by side with my SL3, where M11 (before calibration) picture can easily be identified as it has magenta shift all over the image.

 

Again, it proves that the purple tint is there intentionally and can be remove from the camera. I'm also working in image-processing related field and in this digital age, color is all software (eg. how different camera manufacturer chose to map/interpret data from camera sensor reading to actual color that we see). Whoever came up with the idea that purple/reddish tint should be how default image should look needs to get their eyes checked. The tint is not easily removed in post-processing as the color response from the camera is not linear to different level of luminiance. 

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1 hour ago, M11 for me said:

Its good to hear again and get confirmed that Leica can fix this. Leica evidently can implement a version that is better/different regarding magenta. Seemingly they do not tough the firmware. They do evedently something on a deeper level than the firmware. 

I wrote it somewhere else: It would be great if ALL Leica cameras had the same color calbration or had at least a profile that we could load and install by ourselves. 

Enjoy your M's now!!

I agreed. In my case, Big thank you to Leica Switzerland for sorting out the issue. I've tried with many Leica boutique and to my surprise most of them are clueless and don't even know what to do or what I was talking about. I own 4 different M11 purchased at a different point in time and I've never came across one that's color neutral. None of the firmware update can fix the issue (I don't think they even consider this aspect when releasing each update) The reason that kept me sticking to the platform is that once color cast is removed from the picture, the image quality/color fidelity from M11 exceed any digital M (M10-R/M10/M240/M9) and tend to be on par with my Hasselblad/ALPA-Phase-One setup. 

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Just a matter of WB. One click with the pipette on a grey part (eg the parking above) and the so-called magenta cast is gone. Now i don't mind calibration provided Leica don't include it by surprise in a firmware update.

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Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, lct said:

Just a matter of WB. One click with the pipette on a grey part (eg the parking above) and the so-called magenta cast is gone. Now i don't mind calibration provided Leica don't include it by surprise in a firmware update.

Indeed. Problem is that when there is no grey part in the picture. It's very time-consuming to eyeball every picture that I took. Even my iPhone is able to get the white balance right. It's not acceptable for 9000 usd camera-set up. 

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25 minutes ago, jirapatpum said:

Indeed. Problem is that when there is no grey part in the picture. It's very time-consuming to eyeball every picture that I took [...]

Works also on white and black parts but you don't have to set WB in post if you don't like that. There are other ways to do it. We discussed this many times on the LUF but i don't mind if people not knowing or willing to set WB themselves have their camera calibrated, of course, provided mine remains free of such calibration  😎

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Not sure if I am plain lucky or perhaps Leica are ensuring that recent batches of M11-P are calibrated. Something we might likely find out with time. 
I got a very recent shipment with date 26 June 2025 on the box, I see no purple or magenta cast after testing it in different conditions and with different lenses. 


 

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This thread has plenty of opinions and recipes. On my M11 the following worked best for me (regardless of white balance setting in camera, regardless of light source) - I used the tone curve tool instead of the purple tint slider for three main reasons - 

1. it works with every M11 photo - DNG and JPG

2. it leaves the original camera WB setting untouched 

3. one still can use the WB sliders to fine tune the image.

just apply the correction manually to one image, save it as a profile (uncheck all settings with the exception of curves). I use this preset on import of every M11 image. (Note: it works for my M11 - if Leica had adjusted the color calibration on recent production runs, it would create a green tint….)

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