Fueling the M11-D myth - Capture One 23 vs 22

[Robert Blanko]

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As already noticed by other users, using Capture One 23 (which officially supports the M11-D) and older versions such as 22 (which supports the normal M11) might lead to at least slightly different results. 

 

 

When checking the photos from my last holiday, I stumbled across this rather weird result: the red color was mostly gone and it was impossible in Capture One 22 to achieve the original look. The other photos did not show such obvious flaws.

However, in the current version of Capture One the photo looks as expected, see the following photos (the first was developed with version 22 and the second with version 23, same DNG raw file). This seems to be rather unexpected, as the sensor of the M11-D and that of the M11 should be the same? 🤔🤔

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[aficionados]

I don’t understand what you are talking about. The first photo looks like a black and white.

I don’t experience the same, the red is still red in C1 22 although I don’t have 23 version.

 

[Photoworks]

if you share the DNG i can test it, I have both.

[hunglephotography]

just got my M11d yesterday and fired few shots. the color was so much different compared to my last M11P and it's different in a good way. the magenta cast wasn't there to be found. it's clearer and more saturated. the tint is leaning towards green when importing to Lightroom. 

in conclusion: it's worth the upgrade from M11P 

[maxpower]

Since my post was referred to in the opening post I'll add my two cents.

I don't believe there is a difference between the M11-P and M11-D colours at all (as expected) and what I mentioned was an issue with the CaptureOne version that didn't "support" the M11-D; possibly a bug, possibly on purpose - I won't comment further on that. For what it's worth, I have upgraded since because it was frustrating for me to deal with and now everything works as expected again and I can resume just focussing on my process instead of the tools.

What the technical issue was for me with the older CaptureOne without M11-D support is that the ICC Profile and FilmCurve were set incorrectly, for some reason it is impossible to manually set it to the correct M11 profile and curve using the user interface. Yes, you can click the M11 profile in the menu but that did not update all corresponding fields in the database to their correct values, despite it being the exact same files for M11/M11-P/M11-D. Since the CaptureOne Session database is SQLite I tinkered around manually and by changing the correct fields in the relevant table to the correct values and then I could edit my M11-D files as expected in the old version that doesn't "support" the M11-D. I do not recommend doing this yourself as it can break your whole session so I will not explain how that worked - if you are savvy enough to understand what I said you'll likely be able to figure it out on your own. Aside from that I do not have any desire to dedicate time to reinstall the older CaptureOne to replicate, demonstrate and/or document that experience in more detail, so believe me or don't, both are fine with me.

Also important to note is that CaptureOne seemed to remember the photo settings based on filename even if you delete and reimport, so imho if you upgrade CaptureOne it's best to start a new session if you want to make sure it's using the correct profile for the M11-D. That's what I eventually did at least. 

[hdmesa]

9 hours ago, hunglephotography said:

just got my M11d yesterday and fired few shots. the color was so much different compared to my last M11P and it's different in a good way. the magenta cast wasn't there to be found. it's clearer and more saturated. the tint is leaning towards green when importing to Lightroom. 

in conclusion: it's worth the upgrade from M11P 

It's not the D versus non-D, it's how Leica individually calibrated your unit at the factory. You must have gotten the worker with proper color vision that calibrated yours.