DNG + b&w jpg speed?

[dalippe]

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If I'm planning to end with a black and white picture then I like to have a b&w preview on the camera LCD. On my M8 I did much less b&w than I would have liked because the only way to get a b&w preview was to shoot DNG + b&w jpg; unfortunately, the M8, in that configuration, would pretty much grind to a halt after a few shots in quick succession.

 

Is the M9, with its new electronics, a significant improvement in this regard?

 

I apologize if this has been addressed elsewhere, but I haven't yet come across it.

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[dalippe]

Figured I'd try again. Now that a few more people have M9s in hand, there is a better chance someone knows the answer or is at least willing to try the experiment. Thanks in advance for any information.

[cbretteville]

Jpg processing still adds a noticable ammout of time to the save speed. I didn't do any stopwatch timings, but when I switched to dng only I noticed the light stopped blinking sooner. This, as you've noticed, is just based on how I remember it. I had a little more than an hours 'play' with an M9 on tuesday.

 

I'd say it feels about the same as with the M8 which means it's an improvement ad the files are a lot bigger.

 

Carl

[Overgaard]

The M9 can be set to DNG uncompressed + JPG Fine and then to black and white - and will show a black and white preview on the screen.

 

If set to JPG Fine it will produce a black and white preview on the screen.

If set to DNG it will produce a color preview on the screen.

 

The Menu > Color saturation offers these choices:

Low

Medium low

Standard

Medium high

High

Black & White

Vintage B & W

 

Hope this clarifies what you wanted to know.

 

On speed: I started out with DNG + JPG Fine to see how the JPGs out of the camera was (they're a bit too contrasty and dark to my need), and then I changed back to Uncompressed DNG, but mostly because I had double the amount of files to scroll through in Lightroom and the JPG files were just in the way.

The actual speed doesn't seem to have changed. I use the Sandisk Extreme III (30 MB/s) which I guess Leica will have to update the firmware to utilize better than the slower Sandisk Ultra; but currently Leica FAQ states that the Sandisk Ultra is the fastest, and I believe that.

No matter if I shoot JPG, DNG or DNG+JPG, I get a lot of writing (red blinking lamp) and have to wait for the camera to be ready. I often shoot people and in series, so I tend to shoot the buffer full quite easily. But the bottom line is that I haven't felt any significant difference between DNG only and DNG+JPG.

[dalippe]

Thank you both for your responses. For whatever it is worth, you seem to disagree on the issue of whether the camera slows down when switching from dng to dng+jpeg. I just assumed it would since the M9 is based on the M8 and the M8 slows down quite noticeably when switching to dng+jpeg. On that assumption, I was wondering how much it slows down.

 

Thorsten, I also often hit the buffer on my M8, and for the same reason you do (a series of people shots, although I'm shooting friends and family while I suspect you're shooting models ) It is for that reason that I'm particularly interested in this question for B&W work.

 

Thanks again.

[Overgaard]

The lack of agreement on speed difference might be because of the SD-cards. I have a sense that no matter what you do right now, the writing to the card will not be optimum before Leica update the firmware.

 

That the 20 MB/s card writes faster than the 30 MB/s accoding to Leica indicate that things aren't as locgical as they should be

 

It's my impression that Leica has greatly updated speed and buffer on the M9 beyond the expansion of files from 10 MP to 18 MP. But their firmware is not up for utilizing what they have stuffed in there of hardware.

 

That's my impression, and I hope I'm right when the firmware comes!