Bill Pierce
Well-known
In the last post about sensor quality, I wrote, “just think what will happen if Leitz and Kodak come up with CCD sensor that can run at high ISO’s... .” I thought I was being slightly hopeful and dryly humorous, but, somewhat expectedly, I got some email that essentially said, “We don’t need no high ISO’s, and you are a bad person for criticizing Leica.”
Most of my professional photography has been done as a journalist. While this would establish me as a bad person in the eyes of many, it also makes me one of those people who need high ISO’s. Here’s what Dx0 had to say in its review of the M9.
“In comparison with the sensors used by other full-frame main manufacturers, the pixel quality of the Leica M9 sensor remains low. The results of the Leica M9 are very close to the measurements for the Canon EOS 5D, launched four years ago. The Leica M9 provides good image quality for low ISO, but its results for high ISO are weak, with dynamic range decreasing very fast. So its Lowlight ISO score is a little disappointing, especially for this type of camera. The Leica M9 achieves the lowest score among measured full-frame sensors.”
Remember, they are talking about sensor quality. They are not factoring in either the positive excellence of Leitz lenses or the difficulty of narrow enough tolerances to achieve accurate rangefinder focus on a digital sensor. They are not talking about small size or high build quality. Here’s an excellent explanation of what they are measuring.
http://www.luminouslandscape.com/essays/dxomark_sensor_for_benchmarking_cameras.shtml
With the film Leica, you could switch your bodies from Kodachrome to P3200 with the turn of a rewind knob.
Not so with sensors (unless you own a Ricoh GXR). And so the Leica rangefinder becomes more and more of a very expensive specialist tool. I view its slow disappearance from the world of journalism, especially from the hands of young journalists, with regret. But I understand it. I would like to hear from the non-journalist folks who are using it in preference to other cameras and to know in what fields they feel it still excels.
Most of my professional photography has been done as a journalist. While this would establish me as a bad person in the eyes of many, it also makes me one of those people who need high ISO’s. Here’s what Dx0 had to say in its review of the M9.
“In comparison with the sensors used by other full-frame main manufacturers, the pixel quality of the Leica M9 sensor remains low. The results of the Leica M9 are very close to the measurements for the Canon EOS 5D, launched four years ago. The Leica M9 provides good image quality for low ISO, but its results for high ISO are weak, with dynamic range decreasing very fast. So its Lowlight ISO score is a little disappointing, especially for this type of camera. The Leica M9 achieves the lowest score among measured full-frame sensors.”
Remember, they are talking about sensor quality. They are not factoring in either the positive excellence of Leitz lenses or the difficulty of narrow enough tolerances to achieve accurate rangefinder focus on a digital sensor. They are not talking about small size or high build quality. Here’s an excellent explanation of what they are measuring.
http://www.luminouslandscape.com/essays/dxomark_sensor_for_benchmarking_cameras.shtml
With the film Leica, you could switch your bodies from Kodachrome to P3200 with the turn of a rewind knob.
Not so with sensors (unless you own a Ricoh GXR). And so the Leica rangefinder becomes more and more of a very expensive specialist tool. I view its slow disappearance from the world of journalism, especially from the hands of young journalists, with regret. But I understand it. I would like to hear from the non-journalist folks who are using it in preference to other cameras and to know in what fields they feel it still excels.
