Pentax Monochrome

IMGP0128.jpegLong not very well ordered Sunday morning camera ramble follows. You were warned.
trix4ever said:
To me this is very 'filmlike'. I know you've used most or all of the Leica monochroms, how are you getting on with the Pentax?
Click to expand...

On Friday I’m taking my M10M and M11M Leicas and all my lenses in for CLA and focus adjustment. The rangefinders have become amusing adornments rather than devices for focusing. The rangefinder in the M11 was not that good when I got it. So I’m using the Pentax in anticipation of not having my normal cameras for 3-9 months.

I really haven’t used it that much, except for maybe 2-300 shots with the 70/2.4 in India when I wanted a longer lens than I had for my Leica (75mm was the longest M lens I took). I took maybe 150 shots yesterday during a walk up the beach.

I’m still struggling with the Pentax menus. Every time I need to change a setting I need to check the manual. Again. I have the manual on my phone and on my iPad. There are 4 primary menus, with 8 secondary settings, and then a varying number under that. The camera also has 19 external buttons and 5 control dials. I do appreciate very much that the main Mode dial is lockable.

The autofocus is quite good - but it’s nowhere (nowhere!) near a Sony A1, Nikon Z9 or Canon A3. Some of my shots taken using autofocus are focused on the wrong thing. Usual 1990s af problem. Sometimes the confirmation square in the viewfinder can be hard to see.

When I can get it to be on the right setting and focus on the correct thing, the output is great. It’s quite different to a Leica. The native output is lower contrast and has more open shadows. For me this means less post-processing work. The highlight weighted metering works better than the M11 implementation of this feature. The lower pixel count and greater relative use of each pixel equates to more ‘enlargement’. These factors all mean that the output looks more like 35mm film. The response to filtration is similar to the Leicas - more is less so you’ll need orange filters to get the same tonal response as you’d have got from medium yellow on film. Battery life is tremendous - I get 5-600+ shots per battery. Spare batteries are less than half the price of Leica batteries. You can also charge the batteries in-camera with USB-C.

Image Sync works better - faster, more certain connection and more reliable (less dropouts) than Leica Fotos.

trix4ever said:
Sean Reid's review showed it being amazing at high iso and seemingly less banding than the Leicas. The banding is what kept me away from the M246.
Click to expand...
The camera is extremely well integrated with the sensor, better than any Leica including the M11M. High ISO is fantastic, and yes, no banding of note, even up to ISO 100,000. The banding at high ISOs and unpredictable poor responsiveness of the 246 nearly made me quit photography, although mine seemed to be a particularly bad sample for both.

The Pentax is very nice, but an SLR is an SLR. I am reminded that seeing the world through a tunnel is not ideal for me. But as SLR viewfinders go, it is very good. Bright and clear and the view is large enough, unlike most APS-C SLR viewfinders.

The output is great. In many situations, the lower contrast Pentax lenses compared to Leica lenses work extremely well, like having a rigid Summicron on a Monochrom but not having to worry about value, spontaneous haze, optical cement failure, flare and other optical issues that come with older lenses. The coating on the HD Pentax lenses designed for APS-C sensors and their flare resistance is up there with Zeiss, and generally a bit better than Leica, in my experience. But focus shift is a problem, so a lot of the time stopping down even the slower lenses can be necessary. The 35/2.8 macro is amazing, and has no bad habits. I mostly use a 50mm on my Leicas, so it is a great natural fit for the Pentax, although I do notice that the 35mm seems a tiny bit longer on the APS-C Pentax sensor than a 50mm does on a Leica. I might be imagining that.

I can find nothing to strongly dissuade someone from a Pentax K-3 iii Monochrome if they want a digital camera with a monochrome sensor. In many ways it is better integrated and more usable than any Leica Monochrom, the only thing you give up is access to really cutting edge super high resolving glass, and well, the cachet of carrying a Leica and the pricetag that goes with that.

You can buy a K-3 iii Monochrome and HD 15, 21, 35 and 70mm lenses for less than the new price of a Summicron. Unless you are loaded, or know you’re going to love B&W digital photography and do a lot of it, or you can tax deduct the cameras for work, that’s a fairly powerful argument.

IMGP0140.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Freakscene said:
View attachment 4845039Long not very well ordered Sunday morning camera ramble follows. You were warned.


On Friday I’m taking my M10M and M11M Leicas and all my lenses in for CLA and focus adjustment. The rangefinders have become amusing adornments rather than devices for focusing. The rangefinder in the M11 was not that good when I got it. So I’m using the Pentax in anticipation of not having my normal cameras for 3-9 months.

I really haven’t used it that much, except for maybe 2-300 shots with the 70/2.4 in India when I wanted a longer lens than I had for my Leica (75mm was the longest M lens I took). I took maybe 150 shots yesterday during a walk up the beach.

I’m still struggling with the Pentax menus. Every time I need to change a setting I need to check the manual. Again. I have the manual on my phone and on my iPad. There are 4 primary menus, with 8 secondary settings, and then a varying number under that. The camera also has 19 external buttons and 5 control dials. I do appreciate very much that the main Mode dial is lockable.

The autofocus is quite good - but it’s nowhere (nowhere!) near a Sony A1, Nikon Z9 or Canon A3. Some of my shots taken using autofocus are focused on the wrong thing. Usual 1990s af problem. Sometimes the confirmation square in the viewfinder can be hard to see.

When I can get it to be on the right setting and focus on the correct thing, the output is great. It’s quite different to a Leica. The native output is lower contrast and has more open shadows. For me this means less post-processing work. The highlight weighted metering works better than the M11 implementation of this feature. The lower pixel count and greater relative use of each pixel equates to kore ‘enlargement’. These factors all mean that the output looks more like 35mm film. The response to filtration is similar to the Leicas - more is less so you’ll need orange filters to get the same tonal response as you’d have got from medium yellow on film. Battery life is tremendous - I get 5-600+ shots per battery. Spare batteries are less than half the price of Leica batteries. You can also charge the batteries in-camera with USB-C.

Image Sync works better - faster, more certain connection and more reliable (less dropouts) than Leica Fotos.


The camera is extremely well integrated with the sensor, better than any Leica including the M11M. High ISO is fantastic, and yes, no banding of note, even up to ISO 100,000. The banding at high ISOs and unpredictable poor responsiveness of the 246 nearly made me quit photography, although mine seemed to be a particularly bad sample for both.

The Pentax is very nice, but an SLR is an SLR. I am reminded that seeing the world through a tunnel is not ideal for me. But as SLR viewfinders go, it is very good. Bright and clear and the view is large enough, unlike most APS-C SLR viewfinders.

The output is great. In many situations, the lower contrast Pentax lenses compared to Leica lenses work extremely well, like having a rigid Summicron on a Monochrom but not having to worry about value, spontaneous haze, optical cement failure, flare and other optical issues that come with older lenses. The coating on the HD Pentax lenses designed for APS-C sensors and their flare resistance is up there with Zeiss, and generally a bit better than Leica, in my experience. But focus shift is a problem, so a lot of the time stopping down even the slower lenses can be necessary. The 35/2.8 macro is amazing, and has no bad habits. I mostly use a 50mm on my Leicas, so it is a great natural fit for the Pentax, although I do notice that the 35mm seems a tiny bit longer on the APS-C Pentax sensor than a 50mm does on a Leica. I might be imagining that.

I can find nothing to strongly dissuade someone from a Pentax K-3 iii Monochrome if they want a digital camera with a monochrome sensor. In many ways it is better integrated and more usable than any Leica Monochrom, the only thing you give up is access to really cutting edge super high resolving glass, and well, the cachet of carrying a Leica and the pricetag that goes with that.

You can buy a K-3 iii Monochrome and HD 15, 21, 35 and 70mm lenses for less than the new price of a Summicron. Unless you are loaded, or know you’re going to love B&W digital photography and do a lot of it, or you can tax deduct the cameras for work, that’s a fairly powerful argument.

View attachment 4845040
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for such a comprehensive answer. Very helpful.
I also thought I could buy a K3mono and 15 and 20-40 lenses for less than a second hand M246. I cannot afford an M10m.
Thanks again.
 
Freakscene said:
View attachment 4845039Long not very well ordered Sunday morning camera ramble follows. You were warned.


On Friday I’m taking my M10M and M11M Leicas and all my lenses in for CLA and focus adjustment. The rangefinders have become amusing adornments rather than devices for focusing. The rangefinder in the M11 was not that good when I got it. So I’m using the Pentax in anticipation of not having my normal cameras for 3-9 months.

I really haven’t used it that much, except for maybe 2-300 shots with the 70/2.4 in India when I wanted a longer lens than I had for my Leica (75mm was the longest M lens I took). I took maybe 150 shots yesterday during a walk up the beach.

I’m still struggling with the Pentax menus. Every time I need to change a setting I need to check the manual. Again. I have the manual on my phone and on my iPad. There are 4 primary menus, with 8 secondary settings, and then a varying number under that. The camera also has 19 external buttons and 5 control dials. I do appreciate very much that the main Mode dial is lockable.

The autofocus is quite good - but it’s nowhere (nowhere!) near a Sony A1, Nikon Z9 or Canon A3. Some of my shots taken using autofocus are focused on the wrong thing. Usual 1990s af problem. Sometimes the confirmation square in the viewfinder can be hard to see.

When I can get it to be on the right setting and focus on the correct thing, the output is great. It’s quite different to a Leica. The native output is lower contrast and has more open shadows. For me this means less post-processing work. The highlight weighted metering works better than the M11 implementation of this feature. The lower pixel count and greater relative use of each pixel equates to kore ‘enlargement’. These factors all mean that the output looks more like 35mm film. The response to filtration is similar to the Leicas - more is less so you’ll need orange filters to get the same tonal response as you’d have got from medium yellow on film. Battery life is tremendous - I get 5-600+ shots per battery. Spare batteries are less than half the price of Leica batteries. You can also charge the batteries in-camera with USB-C.

Image Sync works better - faster, more certain connection and more reliable (less dropouts) than Leica Fotos.


The camera is extremely well integrated with the sensor, better than any Leica including the M11M. High ISO is fantastic, and yes, no banding of note, even up to ISO 100,000. The banding at high ISOs and unpredictable poor responsiveness of the 246 nearly made me quit photography, although mine seemed to be a particularly bad sample for both.

The Pentax is very nice, but an SLR is an SLR. I am reminded that seeing the world through a tunnel is not ideal for me. But as SLR viewfinders go, it is very good. Bright and clear and the view is large enough, unlike most APS-C SLR viewfinders.

The output is great. In many situations, the lower contrast Pentax lenses compared to Leica lenses work extremely well, like having a rigid Summicron on a Monochrom but not having to worry about value, spontaneous haze, optical cement failure, flare and other optical issues that come with older lenses. The coating on the HD Pentax lenses designed for APS-C sensors and their flare resistance is up there with Zeiss, and generally a bit better than Leica, in my experience. But focus shift is a problem, so a lot of the time stopping down even the slower lenses can be necessary. The 35/2.8 macro is amazing, and has no bad habits. I mostly use a 50mm on my Leicas, so it is a great natural fit for the Pentax, although I do notice that the 35mm seems a tiny bit longer on the APS-C Pentax sensor than a 50mm does on a Leica. I might be imagining that.

I can find nothing to strongly dissuade someone from a Pentax K-3 iii Monochrome if they want a digital camera with a monochrome sensor. In many ways it is better integrated and more usable than any Leica Monochrom, the only thing you give up is access to really cutting edge super high resolving glass, and well, the cachet of carrying a Leica and the pricetag that goes with that.

You can buy a K-3 iii Monochrome and HD 15, 21, 35 and 70mm lenses for less than the new price of a Summicron. Unless you are loaded, or know you’re going to love B&W digital photography and do a lot of it, or you can tax deduct the cameras for work, that’s a fairly powerful argument.

View attachment 4845040
Click to expand...
I appreciate your input and thoughts on the K-3 Mono. I haven't been able to compare it to any of the Leica Monochroms, but I've certainly noticed that the output which is to be seen online is almost invariably more contrasty than the Pentax. I wondered whether that were just the taste of Leica shooters.

The Pentax output is definitely more subtle than these other examples. I have been enjoying the innumerable variations in tone, while also wondering about the best way to create more dramatic photos without resorting to heavy post processing. However, I've also been appreciating a lot of photography from the seventies which shows a similar subtle tone curve (though of course, film responds to light somewhat differently from digital sensors). In a way, I think the Pentax does a good job representing a lot of the B&W photography from the seventies with SLRs and built-in exposure metering. While the output from the Leica does a great job representing the rangefinder photography of the 30s through the 50s, the heyday of street photography with the format. Generalizations perhaps, but ones which make sense to my mind.
 
agentlossing said:
I appreciate your input and thoughts on the K-3 Mono. I haven't been able to compare it to any of the Leica Monochroms, but I've certainly noticed that the output which is to be seen online is almost invariably more contrasty than the Pentax. I wondered whether that were just the taste of Leica shooters.

The Pentax output is definitely more subtle than these other examples. I have been enjoying the innumerable variations in tone, while also wondering about the best way to create more dramatic photos without resorting to heavy post processing. However, I've also been appreciating a lot of photography from the seventies which shows a similar subtle tone curve (though of course, film responds to light somewhat differently from digital sensors). In a way, I think the Pentax does a good job representing a lot of the B&W photography from the seventies with SLRs and built-in exposure metering. While the output from the Leica does a great job representing the rangefinder photography of the 30s through the 50s, the heyday of street photography with the format. Generalizations perhaps, but ones which make sense to my mind.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure about whether the manufacturers have a particular period of photography in mind, but the Leica Monochroms produce lower mid tones and higher contrast without manipulation than the Pentax Monochrome. The Leicas look like APX in Rodinal and the Pentax looks more like Plus-X in D-76. The differences in lens contrast exaggerate this. From a practical perspective, the problem is that the Pentax output is easy to make into the darker midtone look with no or very few processing artefacts, but the Leica output is much harder to manipulate to open the shadows and produce a lighter midtone look, and, particularly on the Leica 246, they often leave processing artefacts.

I’m enjoying the Pentax a lot. More than I expected, really.

Marty

IMGP0006.jpeg
 
Freakscene said:
Leica Monochroms produce lower mid tones and higher contrast without manipulation than the Pentax Monochrome.
Click to expand...

Do you know if this would be true with the Q2M? The Q2M is on my bucket list, but the Pentax Monochrome makes more sense. The only thing I would like it to be though, is full frame.
 
jon.oman said:
Do you know if this would be true with the Q2M? The Q2M is on my bucket list, but the Pentax Monochrome makes more sense. The only thing I would like it to be though, is full frame.
Click to expand...
Leica’s monochrome rendering and tonality is very consistent, including the Q Monochrom.

With the Pentax HD lenses I see little reason to be concerned about full frame vs APS-C. In general I’d prefer full frame, but my main problem with other APS-C systems is the gaps in the lens line up. Pentax have that covered. The only thing I miss is a really fast normal lens; the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art lens is the only fast normal. For me, it would be really nice if Pentax would product a 33mm f1.4 or 1.2 with the HD coating.

You can buy a Pentax KiMono and several HD lenses for less than a Q2 Monochrom. The Q2 at least avoids many of the ongoing expenses associated with using a digital M.
 
Last edited:
jon.oman said:
Do you know if this would be true with the Q2M? The Q2M is on my bucket list, but the Pentax Monochrome makes more sense. The only thing I would like it to be though, is full frame.
Click to expand...
I don't discount the difference between my FF Pentax and the K-3 Monochrome, but the difference is mainly in the optical rendering, more so than any addition of detail. The light sensitivity on the Monochrome is noticeably better than the 36mp FF K-1. Of course, I'm not comparing to a FF monochrome sensor like some of the Leicas have, because I don't have access to those.
 
I see Ricoh have release a software graduated ND filter feature which you can unlock for US$79.95, applies to the K3 monochrome. Interesting.
 
trix4ever said:
I see Ricoh have release a software graduated ND filter feature which you can unlock for US$79.95, applies to the K3 monochrome. Interesting.
Click to expand...
This bs really ticks me off about ricoh, that users should be expected to pay additionally for a feature in a camera already priced at a premium -- especially a feature that should be available right out of the box.
 
vitaly66 said:
This bs really ticks me off about ricoh, that users should be expected to pay additionally for a feature in a camera already priced at a premium -- especially a feature that should be available right out of the box.
Click to expand...
Well, I don't necessarily want to speak in support of paid firmware (which is unfortunately part of the digital camera world and has been for a while), but I don't think there was any way that this feature could have been supported at launch. I think it's a response to trends in some mirrorless cameras and an attempt to implement some of the same functionality. Previously, I have heard that paid firmware upgrades (this was specifically Panasonic if I remember right) have been put behind the paywall because they are advanced features that typical users might misuse and blame the camera for. Also there's always the argument that the camera would have cost more if it had been included out of the gate, which I think is probably true, as it would have lengthened the already long development of the K-3 Mark III, and a later release date could only have resulted in a higher price point, given the start of the inflationary period in the world markets.

All that said, I don't care for it, it's not a great look - but, we have to remember, it's in line with other camera manufacturers. I wish Ricoh hadn't joined their ranks... but, at the end of the day, it doesn't cost you a penny if you don't use it.
 
trix4ever said:
I see Ricoh have release a software graduated ND filter feature which you can unlock for US$79.95, applies to the K3 monochrome. Interesting.
Click to expand...

I can do this with software I already have, for all cameras that I currently own. I'm not sure this would be any advantage.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom