Buying an M9 in 2021?

[jarski]

according to Leica Store Miami (they have nice YouTube channel), Leica tweaked color processing of M10 series to closer resemble the M9 processing, because the "magical/film like/natural/organic CCD color" opinion was already going strong on interwebs.

 

[David Hughes]

Hmmmm, now what could an organic colour possibly be?

Soot is mostly carbon and organic means carbon based...

Discus; use both side of the paper if necessary.


Regards, David

 

[Ko.Fe.]

...kinda noisy for street photography? 🙂 I guess the discreet mode can help, but the recocking has to happen at some point.

Discreet is self illusion. Your gestures will tell much more loud about your intention. And street photography of people is about been honest what you are into. Show your respect, do not act like coward. Whatever reaction is.

Those were taken with kit which was far from discreet . @21 mm you have to be close.

 

[raid]

Raid: did you find that you couldn't quite get the M9 look with the M10 -- or maybe that wasn't a consideration? I don't know if it's a matter of increasing color saturation. I'm new to digital, so I'm not conversant in the methods.

The M10 seems to be always ready for use. I can take many shots back to back. The colors look fine, but I need still to try it out in a warm place and with an older Sonnar to compare results with the M9.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Hmmmm, now what could an organic colour possibly be?




Regards, David

Dyed Potatoes.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/...rome-color-photography-history-people-culture

 

[raid]

Very impressive, Autochrome. Potato Starch!

 

[David Hughes]

Hmmm, fwiw, I was thinking of that well known printing technique called "soot and whitewash" in the good old days.


Cue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QptZ8tYZAkE



Regards, David

 

[james.liam]

Discreet is self illusion. Your gestures will tell much more loud about your intention. And street photography of people is about been honest what you are into. Show your respect, do not act like coward. Whatever reaction is.

Has the feel of a New York greeting. Who knew it's the same in Toronto.

 

[kshapero]

4. If you want an M9 but want more malleable files, better battery life, higher LCD resolution, but don't want to double the cost to get an M10, get an M262. I don't know why they are overlooked so often. The M262 is basically the updated version of an M9 in terms of simplicity and function. The M10 is great but the M262 is also great and is much cheaper.

That's the route I went and I am very happy.

 

[willie_901]

...

4. If you want an M9 but want more malleable files, better battery life, higher LCD resolution, but don't want to double the cost to get an M10, get an M262. I don't know why they are overlooked so often. The M262 is basically the updated version of an M9 in terms of simplicity and function. The M10 is great but the M262 is also great and is much cheaper.

This is the best advice.

 

[RussPhoto]

If you can get the M9 with the new CCD at a reasonable price, buy it knowing it is 10 years old and if it breaks- might not be repairable. I have 20+ year old DSLRs that still work. The M9 with new sensor is overpriced. The M9 with corroded sensor is overpriced. The latter- several companies will replace the cover glass, a delicate operation. Too delicate to be spending $1500 on a sensor with corrosion. Spending $2500 on an M9 with a new sensor, when the M240 is costing about the same- hard to justify.

If you get one- always shoot uncompressed DNG. The test Farkas did between the M9 and M240: he used lossy compression mode for the M9 and lossless compression for the M240.

Brian, may I ask you why to shoot in uncompressed DNG? I did in both compressed and uncompressed DNG and didn't notice any difference in any details. Processed both in raw/dng Photoshop and they look identical. Regards

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Brian, may I ask you why to shoot in uncompressed DNG? I did in both compressed and uncompressed DNG and didn't notice any difference in any details. Processed both in raw/dng Photoshop and they look identical. Regards

I found that at Higher ISO banding is produced. The compression algorithm basically bins 0:16383 using a square root function. I wrote some custom code to analyze what was lost with the compression scheme. I did some additional tests- converted an uncompressed DNG to a DNG-8, the "suspicion" that it created sharp edges at the boundaries of the compressed levels used to store the image. The 16384 levels of the uncompressed image get divided into 256 values. At the upper end, 127 different values all get lumped together. It did- acts like sharpening when you don't suspect it. At these "contour boundaries", noise is amplified as the naturally occurring noise can cause the compressed image to shift between two values. Once in the compressed step, noise gets lost in the level.



This is with my M8 using RAW mode and M8RAW2DNG. This uses the "Button Dance" to store uncompressed images on the M8. This is ISO5000 equivalent.



To visualize what the DNG-8 compression scheme throws away, I wrote a Fortran program to read in uncompressed DNG files from the M9, apply the compression scheme, and output what is lost.





In short- the compression scheme is "Chaotic". It produced the horrible banding seen in High-ISO shots on the M8. It introduces sharp transitions in the image as one bin level transitions to the next. There are many ways to do a lossless compression that give 2:1 reduction in storing the image, going back to the 1980s.

 

[Andprayforrain]

I was sad when my Xerox 820-II 4MHz Z80a CP/m computer blew out two years ago. Almost made it to 40years old.

Fascinating.

What were you using it for in the end?

 

[JeffS7444]

If I were to get back into the Leica M system today, it would be with a CMOS camera: M240 or newer. If price is a concern, inquire about demo or refurbished units which come with a Leica warranty.

I enjoyed M9 when I had it, but it was always beta-quality, and I never felt the sensor was anything particularly special, save that it's dynamic range was poor, and in that sense I guess it's output did resemble slide film a little bit. But why not just buy film-effect software or a Fujifilm camera if you want film-like output?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Fascinating.

What were you using it for in the end?

I was getting some Z80 assembly language routines off of it when it finally went. It had spent a lot of years in a box. The main circuit board, a Fergusan BigBoard II is still in good working order.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_Big_Board

"Back in the day", I used this computer to process image data from Landsat 4 in 1982, realtime data acquisition from the flight computer of a P3A Orion, and to test high-speed data acquisition equipment built for a custom IR sensor. In 1984, storing 11GBytes of image data took a lot of work.

https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-s...ted_con=0#qt-science_support_page_related_con

Landsat 4 was multi-spectral, later used a Zenith 241 with IBM Professional Graphics Controller to display images in color. 640x480, 256 colors from a palette of 4096. Around $4000, I got 3 of them free in exchange for writing device drivers for them. Very little in the way of software written for them, I did all of my own.

 

[RussPhoto]

Thanks for the info Brian! Next time I'll try to do it uncompressed. It's probably too subtle to notice the difference... I like the way M9 renders colors even at high ISO settings. Here are two handheld (compressed) images: one taken with Jupiter-3 and another with Summicron C 40mm

 

[Archiver]

In short- the compression scheme is "Chaotic". It produced the horrible banding seen in High-ISO shots on the M8. It introduces sharp transitions in the image as one bin level transitions to the next. There are many ways to do a lossless compression that give 2:1 reduction in storing the image, going back to the 1980s.

Thank you for this. I've been shooting with compressed DNG ever since I got the M9 in 2010, and now I'm going to try uncompressed. The camera does produce high ISO noise and banding, sometimes even at midrange ISOs, so maybe this will help.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Thank you for this. I've been shooting with compressed DNG ever since I got the M9 in 2010, and now I'm going to try uncompressed. The camera does produce high ISO noise and banding, sometimes even at midrange ISOs, so maybe this will help.

From my practical experience, it is mostly due to wrong exposure. Underexposure to be exact. Operator error or simply not enough light.

This is M8 @ISO 2500.

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M9 sensor is the same.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

I was looking at many modern cameras pictures in last couple of months. A7C and A7 III, S5, Z5. They are not how M9 sensor renders. I was looking at M240 sensor. Not M9 rendering either. Mind you, I was not looking at typical forum auto sized picture, but larger sizes, mostly on Flickr groups for each camera. I liked Z50, Z fc low ISO images. They are sharp. Kind of close on sharpness to M9.
The whole "shoot 24MP and downsize" to make it sharper just baffles me. I have sharp images SOOC from M9 sensor.
Currently I'm just keeping Canon RP, which is not sharp images camera, but OK color with bunch of not too heavy, not pricey lenses. This is my AF, low light kit. I take group of people pictures indoors @f8.
But if I want crisp image to view 1:1, can't find anything in 2021, but M9 sensor. M8 even more sharper, IMO.

Also, it seems only Q and M9/M8 have reasonably priced batteries. Third party ones. They do work for years in M9, if you know the trick. I have two for twenty something dollars each, back then. Five and four years old. They are as good as made in China Leica labeled one.

Close to M9 sensor is SL sensor. But it just plain stupid on batteries. Nothing, only 285 USD under Leica label. M240 batteries ain't too far from it. No third party ones.
If you need, no, you need spare batteries, for M9. You could get two for well under 100 USD. If you want new batteries for M240, M10... Two will cost you same as used FF camera.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The M9 sensor has about 1/2 the noise level of the M8. The M8 has a higher saturation count.

Other sources of banding include the SD card used and condition of the battery. I use a slower 4x card. The thought is cards faster than the write speed of the camera cause uneven power draw. A battery on-the-edge can also cause issues. I spent years of my career chasing down sources of noise for early digital sensors. BUT- the compression scheme used for the M9 and M8 is just an unnecessary way of introducing a chaotic process into storing an image. It is a very bad way of doing it, showed Leica does not understand digital imaging.

With the M8 using M8RAW2DNG.


Below: comparison show to compare compressed with uncompressed, manual exposure same settings.

M8 using compressed DNG, ISO 2500





M8 using button dance, M8RAW2DNG, same exposure as above and pushed in Lightroom.





Noise reduction and sharpening turned off.

1950 KMZ J-3, wide-open.

I took the M8 and M Monochrom to the Marine Museum, each with a 1950 KMZ J-3 on them. I used the M Monochrom to meter the shot, set the M8 to the same exposure. The M8 was using the Button Dance. Adjusted the M8 shots using Lightroom in post, all NR and sharpening turned off.





The M Monochrom is set to ISO5000, M8 is set to ISO 160 with manual exposure set to the same as the M Monochrom, 1/90th second and wide-open.

If the M8 had native ISO5000 performance like this in 2006, no one would have disparaged its high-ISO performance. The main reason I bought the M9 was to have uncompressed DNG. When Arvid introduced M8RAW2DNG - it's all I use on the M8.