Eight months on with the M240 ... it's not all beer and skittles!

[robbeiflex]

Have you tried DxO film pack for your B&W conversions?

 

[newsgrunt]

can you load a profile to the 240 ? would be a great help if you could.

 

[johannielscom]

The D700 is a great camera and I will continue to use it where it shines which is in galleries (openings) and live events. in this situation it has no peers IMO. 🙂

For color, I agree completely! I do not like high-contrast color images, I prefer sharpness and low contrast, almost pastellish-like colours. Reminds me of the days of prints from film 😉. The D700 with my Tokina lenses gets me just that and I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world, EXCEPT a nikon D3S, which has the same sensor but 1.5 more stops of light and that would seriously help me in low-light venues like congresses etc.

For B&W I DO like high contrast and used to have a Ricoh GXR (no AA-filter, very sharp), which I foolishly sold :bang:
I might get one again in the future (with an Mount module and a Nikon -> Leica M adapter) but earning enough for a D3S is priority for this year😉


Regarding the Leica M, can't say anything useful about it, sorry. But, if it doesn't please you, sell it and get something that does, Keith!

 

[Johann Espiritu]

It took me a few months to get used to the M240 DNG files and change my workflow to suit the way I wanted my files to look. Best way, for me, was to start with RAW then work from there, making my own profiles both in ACR and Alien Skin Exposure (I recommend the latter highly - start with the Kodak 160NC as your "base" for color then customize from there). I'm also quite pleased with the B/W conversions of Alien Skin.

Good luck!

 

[LCT]

Depends on the way we master our raw converters i guess. I'm having a hard time mastering clipping reds of the DP2 Merrill for instance while i have no problem on M240 files with C1.

 

[Kwesi]

Do I like the camera .... very much.

Do I like the colour rendering ... not so much!

Personally I feel it falls well short of the file quality and colour rendering I was getting from my Merrills and this has become a problem because although I shoot a minimal amount of colour when I do it needs to please me. Also I feel the black and white conversions are lacking compared to the Merrills ... occasionally it seems OK but often I am a little nonplussed and no amount of faffing about in LR seems to find that sweet spot that was so easy to achieve with my Sigma foveon files.

Currently I am seriously considering trading it on Monochrom because the images in the MM thread have always really impressed me and black and white really is my thing. I shied away from the MM because the price is outrageous and it lacks the niceties of live view and several other features that drew me to the 240.

Financially it's achievable and if I did go this way the Sigmas would be for colour, which is their strong suit, and all black and white duties could be handled by the MM. My head is well and truly spinning! 😱

Keith,
I have a radical idea🙂
Try your hand at making very short (15-20 seconds max) films that have color as its main subject with your M240. You may find yourself enjoying the new medium and appreciating the M240s color palette for what it is if you take away your ability to compare it to the Merrills.

 

[Manuel Patino]

I took these shots with the 3 cameras mentioned in this thread (Merrill, Epson, Leica). These are straight out of the camera, shot in B&W and jpg format. They are only cropped to fairly uniform size. No other developing. I'd be interested to hear which are the better images and why, and what camera you think shot which image. I shot them with as close as possible settings but there are considerable differences of lenses and crop factors.

 

[Manuel Patino]

Just for fun, here are the OOC JPGs in color, only cropped to get generally similar image proportions. All WB set to auto. The lights are terrible, a mixture of incandescent and fluorescent.

 

[bobby_novatron]

At least the Leica seem to get the colour WB more accurately than the other two cameras -- But the Leica OOC b+w image seems to lack a bit of lustre. In addition, the Leica seems to be moderately out-of-focus, where the other 2 examples are spot-on.

 

[Manuel Patino]

At least the Leica seem to get the colour WB more accurately than the other two cameras -- But the Leica OOC b+w image seems to lack a bit of lustre. In addition, the Leica seems to be moderately out-of-focus, where the other 2 examples are spot-on.

Interesting observations. Could you tell me how you decided which images were taken with which camera? To me, the RD-1 is slightly out of focus but not the other 2. The AE gave different results in each case so all are overexposed or overexposed. Makes it more difficult to judge the color rendering of each one. I'll try again with daylight. It's overcast and misty outside today. It might be very interesting to see how the flowers render.

 

[Ron (Netherlands)]

Leica is working hard to get a new model out which overcomes this 'messy' results. I had a pre production model for a short time, but the results on color were far from nice and far from what I got from the M8 and M9.

 

[Manuel Patino]

OK, I try again. The first image is from an Olympus EM-1 for informative purposes. I shot them all outside with overcast light. All settings as possible set to auto. I used the "auto tone" correction in LR5 because all the images came out underexposed because the white car over the dark background. All were cropped for uniformity because of the different FL and crop factors.

OLympus EM-1 with 12-40 f2.8

The rest:

 

[jaapv]

That's only a theory. I had two cameras in the past where I never managed to get the colors right, the Fuji X100 was one of them. I spent hours tweaking and tweaking in LR and was never satisfied. With the X100s...no problem at all. So I can fully understand that some combinations of camera files + image processor + person in front of the computer don't work well together.

Lightroom is rather limited in that aspect. Try Capture One Pro - a different world of colour correction.

As for OOC colours being different or even “difficult” on any camera, I wouldn’t consider doing serious postprocessing on any image from any camera without having made a good profile.

 

[LCT]

Yes another vote for C1 (in linear mode for me) but don't expect getting the colors you like w/o some work in PP. True for all CCD, CMOS, Xtrans and Foveon based cameras i've used so far. Now some firmwares are better than others as far as OOC jpegs are concerned and Leica's are not the best from this standpoint.

 

[willie_901]

RE: color rendition

As stated above, in digital imaging color rendition depends on many variables. It is inherently complicated. This is one of the reasons there is a diverse range of ad-hoc conclusions from different photographers about the same camera... and even the same camera with the same /similar lenses.

I usually discount reports of inferior color rendition unless there are known, statistically valid data consistent with a technical cause. In my view all digital camera systems, scanners and even pure analog color film printing inherently flawed to some degree. Perhaps a more positive statement would be compromises in design and manufacturing limitations are inevitable and not unique to any brand.

All that really matters is the photographer finds a camera and post-production workflow that satisfies their needs.

 

[Huss]

No issues with B&W with my M240. Maybe it's because I have the 100 Year Anniversary model..
😉

 

[ferider]

No issues with B&W with my M240. Maybe it's because I have the 100 Year Anniversary model..
😉

Yes ! The M100 rocks ! 🙂

 

[icebear]

OK, I try again. The first image is from an Olympus EM-1 for informative purposes. I shot them all outside with overcast light. All settings as possible set to auto. I used the "auto tone" correction in LR5 because all the images came out underexposed because the white car over the dark background. All were cropped for uniformity because of the different FL and crop factors. ....

What's the point of not not using each camera at it's best potential?

I.e. put in an effort to get a proper white balance (manual) and a proper exposure in the first place.
Leaving everything to AUTO is like heating up your food in microwave 😉

 

[KEH]

The discussion of the Leica IR/UV cut filter caught my attention, so I had to try one out on this fine Spring day in DC. Here are the results on my M240:

Lightroom raw conversion, no processing, without IR/UV filter:

And here is the shot with the IR/UV filter attached:

Subtle, but greens, blues and reds all seem to be more natural with the filter, at least to my eye. You can see this especially with the red of the flowers and the brick pathway to the right of the flowerbed.

Kirk

 

[Manuel Patino]

What's the point of not not using each camera at it's best potential?

I.e. put in an effort to get a proper white balance (manual) and a proper exposure in the first place.
Leaving everything to AUTO is like heating up your food in microwave 😉

I did not want to manipulate the images any more than absolutely necessary to compare the output of the cameras. I'm just curious to understand which makes the best image, perhaps as a starting point... I think the OP was lamenting the output of the M240 vs other cameras including the RD-1 and the Merrill with Foveon sensor. Since the post processing should allow the desired out put assuming the files were good enough, I thought I'd post OOC jpg of them and gain some knowledge.

I do PP on all my images, and I adjust the settings on the cameras to get the best possible outcome. But I just did not think that making adjustments to the cameras would be fair way to compare them. My skill with each camera and my bias would probably cause some to come out better than others but not fairly. That is all.