Leica Monochrom M246

Godfrey,

Congrates on your M-246. There is something very pleasing about getting rapid results through a Leica digital. In a word elegant. No scanning for me.

Wet printing for me is a total regression that brings me back to art school where I learned to be a rather good analog printer. Life's curves and disruptions has made a rather large gap in my life. I think when I get back into wet printing it will be very healing and at a time (retirement) that I need the comfort.

Meanwhile I live in NYC, and I'm blasting away. When I wet print I'll probably not be living in NYC.

Cal
 
I had a darkroom until a few years back and divorce, downsizing and client base forced me digital. I studied the zone system in college in the 1980s. Yeah I did all the tests. The school had a densitometer. Drew up all the film curves. Also along with shooting professionally full time since 1986 I also did custom color and B&W printing. If I still had a darkroom I would probably still be shooting film in some capacity. I don't but I can tell you this; the MM is the first B&W digital that I have really liked. My old college professors and I are amazed at the ink jet print quality that can be gotten from the MM files. The MM is the first camera that has given me the same feeling I got when I bought my 500 C/Ms in the mid 80s. Someday I might just go back to film. Maybe buy and old 8X10 Deardorff move out west and shoot large format landscapes but for now the street is my passion as I thought landscape was when I was studying large format zone system photography in college. I worked on a documentary project when I was in school and I found a passion for the streets then that I never found with landscape. And I had yet to enjoy working on the streets as much as I have since picking up the MM.

The reason I wrote all of this is I know what good B&W output is. The MM is as good as digital gets period. I have shot with almost all of the high end Canon and the files from the original are so much better. I can only imagine how good the files are from the new MM. My files even at ISOs of 1600 and deliver prints that I would compare tri-x negs shot with my 500 C/Ms processed in Rodinal 1:50.
 
FrozenInTime said:
Hypothetically then :
camera A (MM) has a 10 stop dynamic range and a 14 bit depth
camera B (246) has a 12 stop dynamic range and a 12 bit depth.

camera A will have excelent tonality on low contrast scenes.
camera A will blow the highlights or lose shadow detail in harsh light.
camera B will have limited mid tone differentiation
camera B will retain more shadow and highlight detail in harsh light.

camera A is equivalent to a film with normal development
camera B is equivalent to a film with pull processing.

Is this analogy flawed ?
Click to expand...

(Above BF inserted by me)

Assuming - as Brian is writing somewhere else - the 12 bit DR of the 246 are due to the width of the CMOSIS A/D converter, identical to the 240's A/D converter. Then there is also

camera C (240) has a 13.6 bit ("stop") dynamic range and a 14 bit depth (due to 3 channels).

Still wondering how much better the 246 is than a B/W rendered 240 image, with the right conversion algorithm. If I only shoot ISO 1600 and below, do I need both ? 🙂

Doesn't look like the 246 would give me more resolution (http://www.ultrasomething.com/photography/2015/04/sensors-and-sensibility).

Roland.
 
ferider said:
(Above BF inserted by me)

Assuming - as Brian is writing somewhere else - the 12 bit DR of the 246 are due to the width of the CMOSIS A/D converter, identical to the 240's A/D converter. Then there is also

camera C (240) has a 13.6 bit ("stop") dynamic range and a 14 bit depth (due to 3 channels).

Still wondering how much better the 246 is than a B/W rendered 240 image, with the right conversion algorithm. If I only shoot ISO 1600 and below, do I need both ? 🙂

Doesn't look like the 246 would give me more resolution (http://www.ultrasomething.com/photography/2015/04/sensors-and-sensibility).

Roland.
Click to expand...

Roland,

If F.I.T.'s asumptions are correct, the midrange tonality of my MM9 might not be replicated in the M-246. If this is true there is good reason for me to keep my MM9 because as far as tonality my MM9 really does it for me. The higher resolution and lower noise at higher ISO is kinda moot the way I shoot my MM9 which is basically below 800.

The M-246 still is a great camera for me for all its updates and advances. I'm thinking the M-246 well suits my 50 Lux ASPH for its highlight control, and where the higher ISO is more likely to be used on the faster lens.

My 28 Cron has broad mids and produces the broadest histograms of any lens I own, and that gets mated to my MM9 to make a match made in heaven.

I'm thinking that my old MM9 offers me perfection as far as tonality (huge mids), especially with the 28 Cron.

Ideally I would want to own both cameras if what F.I.T. suggests is true just for the difference in rendering.

Cal
 
On reputable blog (which shall go nameless) a stranger commented both the M9M and the M-246 actually have color-filter arrays. These CFA filters are not a RGB matrix. Instead every pixel is filtered using an identical (proprietary?) bandwidth to produce the best possible B&W rendering.

I am skeptical.

Does anyone know if this is factual?
 
That is basically correct. It would have been optically very difficult to remove the filter layer. It is basically replaced by a more or less clear glass, tinted to influence the tonal response curve of the sensor.
 
Godfrey said:
Thanks, Cal.

It remains to be seen how quickly my dealer friend will be able to fulfill the order. He was not expecting large shipments (more than one or two at a time) for some months.

As usual, I'm in no hurry. When it arrives, I celebrate and pay for it.

G
Click to expand...

Congrats Godfrey.....
 
14 vs 12 bit ...

14 vs 12 bit ...

Saw this exchange on another forum about the 14 vs 12 bit business. The third response makes sense to me ... The imaging team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory I worked for went through similar engineering/data format decisions way back in the middle '80s with respect to how much data was sensible to keep and how much actually made the imaging output cleaner and more robust.

Q:: re: The new Monochrom, I'm reading that it produces 12 bit files, which would seem to limit the information available in the white areas. This could be a major show stopper for many. Anyone know more about this?
Click to expand...

R1(MM246 beta tester): That's right - although you'll see that the information in the white areas is actually better than the previous MM.

This was discussed a long time ago - and Leica did lots of tests to see whether it was better to go one way or another. Unfortunately I'm not technically qualified to discuss it further (but I think they will).
Click to expand...

R2: Sean Reid's review (subscription site) is pretty convincing. He doesn't know how many bits there are but he provides dynamic range test that are well thought out.
Click to expand...

R3: I haven't read an imaging chip spec since Kodak made the chips for Leica (and only the M8's chip was public information), but they usually say that there is noise from dark current leakage and the handling that the signal goes through while being extracted from the chip (more of that in CMOS than in CCD, BTW) amounting to at least 3-4 bits. So if you keep all 14 bits of possible signal, the last 3-4 bits of any pixel's value are only an accurate image of the light coming to the pixels if you average over several adjacent pixels. (Averaging over 16 pixels brings the noise down by 2 bits.) DeBayering does some of that, but we don't want to do that in a monochrome camera. So what I presume is happening, dividing the output signal of each pixel by four before converting it to digital, makes sense to me. Sure, there are now one fourth as many values available to us in the middle of the image tones, but the actual placing of those values was always random, not real.
Click to expand...

I think the issue comes down to a decision that can only be made by trial and observation of the results as to what is the "best fit" quantization for the purpose.

Eight bit quantization on output with 256 potential grayscale levels produces some very nice B&W prints from my printer. Four more bits produces 4096 levels, which gives plenty of overhead for editing.

G
 
I gave in back in December, or whenever I heard the first plausible rumor. Supposedly I'm first in line at a fairly large Leica dealer, I'm hoping mid May also.

Leica store Miami told me today they expect shipping in Asia late this week, and the U.S. usually follows shortly thereafter.

I've already got orange filters ready and waiting....
 
I've Seen What's Up

I've Seen What's Up

I just received my latest from the Leica Forum reviews.

Unless your knees knock at the thought of sensor rust, by all means stay with the CCD Mono.

As with the release of almost all digital camera debuted these days, image quality degrades in favor of higher ISO.

What improves? Features. That's it, more and sometimes better features. Just as newer computers hit a brick wall for speed improvements some seven or eight years ago, the same is true of digital cameras. What we have are more features and smaller platforms, but the new Mono is even larger I'm afraid.

As a musician, I favor classic instruments, newer guitars aren't any better, and I find that I prefer the sound of some of my older synths. They are classics.

The old digital cameras are becoming the same. I'm not a Nikon guy, but I won't sell my old Canon 5D or 30D. It's all bout the image.

I'm looking for a nice M9 now to mate with my Mono!
 
If we kick up a stink over the 12bit M.246 files, and the case is proven for tangible low contrast scene image quality reduction is made , then the M.247 MM3 will be better for it.

If on the other hand Leica can prove the old MM's 14 bits were not really as good as we believed and the new 12 bits are better despite being spread over a wider dynamic range, then the future looks bright for the M.246.
The case the M.246 being superior under high ISO and high contrast scenes , seems to be no contest.

I would like to see how the M.246 and MM compare side by side for a trees in fog situation.

Maybe the best compromise will be to carry a MM and a M.246.

Is it a more than a coincidence that Leica also launched B&W contrast filters for the M.246 ?
 
FrozenInTime said:
If we kick up a stink over the 12bit M.246 files, and the case is proven for tangible low contrast scene image quality reduction is made , then the M.247 MM3 will be better for it.

If on the other hand Leica can prove the old MM's 14 bits were not really as good as we believed and the new 12 bits are better despite being spread over a wider dynamic range, then the future looks bright for the M.246.
The case the M.246 being superior under high ISO and high contrast scenes , seems to be no contest.

I would like to see how the M.246 and MM compare side by side for a trees in fog situation.

Maybe the best compromise will be to carry a MM and a M.246.

Is it a more than a coincidence that Leica also launched B&W contrast filters for the M.246 ?
Click to expand...

B&W contrast filters would do little to nothing for a "trees in fog" situation. That's basically a monochromatic situation already; a green, yellow, or orange filter can't do much to separate or compress tonal translation values there. 🙂

G
 
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