Leica Monochrom M246

[jaapv]

Mine arrived last week (and I placed the order the morning that the M246 was announced). The box has a large warning page in bright orange paper to remind people to update Mac OS X to ver. 10.10.4 (released on July 1) before loading DNG files from M246s. It made me think that the slow roll-out of the M246 might have something to do with the DNG bug that Apple was working on.

John

Apple is notoriously lax with updating DNG file handling. The problem is that they do not incorporate the full DNG standard in their OS. The linear DNG of the original MM, although to Adobe specification, took them completely by surprise. It took them ages to adapt their OS.

 

[shadowfox]

Just curious, why bother with raw?
The JPG is not good enough?

 

[Godfrey]

Just curious, why bother with raw?
The JPG is not good enough?

There's more image processing overhead to be had with raw files. In many cases, the JPEGs are good enough, but more overhead nets better results when you're working at the limits of the camera's capabilities.

G

 

[SuperUJ]

Just curious, why bother with raw?
The JPG is not good enough?

It probably is, as the files don't seem to need much post-processing. I meter mid-tone with center-weighted setting and the highlight & shadow seem to fall into place. My digital post-processing workflow follows my analog's. When working with films, I prefer to print from negatives than from another prints. But that's just me.

John

 

[shadowfox]

There's more image processing overhead to be had with raw files. In many cases, the JPEGs are good enough, but more overhead nets better results when you're working at the limits of the camera's capabilities.

G

I understand the reasons why one would use RAW vs jpg.

I was asking specifically to those who use these latest digital M. How many times do you push the limitations of the camera that you need the extra room for post processing using RAW formats.

I'd think that a digital Leica M produces JPG that would exceed my expectations even if I shoot at night (I meant scenes with light, not shooting bats in a cave).

 

[shadowfox]

When working with films, I prefer to print from negatives than from another prints. But that's just me.

John

John, to me, that's not an apt comparison.
I've been surprised at how good the JPG quality out of almost any new DSLR today. Unless you're going to print at super high resolution and size, or shooting at extreme light conditions, there is no need to use RAW.

In other words, I submit that for 90% of all purposes, today, the JPG from high-end cameras can be considered as the equivalent of the negative in film world.

 

[SuperUJ]

I submit that for 90% of all purposes, today, the JPG from high-end cameras can be considered as the equivalent of the negative in film world.

Hi Will,

Your estimate of 90% is probably right for good DSLRs. In addition to the 8-bit JPEG vs. 12-bit DNG files, I personally don't prefer the idea of uncompressing and recompressing image files (unless it uses lossless compression algorithm). The using of different RAW editors is similar to the use of different types of developer on film. This is how I drew the parallel between RAW files and negatives. As I have already gone down the M246 route, I would try to squeeze every bit out its output (instead of limiting myself from the get go and shoot JPEG). Hope this helps explain my choice of working practice and workflow. Thanks for sharing of your thought, though.

John

 

[SuperUJ]

High Speed Cards and Banding

High Speed Cards and Banding

With a 95 MB/s card, the M246 startup time was brought down to less than two seconds now. However, the high speed card seems to introduce banding in the shadow on in DNG when images are pushed two or more stops in LR6 (& when I blow it up). I found at least one other user mentioned this phenomenon, when I googled it. It probably would not be a problem when I print the images, but thought that I should bring it up here.

John

 

[shadowfox]

Hi Will,

Your estimate of 90% is probably right for good DSLRs. In addition to the 8-bit JPEG vs. 12-bit DNG files, I personally don't prefer the idea of uncompressing and recompressing image files (unless it uses lossless compression algorithm). The using of different RAW editors is similar to the use of different types of developer on film. This is how I drew the parallel between RAW files and negatives. As I have already gone down the M246 route, I would try to squeeze every bit out its output (instead of limiting myself from the get go and shoot JPEG). Hope this helps explain my choice of working practice and workflow. Thanks for sharing of your thought, though.

John

John,

It does explain it and I appreciate your answering my question.

 

[SuperUJ]

With a 95 MB/s card, the M246 startup time was brought down to less than two seconds now. However, the high speed card seems to introduce banding in the shadow on in DNG when images are pushed two or more stops in LR6 (& when I blow it up). I found at least one other user mentioned this phenomenon, when I googled it. It probably would not be a problem when I print the images, but thought that I should bring it up here.

Wanted to report back on the banding issue of my SanDisk 95 MB/s card. It did not get resolved by changing over to a Transcend 90 MB/s card (suggested by someone in another forum). 90% of the banding (pretty minor to begin with) go away after applying debanding using Dfine 2.0.

John

 

[Ken Ford]

Old thread, but I thought it would be good to add this here due to the existing SD card discussion.

I recently picked up a M246 and discovered it (and my old M-P240) do *not* play nice with newer higher capacity cards. The cameras start up in two or so seconds with my older 32 and 64 GB cards, but going to a newer, faster 256 GB cards causes them to boot up in six or seven seconds. Lesson learned!

 

[Ken Ford]

Followup - these cards start up in about 1.75 seconds in both my M246 and M-P240, plus they’re cheap.

 

[Godfrey]

In the days of my M-P 240 and M-D 262, I used 32 and 64 G Sandisk cards like that. I almost never ran out of storage space before uploading because I don't do "machine gun" shooting.

When I bought the SL 601, I bought a pair of the same make but 128G capacity cards. Those cards are what are now in my M10-M and M10-R ... Again, it is exceedingly rare that I ever run out of storage space, even with just one card and the vastly larger file sizes for 40 Mpixel raw image files.

I've not measured startup time on any camera that I recorded anywhere... All I know is that, once I switch these cameras on, by the time I get them to my eye they're ready to shoot. 😉

G

---
You're reminding me that I should go through my various boxes and bags and collect up all the SD cards, see what I have. I know I have a bunch of them, mostly small ones from when anything with "big" capacity was too expensive for me (circa 1999-2005-ish). But cameras then were JPEG only and 2-5 Mpixel resolution.

 

[d_c]

I've had similar experiences with my M262 and have gone back to 64GB cards as a result. It felt like the camera was trying to 'index' everything on the card when it started up, and so a bigger card plus more images already stored on the card made for a considerably slower startup time. Keeping the card size to 64GB max seems to have mitigated against this presumably by ensuring that this 'indexing' never takes so long that it gets in the way of shooting pictures