New Leica M digital Monochrome camera announced

[hteasley]

Marginal difference to my eyes!

Looking at Sean Reid's images, I don't see the difference as marginal: the difference is significant, especially reading the text in his studio test photos.

But the M9, the images are already pretty awesome. The difference is great, but I'm not sure it matters enough....

 

[dap]

Boy - I can't wait till all the Leica monochrome vs B&W film threads start flying :bang:

Hats off to Leica for going out on a limb though - nothing ventured nothing gained. It is definitely intriguing, but unless you are swimming in cash it would be really tough to justify buying the monochrome version over the more versatile standard issue.

 

[thirtyfivefifty]

$7,950? Yeesh!

 

[moreammo]

no way i'm dropping that kinda cheese on this... really awesome camera 🙂
too bad they can't get their pricing to something that would let them sell these things with any kind of volume.

 

[victoriapio]

Those wild and crazy guys at Solms actually did it. Gonna have to eat crow, never did I think it was a viable idea sales wise. I wish them luck.

Bob

I'm eating crow too and ask Harry lime for the deepest forgiveness because i told him i didn't think Leica would do this. A few interesting points:
1. $7950 - actually cheaper than I imagined
2. But my M9 shoots both color and bw and I have efex software, so is it in fact a better bw shooter than the 9?
3. I do applaud them for taking the gamble, and frankly, I am sure it will sell. But will it sell in numbers enough to keep it in the catalog?

OC

 

[robklurfield]

it will sell. just not to me. time to order some Tri-X.

 

[BobYIL]

it will sell. just not to me. time to order some Tri-X.

Leica do not need to sell much to amortize the costs after investing a couple of days of engineering into this model.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Yeah, I was grievously wrong too. Can't quite see the attraction myself, but best of luck to 'em.

Cheers,

R.

 

[MikeL]

Well, I like the fact the camera is free of any identifying logos,

Companies that manufacture gaffers tape might see their stock prices drop....

 

[Mike Ip]

They advertise this camera as ISO 10,000.... Has anyone tried to manually focus in ISO 10,000 light? Good luck....

 

[Timmyjoe]

I shoot, on average, 50% of my images with a Leica M2-S and Tri-X, so the M9 Monochrom seems interesting. But then when I looked at the samples on Leica's web page, the one issue that has always concerned me about a digital B&W sensor looks like it hasn't been solved.

I use color filters with my M2-S to get particular effects in a shot. I know how Tri-X responds to each of my filter colors. I've never been convinced that a digital sensor would respond the same way.

As an example, here is a shot from Leica's web page of the M9 Monochrom. Here they used an orange filter to add dramatic effect to the blue, cloud filled sky:

And here is an example from one of my Tri-X shots of a similar situation where I used a similar filter to get a dramatic sky effect:

While the orange filter in the M9 Monochrom shot darkened the blue sky, it also darkened and muddied up the white clouds. With Tri-X film, the filter darkened the blue sky but left the white clouds a puffy bright white.

Best,
-Tim

 

[Nikon Bob]

Yeah, I was grievously wrong too. Can't quite see the attraction myself, but best of luck to 'em.

Cheers,

R.

Say it ain't so, never thought we would agree on anything much less both be wrong on the same account.

Bob

 

[mervynyan]

They advertise this camera as ISO 10,000.... Has anyone tried to manually focus in ISO 10,000 light? Good luck....

without taking into consideration of reciprocal failure like the film does, you can do ev0 f2 at 4 sec instead 4 min (I think-🙂 so there are some use for high iso, only wait to see how the grains look.

 

[victoriapio]

Yeah, I was grievously wrong too. Can't quite see the attraction myself, but best of luck to 'em.

Cheers,

R.[/QUOTE
the only thing i was right about was that I knew it wouldnt be the M10. 🙂

but i am dying to see what the RFFers who pleaded for such a camera will think about it. It's no different that carrying two Ms, one with color and one with bw .... EXCEPT the cost of course. If you can live with the faults of the M system and absolutely want the finest bw quality in a 35mm sized system, I see the appeal. Yes, I guess i am trying to talk my self into it 😀

I am so stunned that they actually did it, I am curious what the reaction will be to non-Leica shooters. Certainly the Leica film shooters have already chimed in as have people with contempt for this type of experiment. But getting over the surprise from this announcement, I wonder if it WILL make BW photography more popular?

And more importantly, WILL die-hard Leica M film shooters actually be convinced to give digital a try (in black and white at least)?
OC

 

[mervynyan]

I shoot, on average, 50% of my images with a Leica M2-S and Tri-X, so the M9 Monochrom seems interesting. But then when I looked at the samples on Leica's web page, the one issue that has always concerned me about a digital B&W sensor looks like it hasn't been solved.

I use color filters with my M2-S to get particular effects in a shot. I know how Tri-X responds to each of my filter colors. I've never been convinced that a digital sensor would respond the same way.

As an example, here is a shot from Leica's web page of the M9 Monochrom. Here they used an orange filter to add dramatic effect to the blue, cloud filled sky:

And here is an example from one of my Tri-X shots of a similar situation where I used a similar filter to get a dramatic sky effect:

While the orange filter in the M9 Monochrom shot darkened the blue sky, it also darkened and muddied up the white clouds. With Tri-X film, the filter darkened the blue sky but left the white clouds a puffy bright white.

Best,
-Tim

I guess orange/red/yellow/green filters are some kind of color filter, so you add back color filter in front of the lens to reduce illumination of the scene all together, instead of separating color ray.

 

[Harry Lime]

Well, the test images look very crisp, the tonality is very nice, but I still want to see some dynamic range figures. It better be an improvement over the performance of the M9, which is a little weak at 7-9 stops. I'm hoping for 12-14 stops.

But in any case at $7950 it's mute point. I would need two bodies and I'm no banker.

Guess I'll just keep feeding my six analog M bodies more Tri-X...

 

[victoriapio]

TIMMYJOE - the control of colors in Photoshop"s RAW processing that convert color to black and white might handle it better. but perhaps the clouds were not that bright to begin with in the Leica web site shot???/

 

[kmallick]

They advertise this camera as ISO 10,000.... Has anyone tried to manually focus in ISO 10,000 light? Good luck....

Steve Huff did and posted some other images on his site.

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2012/05/10/the-leica-m9-monochrome-has-been-announced-1st-shots/

 

[BobYIL]

I shoot, on average, 50% of my images with a Leica M2-S and Tri-X, so the M9 Monochrom seems interesting. But then when I looked at the samples on Leica's web page, the one issue that has always concerned me about a digital B&W sensor looks like it hasn't been solved.

I use color filters with my M2-S to get particular effects in a shot. I know how Tri-X responds to each of my filter colors. I've never been convinced that a digital sensor would respond the same way.

As an example, here is a shot from Leica's web page of the M9 Monochrom. Here they used an orange filter to add dramatic effect to the blue, cloud filled sky:

And here is an example from one of my Tri-X shots of a similar situation where I used a similar filter to get a dramatic sky effect:

While the orange filter in the M9 Monochrom shot darkened the blue sky, it also darkened and muddied up the white clouds. With Tri-X film, the filter darkened the blue sky but left the white clouds a puffy bright white.

Best,
-Tim

These are fine examples about the basic differences between film and digital sensor to respond to colors through various sensitivity levels I tried to explain in:

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119168&page=4

Here the white clouds with shades of light gray on a blue sky background have been demonstrated; you noted the "muddy" tones of clouds on the digital sample as being the first discrepancy in rendering. If you try the same for yellow fields (harvest scenery) and the ones toward red the differences in rendering would again be obvious. With red tones like brick walls there is more tendency with digital to "darken" as the red-band sensitivity of sensors shows a "falling" character compared to mid-band colors.

I will try to examine the pictures of the new M9M, to see if Leica was able to accomplish some substantial modification on the response curves in that thread. This is the heart of the issue with the digital B&W and I am sure in the meantime the owners of the M9 or M9P's will check their own results against them. What they would state would be more insightful.

 

[Sylvester]

In Canada the price of the M9-M will be 1000$ more than the M9, 300$ more than the M9-P... I don't understand. Why didn't Leica made a digital Leica at the price range of a Leica CL that could only shoot black and white? That would have been something nice for students like me! Now they made a camera for weird fetishists...