Who's going to buy the new M9M?

celluloidprop said:
Depends on if you factor in the cost of a Nikon Coolscan, the cost for lab development or time and supplies to develop your own and the time-cost of scanning 36 frames per roll.
Click to expand...
Sorry.. have 900ED and V750 Pro. Developing in house is easy.

If this sells...at all...you just might see Fujifilm duplicate the effort, but should it take much development and cost, nobody but Leica will give this one a go.
 
well is i manage to get the right price for my gear and my business goes ok, i´ll probably get me one of these....by that time it will cost 2k!!!!
 
As of now, no. It is interesting. I'm sticking with film for now for B&W. If my scanner breaks, film prices continue to rise dramatically, and all of my film cameras need expensive repairs, I might consider it more seriously.

If it were cheaper, say $4-5k, I'd be a lot more interested. If it were the price of a D800 ($3k), I'd buy it tomorrow. I'm not saying Leica should make it cheaper, I'm merely stating that $8k is far too large of a price compared to my salary for me to be able to entertain the notion of immediate purchase. Same goes for the M9.
 
There are a lot of photographers who could justify the purchase, for better or worse. That's what Leica is counting on.

Maybe not working photographers or the unwashed masses - but there are plenty of people for whom $9k is either pocket change or 1/10 of their daily driver.
 
I only shoot B&W, and this is the inventory of my film cameras:

AGFA Clack - pinhole camera
Ricoh GR1
Widelux F7
Nikon F2
Nikon FM3A 2 bodies
Bessa R4A
Zeiss Ikon SW
Zeiss Ikon ZM
Leica M4
Leica M7 0.58
Leica M7 0.85 (75 frame taken out)
Leica MP 0.85
Rolleiflex 2.8 F
Hasselblad SWC/M
Hasselblad C/M
Hasselblad CW

That makes for 18 camera bodies, and I believe they are worth more than the M9M.
The question is: would the M9M be able to replace any of them?
I am waiting to see.
 
Interesting camera and I wish I could afford it but NO. That price can buy one hell of a scanner for film and a lot of film. On the other hand, my dissapointment with the Leica announcement means that the current and previous lineup will not get any cheaper soon and the X2 is just an Olympus EP-x with more pixels and that weird EVF. I may be moving to the Xpro-1 after all.
 
In many ways this is just the camera I've been waiting for since digital first came on the horizon. When the Kodak 760M came out, and I saw the output compared with contemporary colour cameras, I thought it wouldn't be long before digital B&W would go mainstream.

For my commercial work I'd been struggling for years with shooting B&W and colour on the same job. It really didn't work. Either I was in colour mode, or in B&W mode, but whichever; the other would suffer. I also noticed that on holidays, I would shoot colour but at home, or any place I stayed for a while, I would shoot B&W. B&W might just be a historical abstraction forced on us by the development of photographic technology, but it had a life of its own and became a different thing.

A good article on B&W in digital by Mike Johnston is at: http://theonlinephotographer.typepa...d-a-digital-camera-have-a-bw-only-sensor.html

So. Now to decide.

If the announcement of the Monochrom had come 6 or more months ago, I would have immediately ordered the camera. However, the M10 will be announced this September and what will it bring? I can swing one or the other, but both isn't in the cards. So most likely I'll wait until the M10 is announced, and then decide. Or maybe an M10 this year, and an MM the next.

I still shoot B&W film and develop it, and my darkroom still exists, but scanning film and dealing with that workflow is just monumentally unappealing and boring. Besides, I still have 100's of thousands of old images to deal with. So for me, B&W film goes to baryta prints. Shooting with a colour capable digital camera for B&W output is very, very difficult for me as I KNOW that the colour info is in there. I can always 'fix it in post'; it doesn't carry with it the discipline of true B&W. I know this works for some people, but not for me.

Henning
 
I'm not about to buy one anytime soon. But if I had money to burn then why not. It might be a fun thing to play around with and a great thing to impress your wealthy friends with. I mean, a black and white digital camera, the only one made in the world.
It has a certain kudos factor. Might confuse them all into thinking that makes you a digital fine art black and white photographer.

But all those sample images do look like they need a fair bit of work to give them some impact. They all look pretty lifeless to me (so far).
 
I shoot digital because I need color for work and don't want to do color film. It can be turned to greyscale if needed. I shoot film for black and white. A digital camera for black and white? Not likely.
 
When all the enthusiasm for a new camera has died down I think I'm going to be left with the feeling that for all the marketing hype about sharpness and resolution, Leica are going to look pretty stupid having to give away software to add noise to make the images look like something the camera isn't capable of. That should all be in the firmware and it isn't. That's the irony of it, you need software to undo what the camera does. I'd still buy one "if" had money to burn though.
 
If I had the cash I would buy an M9P, not the M Monochrom. Simple reason, even if the M Monochrom sells really well, like 10,000 units, there still is going to be little to no post processing software developed for it. Where as Silver EFex Pro and offerings from Adobe and others make post processing high quality digital color images into high quality digital black & white images quite possible. And those softwares will just keep getting better. No major software company is going to spend the development time and money on developing new software where the ceiling on sales is 10,000 units. Not when they can develop new software that they can sell to millions.

Best,
-Tim
 
I think it's a great idea, and I'm sure it's a fantastic camera. If I didn't have other priorities and if I was making a lot more than I do, then my order would be in already. As it is, I've got a lot of bills to pay, but I've also got an OM2n loaded and the next roll is going into my M6, and all is good.
 
Although I sympathize with the sentiments regarding sample images posted so far as being rather dull and lifeless, I am still, ever so slightly, impressed with this camera. I shoot my M9 as much as I can, and to be honest, I often convert to B&W for final images. I'm not sure why I prefer BW more than color, but I guess it's just an aesthetic choice I've always been drawn towards. In any case, I could maybe see myself actually interested in this camera. The limits/benefits of shooting only BW is a really nice concept in my mind, and even though it's outrageously expensive, I do understand it's place in the Leica M lineup and it's uniqueness alone in the digital realm could explain some of this retail markup. Anyway, I'm intrigued...

With all that said, I feel like if I did put in an order for an M9-M, I'm sure I would find out that all it's advances would somehow be achieved in the fall release of the M10 (rumored). If I sold my M9, bought an M9-M and then found the M10 to be the M9-M with color (in terms of ISO, tonal range abilities), I would certainly be very disappointed. At this point, I think I'll just wait til the fall and see what the M10 might have to offer.
 
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