GEAR TALK - Leica M Monochrom Typ 246

The original CCD based Leica Monochrom's intrigued me from a technical standpoint - mainly the monochrome sensor and using colored filters to alter the sensor response / contrast. But after three years of bricked SDHC bards, lost images and lock-ups with the Leica M9 and M9P, I was not interested in owning another M9 series camera. Fast forward 3 or 4 years and I have now used the M-240 cameras for three years without any such errors, so given that assurance, I recently purchased a Leica M Monochrom Typ 246. For the most part, The Monochrom 246 is an indulgence in curiosity.

I expect this to be a bit of a journey because it takes awhile for me to get into black & white mindset. Add to that - experimenting with color filters, which is something completely new (for me), plus the learning curve with a new a camera. In this case that learning curves mostly refers to post processing the Leica Monochrom DNG's. This weekend was the first step in tackling that learning curve with some after dark shooting and experimenting with ISO 5000 to 10000 - key words being - after dark. Earlier in the week when the camera first arrived, the quick test snapshots at ISO 5000 through 25000 looked surprisingly good, so I felt emboldened to shoot in very dark conditions.

So off to Decatur, Texas to some of the usual test spots, the first stop being the "Petrified Wood Station". I was shooting handheld, experimenting with the different angles and letting ISO float all the way to 10,000. After reviewing images on the Leica Monochrom's rear LCD, the histograms looked dark (screen shot from Capture One) -

Unedited Image - Original Histogram

A left-sided bunched up hockey-stick histogram is par for a night shot, but the highlights were worrisome. It was barely a heart beat above a flat line, but that line continued all the off to right edge of the chart. Where does that line stop? How much of the highlights were being clipped? Reviewing images on the Monochrom's rear LCD, the shadows were black-black-black and the highlights were somewhat clipped (blown-out). Essentially the images were a sea of blackness with some highlights sprinkled in and not much else between. To get an idea of what I was seeing on the Monochrom's rear LCD -

+3 EC in the Dark and Mid-Tone Areas --- Unedited vs. Edited

Since I needed all the dynamic range the Monochrom could muster, it was time for the tripod and ISO 320. As crazy as this may sound, I might prefer the Monochrom's higher ISO's despite the highlight trade-off. The Monochrom takes on a character starting around ISO 2500 that I like alot. The highlights can have a nice, kind of "filmic" roll-off and sensor noise has a wonderful "grain". Some horizontal banding can be visible at ISO 6400 and above, but this is easily removed using NIK (previous post about NIK's de-banding option).

David Farkas did a nice high ISO M-246 vs M-M vs M-240 comparison. His comparison finds there is 1 to 2 stop noise improvement with the Monochrom (246) vs the M-240. I agree, though in my opinion the actual Monochrom (246) images look better than what a 1 to 2 high ISO improvement suggests. Along the right side there are a couple other snapshots taken handheld at high ISO (the Chinese restaurant parking lot). Those pictures do a nice job of showing the Monochrom's 'patina' in the upper-midrange ISOs. Also worth mentioning, it is nice to have a camera with enough ISO range to support stopping-down for added depth of field.

So first impressions of the Leica M Monochrom Typ 246 are positive. I am looking forward to experimenting with color filters, especially on mid-day pictures. The Leica Monochrom M strikes me as a "happy-go-lucky" type of camera for handheld snapshots in pretty much any (light) setting thinkable. There are no grand plans to rethink the gear bag. This is just an introspective experiment to see if I want to shoot a dedicated black & white camera - an itch that had to be scratched.