[Leica] Leica M Monochrom

[mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)]

For the most part I'm with you but it could be that Bayer screen less
shooting makes for black and white wall prints which rivals medium format
RGB to Monochrome conversions.
Or makes for results which otherwise knocks are socks off. As we look at it
them on the wall. We think we're working now with a system that ain't broke.
But we have no experience with seeing imagery done differently. In this case
done without a Bayer or any kind of matrix screen. Sooner or later someone
is going to show us results which we can really see and then we'll know for
sure.
Looking at a big blow up on our monitor in a little white square from a
small part of an image does not cut it. There has to be no monitor at all.
We have to see a large prints face to face and next to each other.
Preferably with a similar print made the normal Bayer screen way for  direct
comparison. Then someone who'd been shooting black and white quality work
their whole lives would have something to think about. Instead of going
medium format.

We don't need to hear the mathematical reasons why taking out the Bayer
screen is so go. We just need to see it.

The comparison of interest is when the new M10 with CMOS sensor comes out
later this year compared with the just out M Monochrom. As without that
people are just going to buy the color version of it.  The M10 . A version
which records a lot more information. As it knows pink from green. Etc. and
can be converted to black and white with that information being used in real
time so the image maker can chose how to balance it all. Its like using all
the filters there are simultantiously. And it gets addicting. And is more
fun than shooting through one filter.
The black and white work I'm doing now I've never been more thrilled about.
I'm not screen a filter in front of a lens in years.
 And the reason why is the real time conversion you make with all the color
sliders.... In the ACR converter or in  "convert to black and white" in
Photoshop which has the same sliders with a slighter better interface.

The M9 is a great camera for Leica but a first out.
The first full frame camera Leica has made for the M system.
I think in the next few months with the M10 digital color M shooting with
Leicas will reach full cruising speed. And will leave nothing to modern DSLR
shooting.
The same people who picked an M6 over an F5 in 1999 will be the same people
who shoot with an M10 over an D800 In 2012. December.
But they'll have that black and white option if the also want to get an M
Monochrom.

- - from my iRabs.
Mark Rabiner
http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/lugalrabs/springdays/


> From: "B. D. Colen" <bd at bdcolenphoto.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 17:01:19 -0400
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] Leica M Monochrom
> 
>> Thinking about the MM, I find myself wondering why one would pay a $1000
>> premium for an already extremely expensive digital camera stripped of
>> what, for me, is one of the greatest attractions of digital - the ability
>> to think black and white, produce wonderful black and white images, but
>> always have a color "negative." Shooting with a color sensor allows me to
>> go back to my images years later and discover something that I thought
>> should be a black and white image is, in fact, extraordinary in color.
>> Yes, taking off the bayer filter allows for an otherworldly level of
>> sharpness. But photography, for me at least, is not about etching with a
>> razor blade, it's about catching moments that show us things about the
>> human condition we see every day yet fail to see because they are so much
>> a part of our lives. I don't care about being able to count the number of
>> fibers in the thread holding a button onto someone's collar, I instead to
>> see the joy, or pain, in their eyes.
> 
> End of quite rant.
> 
> 
> 
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