Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/10/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]As a 3 year owner of the M9, I found the fascination with the MM, well, fascinating. First, as much as I love B&W (I convert almost everything to B&W), I hate to lose the flexibility of having the colors and specifically the color filter components. I can darken the sky by tweaking the hue component post. How easy is that? When I am shooting B&W film, it's not a big deal, it's a choice I make, whereas the MM makes the choice for you. If that makes sense. Fundamentally though, for $5400, you can get an ME or used M9, or pay $2000 more to get a B&W camera. That just seems backward. Yes, I know, the resolution is higher and the ISO is one stop better etc. etc. but you know what? I have taken some decent pictures with the M9 and not once have anyone say about my successful pictures that they would be even better if the resolution is better, or the ISO is better. And of course with the unsuccessful pictures, they just suck no matter how much resolution I throw at it. I don't buy the easier to post process aspect. LR 4 Develop have 4 major sliders, highlight, shadow, whites and blacks. Those Adobe engineers have done A LOT of magic so that most images will get close to (lets say 90%) of their best potential with just those 4 sliders. 4 sliders, and you don't change the blacks and whites much. Once you learn a tool like LR4 well, any time saving would be measured in seconds at best. Besides, if I do have $8000-$9000 to spend, I will either hop, skip and jump and save a little bit more to get into MFDB. Or heck, my 617 is giving me a lot of joy. There's 10000 square mm of B&W goodness, that's more than 10x of 864 square mm of digital pixels. For $8000, I can buy a new Ebony 617s. Super sharp 5x7 lens are $2000+ and there are plenty great sharp lens for $500 or under. -- // richard <http://www.richardmanphoto.com>