[Leica] M9 RAW's and B&W

[erik at avondel.com (Erik van der Meulen)]

Dear knowledgeable Leica-group,

I seem to be missing something in the way my M9 handles RAW's.

As long as I keep my 'Compression' setting fixed on 'DNG', I have no means
of altering the 'Color saturation' setting. This remains on 'Standard'. This
seems to me 'normal behavior'; I get the 'raw' data from the sensor.

Now this get interesting; I followed the suggestion found on
http://www.overgaard.dk/leica-M9-digital-rangefinder-camera.html to set the
'Compression' to 'DNG & JPG' and the 'Color saturation' to 'Black & White'.
This way the screen on the M9 nicley shows B&W images which I have shot. I
was under the assumption that this came from the JPG files recorded along
with the DNG.

I have no need for the JPG's other than the preview function, I want to do
the actual B&W conversion manually in Lightroom on the DNG. So I delete the
JPG's before I import the DNG's files into Lightroom. Much to my surprise in
the import dialog window, the pictures do show up in B&W! Only after the
import they seem to be converted to colored pictures.

Now what puzzles me is that I would have expected a DNG file to be the same,
no matter that the camera saturation settings would be. Further, if this is
not the case (as it indeed appears), how come I can only make adjustments in
relation to JPG settings on the camera?

Obviously I am missing something here. If anyone can point me in the proper
direction, that would be greatly appreciated!

-- 
 Erik van der Meulen
 <erik at avondel dot com>