Hello all together!
It has been a while since I posted last time here. Have been really busy at work, but you have to work a lot to buy Leica gear ;-) My order for the M Monochrom has been set shortly after the announcement this year and finally about two weeks ago my trusty Leica dealer Mr. Werle called me that the desired object has arrived in Vienna. The Digitalstore (located Stiftgasse) is photographers heaven in the middle of Austria’s capitol. They recently opened a dedicated Leica Boutique in-store. The event for that has been great, a lot of special offers and of course coffee and cake.
The day I picked up the camera it was late arriving at home. So I just checked everything – I believed – and took some test shots of my cat. The next day my niece came over for a visit so I put the battery into the charger prior to that. BUT THE LEDs STAYED DARK. I tried several outlets and a different cable. Nothing. Assuming only the LEDs are defect I put the battery after about an hour and a half into the camera. Again nothing. It turned out the battery packed into the box was indeed not able to charge in any way. Mr. Werle immediately replaced it. But all together a very frustrating situation!
Beside that I love the camera! It looks gorgeous and feels great in the hand (just like every M). The very first shot I took has been at freaking ISO 5000 and I am very happy with the result. Let me show you here.
MM – Summilux 50 ASPH – f/1.4 – 1/125 – full size JPEG – NO noise reduction.
Click to enlarge.
The camera is an available light beast ;-)
Samples. Let me show you some more pictures of my first week with the MM below. As usual just click the to see the full size version.
Filters. With an base ISO of 320 (M9 has 160) and a fast lens – I prefer shooting wide open – I picked up an Hoya ND filter (3 stops). According filters I already ordered one A25 one and hope to receive it very soon. I am very curious about the results and will keep you posted here.
Flash photography. I have never been really into using light guns on my cameras, but so far testing the Leica SF 24D I kinda like the results. At a photography excursion to our local church I used it a lot. I set the camera to f/2, ISO 320 and the flash to A mode. Worked fine.
Lightroom (4). As you don’t have any color information Lightroom will show you this.
;-) At the beginning you have to get used to edit this monochromatic files, but the results you get are pretty nice.
B&W film or MM. I haven’t used Silver Efex Pro on the files a lot, but you can simulate ALL film types you are used to know in a really easy and quality way. Some may disagree here. I love shooting film as well, but for me personally I prefer digital. Not only because of the waiting time of developing the rolls. Film nowadays is pretty expensive. And at the end of the process you scan the images onto your computer and post them to the internet. But regarding this topic a lot of chatter is going on and we could discuss forever.
Let me wrap up my first thoughts post. I will post a lot more on the MM with loads of samples. As well I acquired a new toy – Epson 3880 – so far I like the results – more on that as well. And finally let me tell you that the NEW M feels great in the hand too, had the opportunity to see it in real (preproduction model) at the opening of the Leica Boutique @ the Digitalstore ;-)
Have a nice weekend and take a lot of images!
Greetings,
Picki