Leica Tech Talk: The Soul of Monochrom

[Music] i'm a storyteller and i use a camera to find truth it has allowed me to look at the human condition with intimacy and remind us who we can be at our very best so many of us are afraid to try something new afraid to take the road less travelled and one of the things that shooting with the leica q2 monochrome has reminded me of is to not be afraid of failure and to tell your own story and the universe has a way of of listening to you when you're being truthful [Music] at the beginning of this year i was still wondering what my voice really was as a photographer and the anti-racist movement globally happened and the protests found me really and i felt responsible to be a custodian of those stories to be a custodian of the extraordinary allyship and solidarity that is a very beating heart this united kingdom [Music] the great gift that is the still image that is photography something leica has been part of from the very beginning of this art form is that it really is available to everyone anyone can pick up a camera and begin their journey in finding who they are as a creative having the right tools is paramount and i found the right tools with leica cameras and from the moment we've begun this waltz of creativity i've been able to paint a type of visual poetry that i never thought i would in my wildest dreams [Music] a lot of my images are informed by well i guess my childhood in some way and the fairy tales that i used to read as a child or the dreams that i have i'm really intensive dreamer i dream a lot i'm always using symbols and metaphors that people can subconsciously connect to regardless of their cultural background or their personal experiences so of course anyone create their own story when they look at my photographs and that is my aim i remember the magic moments discovering how the image come through on the paper and this was the first encounter with black and white photography specifically without the color you see more the graphical aspects of the picture you see more the play between light and shadow [Music] i am creating narratives i think in everything that i do as an artist and it begins maybe even with the music that i'm composing so everything i do is in a way connected i work completely alone so i set up everything alone i prepare everything alone really hands-on like the whole body experience the whole mind experience so it's almost like meditation in a way and i really really enjoy the process of working with this camera because it becomes almost like an extension of your body actually one of the aspects that i like so much about the q2 monochrome you know it's not overly geared there's not too much technicalities that you have to take care of all the time so it's literally like you put a film and you shoot it's almost like that [Music] now in this project when i started finally photographing myself i kind of put together all the elements and performing is part of the process exploring my journey into my childhood and my past and my fantasies and my fears but in the same time with somewhat humorous approach [Music] [Applause] you know i dream so much that sometimes i don't know where the reality of my dream ends and where the reality of the everyday begins i'm not sure which one was a dream which one was real [Music] baby [Music] [Applause] welcome leica fans and welcome to another episode of leica tech talk episode number three we're here again today to you to bring a very special program i'm your host and tony benedetto product specialist for like camera usa and i'm so glad i already see people on the chat talking away saying where they're tuning in from whether it's uh sunny st paul minnesota or uh bermuda or all over the place uh in brazil as well hey an extra shout out to benjamin jp and tom for uh signing in very early and chatting with me a little bit so i can tell that people are very excited for today's topic uh which maybe spoiler alert you can may know what it is um but i'd be remiss if i didn't introduce my partner in crime my colleague my co-host mr john kreidler hey john hey antonia great to be with you here today on episode three and uh it's all about the soul of the monochrome so uh want you to kind of take us through it a little bit before we dive right in yeah so today we're talking the soul of the leica monochrome and i know people have questions so sound off in the chat for when you've got those questions we're going to do our best to answer them and we're going to be talking digital monochromes digital rangefinders a little bit of film maybe a little bit of extra stuff for for you analog fans as well but ultimately you know leica has these cameras that are very specialized right these cameras that only record black and white uh even though they're digital and i think from the foremost at the very beginning john people asked us why why monochrome why do we make cameras like these and i think there's a special quality to them wouldn't you say it's uh something about black and white that's just a little bit different than when you see color when you record or capture a picture in color and convert to black and white um so why don't we take them through why okay let's uh let's talk a little bit about the monochrome i know myself shooting a monochrome it kind of re refreshes my uh creative palette where i start to see differently and think differently and look for different subjects that i wouldn't normally photograph when i'm shooting in color so i'm again you're thinking differently but why the monochrome so i think for many of us that's where it all started our love of photography we started with uh with shooting film in black and white film to help us learn compositionally uh and and how to shoot and you know there's something about um still even today right opening that box of tri-x or t-max that's right you get that that scent of of the film and that that that tactile feel of loading a role it's it's still something uh as a photographer you just enjoy uh yeah for sure and also john you know when it goes to when we think of the history of leica and the history of photography so much of what we think and visualize is in black and white uh if i say uh you know just a few words like uh vietnam napalm girl or vj day kiss i bet many of you in our audience you can visualize what those images are those historic leica pictures um and they were in black and white actually hey in the chat sound of you got maybe a few words that describes an iconic photo and see if others pick up on on what it is but it's all about black and white and as you said john it's kind of a back to basics it's where people usually start um and it's a different kind of way to to do and take pictures um you know so i think ultimately when we think why the monochrome we should then look to maybe our colleagues in germany which john uh if we go back to our slides i think you've got uh some insights that we we asked uh one of our colleagues that has some direct access and direct hand in in these monochrome cameras right uh rachael r antonio you know uh our good friend uh yes go who's the product manager for for the m camera and probably has the most should i say coveted job in all of leica to uh vm vm through the gauntlet of uh features and requests and the interesting thing uh when we were speaking with esko was that he was uh there from the very beginning of the concept so it was great to get his insight and i'm i'm gonna uh read his quote that we've uh that we got from him so he said we started to consider the monochrome concept with the leica m8 but it really wasn't uh until uh we had the m9 where we began to witness the the real noticeable advantages of producing a monochrome camera and we're always looking to create products that advance the artistic vision of the photographer the monochrome products are an important part of that philosophy utilizing technical advantages to yield a truly unique experience and you know when we were talking to them that those words rang uh so true to me where we're really trying to produce products that allow a photographer to express his vision or her vision to tell their story in a way that the technology doesn't get in the way it's a very natural extension of their artistic vision and that stays true to what we've always done we've always had products that were innovative but were always contain the the essentials so uh to me uh you know his his comment uh really rang rang very true so you know i think it'd be really cool uh if in the chat people wanted to chime in and we've had i you know several versions of the monochrome out uh including film cameras if you just want to type in the chat kind of your favorite monochrome the camera that um or maybe the first camera like a camera that you use really helped you uh capture your vision that would be really something uh very interesting so uh i guess now antonio why don't we uh go back and we'll talk about uh a dear friend that we were introduced to in 2012 named andre yeah so uh kind of a funny in inside baseball aspect uh you know leica cameras have usually code names uh as i imagine most companies have for their products and uh when the m monochrome was conceived its code its code name was henry or henry uh for in uh shout out to enriquez brassan of course the famed uh street photographer um and you know the concept was unique uh when it was released people said what is leica doing why don't they know that you can just release you can just take a camera that takes color and convert it to black and white and we said no there's a certain way of doing it that's quite special so this is a very unique camera and what it enabled us to do was also quite special higher iso range again an 18 megapixel ccd black and white sensor that was based on the m9p but this was a formula that worked and people seem to really love it so as the yes go had mentioned in the quote we got from this concept was being baked in the m8 days but came to fruition with the m9 and then it was successful enough that we saw the m monochrome type 246 based on the mp type 240. bump in resolution at 24 megapixels uh cmos sensor so even better iso performance uh and then you know even a little more versatility because it added video in 1080p now we move on from the m type 246 to the current m monochrome model the m10 monochrome um now someone in the chat already asked this question said uh brooke asked uh other than more megapixels what is difference between the monochrome 246 and the m10 well of course you see the jump in resolution from 24 to 40 megapixels uh it's also all the benefits of the m10 uh platform so the thinner body the three button layout that's more streamlined the beautiful iso dial on the top for that you know great control you can see all of your settings right from the top even when the camera's turned off um and yeah also like a photos connectivity or wi-fi so all the benefits of the m10 system are here and with the m10 monochrome being based on the m10p you get even the quiet shutter the silent mechanical shutter and the uh touchscreen so a lot to love with the m10 monochrome and you know if we're gonna talk we're gonna talk some technical things coming up a little later in the program and you're gonna see just how good this camera can do at high isos in particular now john then also last year in 2020 we not only got the m10 monochrome but we got i think with maybe one of your faves the q2 monochrome yeah definitely uh so it's it's interesting uh the q2 monochrome um and what i like about the experience the shooting experience is the queue as we all as many of us know has a very similar uh say feel like an m but it's it's not a rangefinder uh but there are some really significant and nice features about the q2 and q2 monochrome that being it's autofocus but still gives you the ability if you want to manually focus build in macro lens of course increase resolution to the 47.3 megapixel but also to me one thing i really enjoy is the video so being able to shoot cine 4k at 24 uhd at 30 and 24 or my personal favorite full hd at 120 in slow motion really allows you to capture i think footage that is very emotional and uh here uh i don't know if anyone's gotten much snow this winter but maybe a little bit john i don't know about you but uh there's something about uh just shooting video particularly with this uh q2 monochrome and it's slow motion and just how beautiful it looks uh and basically image stabilization that was handheld uh and i probably only had four or five espressos that day so it was a good day for me uh in terms of steadiness so but um all that to say i guess uh to to move on would be that um we did get a quote from aj with one of your your good friends yeah so uh we have got some insights also from product management mr peter krazewski uh our good friend and colleague over in betzlar who uh manages the leica compact cameras and that includes the q2 and q2 monochrome so we asked him why the q2 monochrome why was the q2 graced with the presence of monochrome status um and he said we had feedback from from the market that a monochrome version of the q2 was of great interest we began to investigate and realize that the 28 millimeter sumo x lens uh was up to the challenge of being able to render a 47 megapixel monochrome sensor so we set the work to bring the camera to market in many ways the q product line is the most like the m and for us it seemed like a natural progression and i i really can't agree more so many people love their q cameras because of you know maybe the way it supports an m system if you already own an m uh or you know you have another camera that that gives that kind of rendering and feel and vibe and handling but without um you know having to worry about manually focusing you get some more more modern features with autofocus continuous tracking all those kinds of things some great iso performance overall fantastic performance and john as you showed a little bit with the video you know with firmware 2.0 of the q2 and the q2 monochrome from day one you have manual control over video 4k uhd and and and 1080. and john you didn't tell me that that was handheld i actually assumed you put it set up a tripod for that so way to surprise me while we're live i didn't know yeah well you know uh let me set up a tripod come on seriously uh in the snow yeah not likely i i just assumed because it was so rock solid i have no i'm i'm i'm telling you folks i did not know that that was uh that was um the stabilizer is incredible incredible in that camera yeah um so ultimately you know we we've talked a little bit here now about what these cameras these camera models have done what they've achieved um you know i'm sure people may be wondering some people maybe already know this but how does a monochrome become a monochrome how do we create a monochrome uh so john can you take us through this what what are the changes to a sensor we talked about how you know the m the m9 monochrome was based on an m9p the m the monochrome type 246 was based on the mp type 240 and m10 monochrome with m10 d so do we just take the sensor and strip something away and just slap it in and we're done what do we do here yeah that's pretty much it uh no not at all so i i guess that the first thing uh just to kind of relate to uh relate in in hopefully a somewhat uh clear way is that basically to create a color image with with a sensor the sensor itself has what's called a bear filter or a color array filter so there is actually one color filter over each pixel well so these are very tiny filters so as light comes through the sensor is actually gathering information that is then used to process the image and that information is either about the red channel the green channel or the blue channel so then through a series of mathematics and interpolation we utilize the information of neighboring pixel wells to then interpolate uh the the other two channels the in the case of a red to to find that the green and the blue so all that to say that's simply i guess as simply as possible how it works so we talk about monochrome we're really faced with a couple of challenges challenge one is being able to remove the filter which through manufacturing is something we were able to accomplish the next thing is since we no longer have color information that we were utilizing to create the image file we had to think of a whole other way of creating the image basically just utilizing shades of gray so that's um one of the the nice benefits of a monochrome camera is that we're no longer interpolating all that color information we're getting uh that information on a pixel level and what that does from a say a color noise standpoint as isos grow is that we're now looking at noise on the pixel level and not being amplified through uh interpolation so uh antonio take us through some of the other uh other benefits of the monochrome sensor right so that's how the technical aspects of how we make a monochrome uh but what makes a monochrome really it goes beyond that and that's the benefit that you get from using one of these versus just converting color to black and white so everything that john just mentioned with the the no need for interpolation uh you know removal of the color filter array or just lack of the color filter right uh what that yields is we have an increase in sharpness and natural sharpness uh we have increased image tonality and reduced noise so because we're you know recording light at the pixel level and we're no longer magnifying noise from color interpolation we have reduced noise that looks more grain like it has more of a film grain kind of look to it and with you know each pixel well receiving more light because there's no color filter array the iso range actually climbs so we've seen this across the board from the very beginning the m9 monochrome went from i believe it was uh 160 to 3200 iso all the way or 6400 all the way to uh you know 320 to 10 000 iso then we reached 25 000 iso now we reach 100 000 iso so the isos keep climbing and they scale higher than their color counterparts but it's cleaner at those high isos as well and we're going to have some comparisons to show you firsthand how you can see hard evidence that that you know shows how how that's done um but the other aspect is the intangibles and again shout out to people in the chat i've seen people tuning in on this and saying how you know it's it's the thought process you think differently in black and white you take different pictures in black and white that's a big component of using the monochrome camera uh you can no longer go back to color right you can set any camera to black and white but typically especially if you're shooting raw that's just the jpeg settings if you import your raws they're all in color uh and that really kind of changes up the workflow a bit uh in addition to you know the all the the tangible technical changes that we've just gone over it's up here as well right um so yeah i see a lot of people tuning in and mentioning uh that element of black and white photography really helping or being a big part of the experience and it's here with the m10 monochrome q2 monochrome all the monochrome cameras to really hone you in on black and white looking for texture looking for detail and light and not being distracted by color now john i think you know ultimately this is something that uh maybe a lot of people don't get at first and i'd be i'm be honest with all of you i was one of them i used to say hey i can just go shoot tri-x i can load tri-x in my m6 i've got a monochrome um i can just convert you know my m9 image from color to black and white this is what i was saying back in that time when i was shooting those cameras uh and then i took this photo i got to borrow an m9 monochrome uh and a 15 octalux 0.95 i saw somebody in the in the chat mentioned that being the like the the 50 knock flux on a monochrome is like the pinnacle took this photo of a friend of mine and former colleague and you know it was just a like a candlelight bar scene really really dim really dark 0.95 wide open at like max iso or damn near close and i was just blown away this is what helped convince me that this monochrome formula this concept is the real deal this is not just a gimmick this isn't just you know just a story we tell there are the tangible benefits that you gain and i saw it firsthand now continuing forward there have been other situations that i've been in where using a monochrome camera became really it really affects me in a significant way this is another image that i shot another aha moment again with the m9 monochrome i think i told you folks in the chat that i was going to show you some m9 monochrome images so here are a few this was actually at my sister's wedding and i because a rangefinder is so discreet you know i was able to take this photo of my my aunts and my uncle um you know in this really candid fun moment uh that has i really cherished because you know i've heard people say that the the draw kinds of like stories from this maybe it's uh there's a dispute between them or they're like little kids on park benches um but ultimately it's it's what makes an m special right it's the way it's discreet the way you can use it and use it with with people um and then all the quality is the sharpness and detail and the tonality of the monochrome that brings these images to life in such a cool and timeless way um and then one more that i've got i want to tell you a little bit more story about this is a shot that i took again m9 monochrome era so this was when the m-type 240 had come out i i would i was still using m9 monochrome and i would want to shoot bands just as a fan from the crowd uh and i always wanted to use the m9 monochrome because to me these like small dingy punk clubs they're like the best when you photograph them in black and white and i used to do this with film with like ilford delta 3200 and you know the m9 monochrome showed me i could do this now digitally at iso 10 000 and get the kind of look and rendering that i loved about film but at a much higher iso to make my life a lot easier so this is a a band called the wilhelm screen that i remember shooting two cameras i had an m240 and an m9 monochrome and i'm getting bounced around in the crowd and it was an amazing show and you know i i set the m240 to black and white but when i imported the files i saw them all in color and it really threw off my kind of hardline stance on all these shows that i shoot i'm gonna shoot them in black and white and i was like um maybe i do a split maybe i do half black and white half color and then i started to like think about like no no i i want i want the grit i want black and white so i set all my color images to black and white in lightroom never looked at them in color again and again it's another it's a mindset thing it's it's how the workflow relates to your creativity when you are locked in and adhere to true black and white full-time all the time so these are some of the intangibles that we talk about that you experience best when you use the cameras now that's a lot for me but john you've also got some great insights and stories from from your some of your black and white work with these cameras right so uh this image was one of the first that i took with the m10 monochrome and uh what what i discovered is you're shooting at 32 000 iso in uh in miami beach early evening uh it just what struck me is there's a sharpness to it and here even handholding a rangefinder at a 15th of a second which i gotta tell you i mean i was surprised it's as sharp as it is but to me you know sharpness is one thing from uh i guess technology standpoint we're always talking about is resolution and sharpness but to me the real impact of a monochrome is how it renders the out of focus bits or how the emotional parts of the image look and render and to me that's that's what struck me there's there's sharpness there's detail but there's also this transition uh in in the tonal range that to me just kind of adds an emotional component uh to the image that i wouldn't see with a color photo uh color tends to i mean for me to dominate uh and i'd lose that emotional impact so uh being a visual storyteller again the monochrome uh i think i feel gives your images and your stories another dimension where it's it's keyed more into into the emotional so here with uh the q2 monochrome uh shooting from uh liberty uh liberty state park to me what what i like about the q2 monochrome is while it it can be automatic it can be fully manual and i had the ability with uh you know here with the 28 millimeter lens to get all of lower manhattan skyline in but yet have this really nice uh kind of out of focus bit of interest uh in the foreground foreground point of interest so uh of the binoculars you can you know what it is uh and yet it's it's out of focus and to me it's just again the the camera's ability to to really do that and to do that seamlessly it is a different experience than a rangefinder but um the way the way it works and the way it's set up it kind of mimics that rangefinder experience yet being this compact camera that's that's a lot of fun that's small and like i said compact easy to carry and take with you everywhere and zooming in to the skyline and seeing the resolution of the detail is is amazing so we've got more images uh to share and this is now where antonio is going to describe the tests that he set up uh for us to to view and compare uh image files that's right here we go so uh you can just see i'm excited for this because um we thought well we got to show some a little bit of technical presentation of you know how these cameras really compare people ask all the time can't you just convert isn't that fine enough how big of a difference is there really so we thought well we want to show you guys plenty of regular images but here let's let's try to do like a little bit of testing um so and i swear this is not just a way to some kind of weird flex that i want to show off my lego millennium falcon i i promise um i'm just letting i'm just letting my my nerd card really show here but um we tested the m10 monochrome the m10r a couple of film cameras as well so t-max 3200 tri-x 400 um and q2 monochrome and q2 now all the m lenses use the the 28 millimeter f 2 summer con a spherical uh so all the cameras are shooting at 28 millimeter they're all stopped down to f 2.8 um and we focused on iso's 400 and 3 200 for the full comparison because of the film stops right um and the color images were just converted to black and white no no further changes done uh black and white monochrome images are straight out of uh straight out of the camera um and so that's the i wanna show you what the full image looks like a 28 that red box that you see there that's what we're really going to zone in on uh for this comparison side by side so if we go to our first comparison uh we're looking at iso 400 across the board so here you see on the left we have the m10 monochrome you see we have the m10r beside it next is the m3 which is you know just there for its tri-x 400 which i had loaded into it uh q2 monochrome and then q2 you know ultimately of course they all look great at 400. you know the the tri-x has has some grain as you would expect even at 400 but it's film it's beautiful it's got a great look to it and i included it because so many people talk about how you know the monochromes kind of have a bit of a tri-x look to them uh straight out of camera and i know you can always change that even with scans and and post-processing but uh i thought it'd be cool to to include some film so for all you analog fans you know we welcome you we're not we never talk bad about film because we still love it as john said it earlier in the program there's something special about it for sure now what i'm seeing though while they all look good at iso 400 of course all digital cameras these days look good at iso 400 but if we look a little bit of the tonality um so if you look at those darker bricks which are actually in real life like a like a burgundy red color if you look from m10 monochrome to m10r and then q2 monochrome to q2 do you see how there's a slight variation in the contrast and the tonality of those darker bricks and in respect to the remaining tonality of the frame so that's one little hint in how there's a slight is a natively different rendering of the monochrome sensors and people will ask yeah can you can you mimic can you just mimic it can you just do post-processing and make the the color one just the same as the monochrome well you can get it close but it'll never be a hundred percent the same and our further tests we're going to show you in a bit and also show you why now john you often talk about emotional rendering and one thing that you often think about is that the out of focus areas as well so from this image to as we step into the next image when you're ready tell us a little bit about like what to look for in the soft details not just the sharp right well i i think we'll start to see here at 3200 um just kind of that this this change in a tonal range in this transition between the plane of focus and as it goes to the background or to the foreground and to me uh it has to do like you were saying really with uh the tone the tonal range uh and how if we kind of look at it and if we could take the green off the 30 the t-max 3200 i think what we would see is that the tonal range of the monochromes and the t-max are very similar but it's if we look even closer at say m10 monochrome and m10r particularly just behind chewie how that there's a real difference in internal range and to me the monochromes have that more similar look to film where the color versions with the color stripped uh tend to be flatter and not have the same tonal range or contrast value yeah for sure and you know it's just it's uh again we love film i'll just re-emphasize that and we'll continue to emphasize that we've got another comparison to coming up that we don't want it to send the wrong message uh you know film still has a great look and t-max 3200 especially um you know and we had to of course normalize and and unify all of these uh these images for the resolution we have some varying resolutions from 40 megapixels to 47 megapixels and then of course the film isn't really quite that resolution but here now we see another comparison head to head m10r and m10 monochrome and again this is maybe one of the things that people ask all the time which is why i want to make this comparison so this is iso 25000 for both shots uh m10 monochrome of course straight out of camera m10r raw but converted to black and white and you see here that i would say and and we always debate john and i always go back and forth we say that you know image noise is a little bit subjective some people might find a little bit of noise is intolerable and some might find a good amount of noise no big deal it depends on what you're used to what your output is are you printing are you showing it huge on screen what are you looking at are you pixel peeping i mean right now we're pixel peeping let's be honest but what this is showing us is 25 000 iso on the m10r i'd say looks quite good but the m10 monochrome is that much better huge difference very noticeable here um and this is getting to a point at these higher isos where it's also going to be really apparent at the uh even at the full image not just when we're pixel peeping so again m10r versus m10 monochrome and now we can move on we've got another one uh to show the q2s side by side uh so q2 monochrome versus q2 again kind of a similar story here right we see uh just that that's a little bit of increased sharpness and and because the the image is a good deal cleaner in black and white with the q2 monochrome we really see how this starts to change our perspective when you photograph with a lot of image noise you can get a great image and you can always reduce it in post yes uh and that will of course make it um a little softer though right you lose some sharpness but you can hide that that grain and that noise but here you see that you know when you look at that out of focus area john that emotional rendering as you put it the blur in the background behind chewie there you know it gives it more depth and when you look at the full image you actually can really tell them apart because you are kind of looking through noise when you have a lot of image noise and when you have a clean image like this at high iso you still maintain more of that dimension from sharp point to natural fall off which is yeah just quite a quite a lovely look uh especially at these these high high isos right and i think it goes back to to peter's quote you know where he said that the you know the the 28 millimeter sumlux lens was up to the challenge of being with a monochrome sensor i mean you can just see how sharp that that lens really is yeah for sure and we've got another one coming up a little bit that'll show even more um but one more comparison with ems so again we love film this does really start to show though how big of a difference we're talking when we talk these high isos and how much we were used to in the film days and still are when we shoot film today t-max 3200 has a really nice look to it there's a great desirable look to high iso black and white film but we can do we can go so much further now with these sensors and these monochrome sensors it's really astounding to see 50 000 iso put next to 3200 iso and you see how much of a difference there is in sharpness in resolution and a big difference in grain again there's no there's no wrong way of doing this it's just a matter of you know what you prefer and how these monochrome cameras can enable you to do more in black and white so it's pretty exciting and pretty pretty cool to see uh and again i salute all you film users you analog users i know there's some people in here even at the very beginning of the program some of the early people that that signed in that i was chatting with were talking about how they use film uh and there's still a great quality to it for sure um but there's also something very special about what these new modern sensors can output in black and white uh and i think john that'll take us maybe to one more comparison john would you say that this is maybe one of the burning questions we get from people definitely uh you know m10 monochrome versus q2 monochrome you know which one should i get well arguably both right but uh of course and also in all seriousness uh like i had mentioned and peter had had mentioned in his quote that the 28 sumilux lens that's on the q2 camera and the q2 monochrome is exceptional and it's purpose-built it's a lens and sensor and camera combination that's all designed to work together by design where an m10 monochrome being a rangefinder a system camera that sensor and that camera design and how uh we generate images with it uh has has to respond to many different lenses uh not just the most modern lenses but like we talked about last time in tech talks the classic lenses uh so to me it's to be very honest it's uh remarkable that these two images are so similar uh yet you do see a slight edge i would say in sharpness to the q2 monochrome uh to the m10 monochrome but again a big part of a choice between one or the other is the shooting experience that you want do you want that true rangefinder experience where you're looking through the world unfiltered you're not looking through a lens you can set focus aperture shutter speed and iso all with the camera turned off and you can you know both cameras you can shoot from the hip uh but the to me the m10 monochrome has a much different uh much different shooting experience uh i enjoy both and i think for it it depends on your level of comfort whether you want that true rangefinder experience or you you enjoy the the autofocus and quick nature of a q2 monochrome yeah exactly it does come down to use case and personal preference um i've seen people saying how much they love their cues and some how much they love their m's and there's really no wrong answer it comes down to what you like and how you use it um and you know we've like we said we've definitely gotten this question a lot m10 monochrome versus q2 monochrome now that there is another monochrome right the monochrome family is no longer just an m camera thing it's now growing it's grown to the q2 system so um you know i would say for based on these these images i was kind of a little bit surprised that they have you know some push and pull here the as you said john the m10 monochrome has a slight edge in in uh high iso performance in terms of the the cleanliness of the image it's a little bit cleaner in the grain but the q2 monochrome has a slight edge uh in sharpness but again closed system versus uh you know a system camera that can be adapted to all kinds of lenses uh which we covered extensively last month in episode two as you said um and i saw some people talking about some classic lenses i've seen some people asking all kinds of questions um actually maybe this would be a good opportunity for just a few quick questions and comments from the chat i saw people talking about uh classic filters right like in terms of color filters red yellow orange filters green filters and yes you can use all of those on uh on the monochrome cameras it's another benefit of them is you can use the traditional filters and affect your contrast uh at the camera level before you ever get it into post it's just a different way of working it doesn't that's not to say that you know that's superior to doing in post processing uh but you can get a nice look straight out of camera with like say an orange filter or yellow filter or green filter uh so that's a pretty cool aspect and i saw a couple people mentioning or one person saying they just leave a filter a color filter on their monochrome almost all the time and that's particularly cool if that if that look really speaks to you and some other questions that popped up you know with some comments about how the m10 monochrome and the 50 appo is such a joy to use i agree i joke that the perfect combo the perfect two lens kit is the q2 monochrome and the m10 monochrome with the 50 apple uh mounted on it perfect two camera two lens kit in black and white and then in color the q2 and the m10r effectively though i i see it well we saw some variations and differences in the q2 monochrome versus the m10 monochrome we have to remind remind ourselves that we are looking pretty close we're pixel beeping a bit i think effectively you kind of do have parity for most real world circumstances um so i think that's important to think about when if you're going to make a decision on one of these cameras again it just goes back to what we're saying with how do you want to use it what do you want to do with it and what in your photography is it going to help you with i personally love how the q2 monochrome it just i just feel like i've got like fine art ready to go at any moment and it's something that can fit in almost any bag i have and then of course the m10 monochrome uh you know is ready to go with just about any lens and there's almost so much versatility to this in black and white so there's a lot to be said about that keep the questions coming uh keep the comments coming really appreciate it i saw one other question did chewie help me with my uh with my test shots uh he was very unresponsive uh funny now i don't know why i kept asking him but he just kept growling at me and not really being very helpful another person asked where did i get this shirt um this shout out to our our friends at visual apparel uh this i don't think this monochrome shirt is available anymore uh it was a limited drop so uh sorry uh for the for the bit of the thirst there but uh it's not available anymore but uh check out visual apparel uh for some leica inspired shirts as well as some other cool stuff so all right john i'm talking way too much i'm caffeinated we we see it we feel it we hear it how about we talk a little more photography we show some more photographs and especially if we bring it over into lightroom we can show some monochrome images that you and i have made that we can speak over and then again answer some more of the audience's questions sounds great let's get to it all right so here we are in lightroom now john um let's start with some of your images i'd like you to speak about some here um and yeah let's let's dive right into this quite close up okay uh i see the lens so obviously q2 monochrome exactly correct yeah so uh the q2 monochrome has a macro mode and it's really one of those features that i really enjoy using whether it's q2 or q2 monochrome but what constantly blows me away with the q2 monochrome in particular is the amount of texture and sharpness that you get from the plane of focus but also with the 28 millimeter how quick that fall off is when you're in that close and just how beautiful and three-dimensional that um the image renders you know it's really the the creamy sharpness of you know of of leica and the leica look so it's uh obviously plenty of detail where you want it but then giving you this very uh again what i would consider an emotional rendering where it allows you as a viewer looking at this image to imagine what's going on beyond the plane of focus uh in a way that you know other other cameras and other lenses may not facilitate so yeah and it's just it's wild fun to shoot it really is and and it's crazy to think so i was zooming in there not only to 100 but i also did 200 percent there and you saw the level of detail uh it's it's it really kind of boggles the mind um when you can see this level of fall off at macro levels um it's it's really awesome uh it's it's crazy uh and uh i think thanks erica eric gave you a shout out so that's a hell of a shot john it really is thanks thank you it was very cool all right john all right let's let's move on to some more images okay what can you tell us about about this one okay so this uh this was in soho i'm seeing this tag a lot around new york dream until it's your reality um and to be honest that's what grabbed me first and you know shooting it and then looking at the image in lightroom and being able to see the the actual texture of uh of the plywood that's used and even zooming in seeing the texture of the the marker that was used to make the tag just really uh blew me away in terms of sharpness and detail and uh and even you know looking at the brick and the stucco uh or the limestone whatever it is they're around the brick and seeing that detail again capturing that to me is quintessential monochrome imaging where you know you're looking for that texture you want to see that detail and i was i was really amazed by just overall the the texture in this particular image and leveling yeah it's funny uh john the q2 monochrome has so much sharpness and resolution that sometimes i forget if i'm at 200 or 100 so i just i realized i was at 200 percent the whole time there folks um this is 100 it really starts to kind of boggle the mind and you start to lose yourself uh in the in the image uh which is a great kind of feeling to have when you can you know see so much within them uh and then you jump back out and you're like oh yeah that's right oh my god this is a 28 millimeter lens and i actually still have this whole image to look at but it's just it's fun to see what we can dive deeper into and now was this a similar shot to the one you showed us earlier right so the qt monitor kind of in the same yet no this is the m10 monochrome with uh the 75 noc deluxe so uh personally the 75 knock deluxe anyone who knows me that's one of my favorite lenses to shoot and if you have why not right so uh of course it's it's it's a lot of fun and that lens in particular uh i find focus point is incredibly incredibly sharp but then you have again this creamy sharpness this drop off shooting wide open of course just giving still being able to to make out you know that it's lower manhattan but uh being able to see the detail and really a lot of the texture of those crazy coin-operated binoculars um that always to me look like a face like an alien you know a friendly alien yes of course which which is kind of always fun so um again um just just that rendering looking at texture looking at um you know detail is that 200 percent that's 200 percent show hey folks shall we go to 300 i think it's like we could just when does it stop 300 there you go john okay what i find interesting is i was actually able to focus a rangefinder with the 75 not deluxe wide open uh or i'm sorry it looks like it was f4 um but still in like 20 degree weather uh a real a real challenge but uh amazing level of detail you know and this is probably you know the thing is folks with uh if you've shot m digital cameras you know that of course since we kept the mount the same for all these years uh you know the the the aperture is an estimation from the camera so sometimes if it says f4 it could still be like a 2.8 or something um you know so we have to give that a little bit of a caveat but it's just crazy to just go around here at 300 and you can even see this drop off the fall off from from the optics here in the surface and the metal to the the quarters only in the back i mean that's probably just an inch in separation right there and how much of a falloff there is um and again yeah this is 300 percent you know three to one which is just crazy that we have this much resolution um and it's it's really uncanny um all right john let's let's show some others uh already zoomed in um iconic new york shot i see yeah definitely uh so close close obviously close to midtown i might have been just a few blocks uh north of flat iron here at this point and uh again m10 monochrome with the 75 nocteluxe and um i mean to me what i was just trying to do is to kind of play the whole with the american flag and the empire state building just to kind of give a sense of um you know an iconic uh new york type type shot um but i'm not sure if we zoom in to the building how how in focus whether we can see some of the detail like in the spirals that's only 100 too let's let's dive a little deeper let's go let's let's let's go modest let's go 200 um ah looks like still a good amount of detail there john um i think i think you got your focus yeah yeah i mean that's yeah i mean it's it's a little bit maybe probably a little over the process but uh but it's still kind of sharpness traditionally that's that's my style it was an ansel adams thing underexposed and over developed that way over process no no but i mean well you've got an another one that you know we we're showing some that have like just strong like technical sharpness um you know but now tell me about this one a little bit of a different vibe here right so um like i had mentioned earlier to me okay sharpness is great but sometimes there's a story that maybe we it needs to be a little bit more emotional that where you want the viewer of the image to to kind of put their own spin on it to imagine so you're not putting every detail right in front of them you're allowing them to kind of do their own interpretation of of the image so this um this image uh the gate uh well it may look sharp it's it's not sharp uh but i was what interests me was this artwork that was locked behind this uh escape and and to me it um i kind of wanted it to be maybe just slightly out of focus uh it's enough to know that it is a locked gate but uh and then you kind of see or imagine the artwork behind it but to me it just has a great feel and a lot of times when i'm shooting the monochrome that's what i'm trying to achieve is either when i see the image or if someone interested in my photography cz image i want to try to elicit a feeling uh about what i'm seeing so um you know many times i get you know way too wrapped up in you know hyper focus so sometimes just as an exercise it's nice to uh to try and create images that have more of an emotional appeal and that's what i was attempting to do there yeah for sure and and we're uh getting some some questions from from the chat on this john uh you know some asked uh did you use the evf for any of these shots that we saw with the 75 knock deluxe no all rangefinder all the time oh range flander yeah uh yeah and it's um i mean look it's it's um if you shoot enough with it you'll get good enough with it is i i've heard that a number of times um it does take it does take practice uh particularly if you're shooting that lens wide open um but to be very honest if i'm shooting an m camera i want it to be that range the rangefinder experience if i wanted to do something like something more in a commercial setting where i really wanted to consistently uh mail everything i would put the lens on an sl2 sl2s and and shoot it that way but you know what john i think another example i know is one of your shots but i'm going to jump in here because i really admire this shot and i admire this kind of rendering where you know these kinds of images where you can dive in and see things that you couldn't before um you know out here we just we see the arch of washington square park um but then when you zoom in you very apparently and obviously notice the netting all around uh the arch and it's just it's sharpness for days and it's so cool to you know i love being able to photograph uh you know works of art and architecture and and go with these cameras go closer and deeper than you ever could unless you just sat under there with a pair of binoculars maybe um you know it really is uncanny what you can see um you know what what more there is to the world when you can magnify it uh through a leica lens it's really quite quite special now i saw some other comments in the chat um some people were asking for anything with people i know you know a lot of these images are taken more recently so uh you know obviously it's a little harder sometimes to take pictures of people these days but uh here we go i've got if it's cool i'll jump into one of my photos um so this is something that i shot with the uh q2 monochrome uh back when it came out and you know a little bit of socially distance uh meal uh this was my niece that i photographed at iso 100 000. that's not a typo that exif data is correct this is 100 000 iso now to be fair it might be coming through a little darker possibly uh you know through the stream um but this is this is one of the images that really blew me away and this is one i know people use those terms like game changer all the time it becomes a bit cliche but you know this is the kind of thing where if i didn't have a camera like the q2 monochrome i wouldn't have been able to get this shot i got this silly photo of my niece it's of course important to me because it's family but if we zoom into it now that's i believe 100 percent you know it's i didn't focus on her face perfectly that's my my mistake uh but ultimately you know what we see here is like the jacket how there's still sharpness and detail you know in that jacket where it's really focused and even if we go in this is 200 percent um if you look at the zipper look at the the the texture of of the strap here 101 125 of a second a hundred thousand iso wide open at f 1.7 folks think about how dark that is um you know and i was in i remember when i shot this just a week or two prior i was in the basically the same situation my family out you know eating in the driveway and and sharing some time while we could outdoors um and i didn't take any photos i i just skipped past it i left the camera in the bag once uh once it got this dark but the q2 monochrome allowed me to continue shooting to take this kind of picture and capture this so this is the kind of things that we talk about that you know enable you to do special things with the monochrome cameras because it allows you to see in the dark as cliche as that as that can be sometimes um and yeah it got me this kind of cool photo um you know that that i i cherish because uh it's family but it was it's just it's a cool story there's something fun to it yeah i really love that and i and i hate it when all the cheese comes off the pizza as well that's a drag yeah and i just got i just saw a question can you go into the develop module and look at processing um actually that's a great point so i appreciate that that feedback and if you guys got more feedback or questions throw them in the chat um you can see here in the develop module i didn't do anything to this photo so i just i i think i tinkered with some cropping you see the cropping i where i did a post instagram where i showed 100 crop so that's what that crop rectangle uh history is but ultimately this is straight out of camera there's no noise reduction done to this um so that's a key component of this this is what you get out of a hundred thousand iso of the q2 monochrome straight out of camera all right so we're quickly running out of time so let's let's jump through some a few more images and we'll go a little faster these two are kind of a pair also a hundred thousand iso uh and fifty thousand iso on the q2 monochrome uh so this is around halloween time took some some picture these cool fun fun things of the uh of the uh these halloween decorations casting a shadow uh and you know here we see how much detail and texture we can get even at a hundred thousand iso sure it's greeny it's got green but it's a hundred thousand iso it's unreal um what you can what you can see and what you can can capture with this um i saw another comment uh can you push the exposure a bit all right so i'm gonna just for you guys i'm gonna push it a little bit now of course we're gonna see some grain some more grain coming in right if you push it far you gotta watch for banding um but here you see that's a one-stop push to me that still looks serviceable i could probably push a little further let's let auto do it take it go crazy with it no too much but you can see that you have a little bit of leeway still but this is where we always say you want to make sure you if you can try and nail your exposure when you're at these extreme isos because you don't have the latitude like you do with the q2 monochrome m10 monochrome over at the low isos all right a little further before we wrap up again these are just some images that speak to black and white and the quality of these cameras as well so this was long exposure on the m10 monochrome um these are just my back porch steps um but there's a quality to capturing light like this in black and white that is special it's you know it's part of why i think we're motivated and driven by black and white photography whether it's analog or digital and if we zoom in right it's sharpness for days um it's crazy and this also yeah and this also is nothing has been done to this um you know it's just as is straight out of the camera um so it's really sharp it looks great it's again a long exposure um where you might have to you know we get the very long exposures uh you might have to be careful like hot pixels and things like that of course uh 24 seconds is pretty modest so it wasn't too bad um but i love the tonality from the m10 monochrome and again i'll jump back to you see i just imported it and that's it there's nothing else done to it if we go to one more another long exposure also speaks to the quality of black and white there's mystery to it right um here i believe there's about a 16 second exposure um and really interesting and really cool what you can do the way the lines draw your eye to the light source um yeah it's just it's part of what's fun about taking pictures in black and white and then of course with the monochrome the tonality that you get uh the sharpness that you get is just pretty unreal um here this one is at uh f4 so stop down a little bit on a 35 millimeter sumicron aspherical lens uh but again long exposure base iso of 160 16 seconds uh yeah really quite nice uh and again let's take a look at the develop module this is straight out of camera the m10 monochrome really often gets me i think 90 to 95 of the way there for me in most shots and most lighting i don't find i need to do much with them at all all right a couple more and then we're going to have to wrap it up so if you have any last minute questions get them in we'll try to answer them as we're going through this this one i like to show because this image is completely out of focus john as you said you took an image that you kind of purposefully threw out of focus uh because you there's some some kind of quality to that and here i was shooting with you can see from our last episode the noc deluxe reissue the one that just came out the 50 f 1.2 uh really cool and you can see with that classic rendering it's got a bit of that swirly bokeh just ever so slightly if i zoom in actually you can see there actually is a little bit in focus and it's snow flurries that were just starting to come down uh really crazy to see that that's ever so slightly in focus uh it kind of was what i was targeting thank you and that's a 200 here's 100 um so it's pretty pretty awesome to see that kind of razor thin depth of field and that tonality and quality uh to this image which is mostly out of focus but that's okay that's part part of the charm of this uh is you know that ethereal look to black and white especially with a classic lens all right and then i promise this is the last one one more because i love it so much the knock-knock issue yeah f 1.2 i'm a sucker for this lens and i was so sad to have to turn it over and give it back um so here's another m10 monochrome shot with the noctilux 1.2 wide open uh really has that as we say emotional rendering and it just lends itself to black and white so much it's not the sharpest thing in the world no but you know again that's what a classic lens gets you it's all about the look and when you bring it up to this tree um you know in the way that that separation that fall off stands out it's pretty fun pretty unique and to me it's quite special let's see all right i see a quick question can q2 monochrome support long exposure it doesn't have the long exposure chops that the m10 monochrome does uh but i believe the q2 monochrome can do a 60 second exposure um so you have some versatility there for sure um any other further questions uh before we wrap this up i think we've showed you a good amount of little lightroom examples i hope that's helpful um and yeah i would hope but feel free of course to reach out uh if you've got some further questions um so uh let's see real quick uh do you both typically john and feel free to chime in do you believe you stop do you typically shoot a stop down or adjust at all with the m10 monochrome what's your rhyme or reason john do you try to nail exposure on any iso or do you go more under and push and post how do you like to deal with the m10 monochrome well to be honest i tend to be maybe a half half stop under uh a lot of times i mean it it does depend on you know this the subject matter uh you know with with snow which is apparently all i've been photographing for the last several weeks looking at my lightroom images uh you know normally i would be plus two but with uh m10 monochrome i'm usually like plus one and a half and i find it gets me pretty much right where i want to be yeah you know it's it's it's funny um i i find that uh you know we're in the winter doldrum months right it's it can be tough to uh you know keep your motivation and and i find actually black and white photography helps motivate me when the weather is so dreary because i love the way that you render in black and white with those overcast snowy days or the snow itself um there's a really nice quality to it it helps kind of motivate me to take more pictures um and so i find that this is the time for monochrome i joke that you know hey let's let's take those black and white images we you know we it's it's tough to not be depressed a little bit these days but let's let's get some black and white let's write some bad poetry whatever it takes you know to keep yourself motivated uh and and keep the creative juices flowing uh that also can sometimes cheer me up too all right so the final final questions uh someone did ask that you know will they be able to watch this uh later yes uh you will be able to watch this in its entirety on our youtube channel uh and yeah we definitely want you to share it with friends um the let's see we had another question that i really liked um center metering spot metering or full evaluative metering on the m10 monochrome so on the m10 cameras uh when you're using the rangefinder it's just spot metering when using live view that's when you have those options for the the three different metering modes so when i'm on live view i'll keep it on you know multi multi-point evaluative metering and take the benefit of that otherwise of course it's just spot metering through the rangefinder and yes another more comments again john a minute for what you're saying where usually with the m10 monochrome and q2 monochrome i typically will shoot a little bit underexposed to see more people asking questions about that uh so that's pretty cool all right uh this is a lot of information i know we've gotten a little long uh so we really appreciate everyone sticking with us we just had so much that we wanted to show you and so much to share i think john we just love the monochrome right that's what it comes down to we really love these and we're motivated yeah it's definitely and it's um you know part of it is is that creative tool uh that can can break the the doldrums right they they can get you to think in a different way and uh you know for some people it might be shooting with a rangefinder or shooting with any you know q2 monochrome or an m10 monochrome uh it's just that change of pace that allows you uh another paintbrush uh to create some great images and create your own narrative so um i really and i know you do as well i really enjoy shooting uh shooting the monochrome uh particularly for myself it's images that to me uh i feel are a timeless and allow me to to tap more into an emotional uh value of those those images that get me to think beyond some simple color for sure and you know uh john i don't think i could have said it much better myself um there's something to these cameras i think we've gone a lot over what's so special about them and the technical qualities the intangibles the emotional qualities uh there's a lot to love if you love black and white um and before we wrap folks i want to remind you uh yes we will post this on the like camera usa uh youtube page be sure to like and subscribe when you see it posted and if you subscribe to like camera usa on youtube uh and hit the bell you'll of course be notified whenever we're uploading the our videos including these full replay videos of this content uh and maybe you know on the replay john maybe for this one maybe a drinking game no we won't encourage that really every time we say monochrome uh i think don't do that folks that would be a recipe for disaster um but uh but again this has been fun uh thank you everyone in the chat for all these uh these great feedback great questions uh you know there's something to black and white right folks in in the age of smartphones um and and pictures every the second there's millions or billions of photos being taken but there's something to slowing down and seeing the world in black and white um it's an excellent quality and an excellent skill to have and an excellent thing to admire so without further ado john thank you so much for joining me on this black and white journey my my pleasure antonio anytime and uh i want to thank everybody for for tuning in and sticking with us and great great comments in the in the chat we really appreciate your participation and for me that's what makes these programs great is that interaction so keep those questions coming for sure uh thanks again everyone and until next time see you again on leica tech talk take care everyone take care everybody [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Leica Camera USA

Views: 12,786

Rating: 4.8657718 out of 5

Keywords: Leica Tech Talk, #LeicaTechTalk, #LeicaTechTalks, Antonio Di Benedetto, John Kriedler, Leica Camera USA

Id: FVWKacOLZy8

Length: 76min 32sec (4592 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021