M-Monochrom worth it? — A review and appreciation-

[airfrogusmc]

Originally Posted by malland

You can see it by clicking on the link under my signature, which will download the PDF file of the book, of which I've printed four dummy copies by digital offset. The page size is 10.4 x 6.9 inches.

—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria (download link for book project)

Many years ago I spent some time in the far east, though not in Thailand and you took me back. Its more than the sights, which any pretty travel book could capture but even more important you nailed the feel The sights, smells, sounds came rushing back. I found the flow to be good and the words very appropriate. Perfect title BTW. Thats my 2 cents now where can we get a copy?

[malland]

Thanks for the kind words. Of course you can get a copy when you find me a publisher. It's extremely difficult to get a book published these days. As I mentioned, I had four copies printed by digital offset, which is good quality but to cost US$100 per copy which is too expensive for distribution. That would have to be done by regular offset, which is much cheaper per copy but requires a minimum run of more than 1,000 — I don't know the actual number. I looked into doing it on Blurb, but could reconcile the design that I wanted with the choice of Blurb page sizes.

The printed book looks better and has a better feel to it. It is printed with full bleed pages, which I feel works well for the style of the book. Actually, I just learned a lot in laying it out and having isd printed. Not only the importance of the composition of the two page spread, the sequencing and pacing. but also selecting paper by its color, feel and weight: for example, I it turns out the that the paper is heavier after it's been inked, which is something that I would never have thought of without discussing this point with the printer. Also, picked up a lot of printing vocabulary in Thai, which, as in English, is specialized, with words like spine and gutter.

—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria (download link for book project)

[malland]

It seems to me that the M-Monochrom renders the highlights of the brightest light so beautifully that I'm approaching my usual high-contrast processing less simplistically. In he following photo, my initial thought processing was to lift the shadows by increasing the overall Exposure, which would have pushed up both the values of the foreground and the highlight, and to increase the midtone contrast by increasing the Clarity slider. However, then I reprocessed the picture from scratch, as it is below, by keeping it much closer to what came out of the camera: no general exposure increase, but only some increase in Clarity to show the grittyness of the scene. The result preserves much more effectively what the scene felt like: it was a very bright, hot day and this processing kept the feel of the highlights much more as well as the contrast with how dark everything looked in the shade.




M-Monochrom | Summicron-28 | ISO 2500

Bangkok





Another thing is that the M-Monochrom allows me to crop more aggressively than I've been able to do with other cameras. The following pictures is a 38% crop, with a landscape orientation cropped from a portrait orientation shot.



M-Monochrom | Summicron-28 | ISO 2500

Bangkok



—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria (download link for book project)

[Jim Evidon]

Xpanded,

"...Ashamed to be Danish since 29 November 2012...."

Why? What happened then?

Never mind I just looked it up. It may have been a mistake, but as a tourist in Denmark and a reader of Danish history especially during the dark WWII years I think you have a wonderful country that has more than demonstrated its sense of fair play, generosity and humanity.

[SakamakuAme]

Technically, Monochrom seems to have the same advantage as Sigma 3 layer sensor, the sharpness and resolution. I don't see any other advantages here.

Unless for someone who does the BW landscape work, I'm not sure if this subtle difference in resolution is meaningful or not. Also I personally think BW digital is still ugly, due to the limited dynamic range and the limited bit depth. I would choose M6 over Monochrom any day for IQ, although the resolution of 35mm film probablly would be lower.

[malland]

Originally Posted by SakamakuAme

Technically, Monochrom seems to have the same advantage as Sigma 3 layer sensor, the sharpness and resolution. I don't see any other advantages here.

Unless for someone who does the BW landscape work, I'm not sure if this subtle difference in resolution is meaningful or not. Also I personally think BW digital is still ugly, due to the limited dynamic range and the limited bit depth. I would choose M6 over Monochrom any day for IQ, although the resolution of 35mm film probablly would be lower.

It's not a subtle difference; it's not all about resolution; it's about gradation and the enormous dynamic range, which you cannot know without having tried the camera. I'll just repeat what I wrote in the original post:

People have asked, "is it as good as film"? My take on this is that it is "better" than film in the same way that one can say that the Summilux-50 ASPH is a "better" lens than the last pre-ASPH version in various measurable ways. But I generally like the rendering of the pre-ASPH lens much better than that of the newer ASPH lens, the same way that many people like the look of film better than digital files. But these are very general sentiments, and I would add the proviso that the M-Monochrom files are so malleable and robust that one can process them to achieve the look that one wants — and therein lies the main value if this camera for me.

—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria (download link for book project)

[Haigh]

Very interesting. Thanks for the review and the images.

[airfrogusmc]

I'm sorry and I don't mean to hi jack this and this is no killer image. Just a photo I took of my wifes aunt at a family get together but it really shows how good the high ISO performance is on the MM.

3200 ISO
cropped

I blew out the highlights and this shows how if you do they're gone. I only had the camera for a few days in all of these so I was still trying to get a grip on it. Theres no shoulder but lots of room in toe.

another at 3200


And 6400
This show on the awning how if you blow the highlights they're gone.

cropped

[malland]

Here's a shot at ISO 10,000. Actually, it could have been exposed at an ISO as low as 1,000 because the shutter speed is 1/500 sec. However, I had the camera set at ISO 10,000, shooting in a dark part of this temple, and was afraid that the constellation of people would change while I was changing the ISO.




M-Monochrom | Summicron-28 | ISO 10,000

Colombo



—Mitch/Bangkok
Bangkok Hysteria (download link for book project)

[malland]

The photograph in the posting immediately above is from a series called Lanka Footseps, which is a set of 55 M-Monochrom shots taken in Sri Lanka, which you can see by clicking here.

—Mitch/Chiang Mai
Bangkok Hysteria (download link for book project)

[malland]

Originally Posted by nightfly

On a side note, I really enjoyed the thread you started awhile back about looking for expressive color with some of these digital cameras, the GRD and GXR M, at the time. Wondering if you kept perusing that or went back to shooting mostly black and white.

In the part of the world you work in, I found the expressive color added a very interesting element to your work.

nightfly, in post #71 I wrote that I would post a link to my second book project, which contains both color and B&W pictures. It's under my signature below.

—Mitch/Potomac, MD
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems [download link for book project]