Penberth

Leica M10-Monochrom with 50mm Summilux  Asph 1/90th at f2.8 ISO 640

Introduction

I have been lucky enough to test all 3 of Leica’s Monochrom cameras. The 18mp M9 Monochrom was launched in Berlin amongst much excitement in November 2012. The 24mp M246 Monochrom was announced two and a half years later on April 30th 2015. We have had to wait nearly 5 years for the latest version: the M10-Monochrom being announced on January 17th 2020.

I think that for many of us the M10 was the ultimate digital expression of the Leica Rangefinder camera. They had managed to reduce its size to that of an M7, to speed it up, quieten the shutter and streamline the operation. Then came the M10-P with an even quieter shutter.

Pednvounder and Logan's Rock

Leica M10-Monochrom with 35mm Summilux FLE 1/250th at f1.4 ISO 160

Chapel Carn Brae

Leica M10-Monochrom with 28mm Summaron-M 1/500th at f9.5 ISO 160

The M10-Monochrom retains the quieter shutter of the M10-P, but adds a completely new 41mp monochrome sensor (7864 x 5200 pixels). Of course this brings up a number of immediate questions:

Are the M lenses good enough to support such resolution?

Does anyone really need this much black and white resolution?

Is the M10 electronics sufficient to deal with such big files?

Is it possible to hold the camera steady enough with no Stabilisation?

Is it possible to focus accurately enough with the rangefinder

I’ll be looking at these questions in the course of this article.

As usual I should emphasise that my job with Leica is as a camera tester, and my job is to report problems to Leica (which I certainly do!). On the other hand I would never miss out anything which seemed to me to be critical and I don’t get paid for writing these articles (either directly or indirectly). I’m not asked what to write, and although I do show them to Leica first for fact checking that is all that they do.

Roo and Eros Wang (the plane)

Leica M10-Monochrom with 50mm Summilux  Asph 1/125th at f2 ISO 400

In the past (and always by chance) it has turned out that testing cameras has coincided with one of our trips abroad. This time it hasn’t been the case, what’s more I’ve had a pretty busy time at work, so, apart from a brief working trip to Cornwall (where it rained every day), the images accompanying this article have mostly been shot within walking distance of home (or in a local pub!).

The Handsome M10 Monochrom

Leica SL2 with 75mm APO Summicron SL f5.6 1/160th ISO100

The Body

The M10-Monochrom body is a beautiful thing, and I think this might just be the loveliest of all the variants (perhaps of all the digital M cameras). The body is a stealthy black chrome, with no red dot (just the big screw of the M10-P). It has no logo on the top plate, just the word MONOCHROM engraved in small letters at the front (mine also has P03/15 engraved to indicate it’s prototype status). On the back it says LEICA CAMERA WETZLAR - MADE IN GERMANY, but like the engraving on the top plate this is not picked out In colour.

The shutter speed dial has the shutter speeds picked out in white (as usual), but the A setting is grey rather than red, and this goes for the M setting on the ISO dial and the red dot on the on/off. The rear plate is the same as a normal M10, with LV, PLAY and MENU buttons on the left and a 4 way rocker switch on the right with a central button. The thumb wheel and it’s bump are also the same as the M10.

The whole effect is very discreet and really smart.

The Handsome M10 Monochrom

Leica SL2 with 75mm APO Summicron SL f8 1/160th ISO500

Operation, Speed, and Menus

If you put a much larger sensor into a camera with the same processor you are inevitably going to have an impact on the speed of processing, and it’s certainly the case with the M10-Monochrom. Shot to shot times, writing to disk and review times are all slower. So perhaps it isn’t  the camera for sport! On the other hand, as a single shot user, I never found myself waiting for the camera (and I do often shoot groups of images together).

I mostly use Sandisk Extreme Pro 64Gb 95ms SD cards, and with the camera on continuous-fast it takes 10 DNG files at high speed before pausing, and another 10 before really slowing down. I can’t imagine anyone using continuous on a camera like this, but it does show that for measured shooting the slightly slower processing times are unlikely ever to cause an issue. Certainly I’ve never been inconvenienced by it.

Contemplating the Brisons

Leica M10-Monochrom with 50mm Summilux  Asph 1/2000th at f1.4 ISO 160

If you’re a fast shooter, then you should be aware of the issue, but for most normal photographers it won’t ever be relevant (or noticed). The important point is that as far as I’m aware there is no shutter lag involved, whether you use the EVF or not.

I’m not going into the menu system in any detail. As expected, it is pretty much identical with the M10, but with colour and white balance options removed.

Having spent much of the last year using Panasonic and Fujifilm cameras it’s a real joy getting back to Leica’s simple but functional menu system. I think it’s sometimes overlooked how much purpose and determination Leica put into keeping it like this.

Bartinney Bog

Leica M10-Monochrom with 35mm Summilux  FLE 1/90th at f2.8 ISO 320

Focusing and Image Stabilisation (or not)

The Leica M Rangefinder (or, in German, Messsucher, hence the “M”)  was first released in 1953, and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to wonder whether it is still fit for purpose for a 41mp sensor 67 years later in 2020.

I’m not fortunate enough to own a 50 or 75 Noctilux, but I’ve found rangefinder focusing with my 50 Summilux Asph and 75 APO Summicron to be easy and reliable, even wide open (I mostly shoot wide open). I have a practice game I play, which involves focusing with the rangefinder, and then checking whether it’s correct in the EVF, it always reassures me what a wonderful tool a rangefinder still is.

Which brings me back to the EVF. I know there have been a lot of complaints that it’s rather old school, and I long since stopped using it with the M10 (I’m pretty good at focusing with a rangefinder, and I like to see around the subject).

Sparkling Scarlett

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/90th at f2 ISO 2500

I found that I liked using the EVF with the M10-Monochrom; partly because it was nice to see the image in black and white, but also for focusing: I think it works best with focus peaking turned off, and with auto zoom turned off (with zooming on the front button). For most images I found there was a shimmer of excitement over the area in focus, with no need to zoom in for critical focus. I particularly enjoyed using it with the 60mm Macro Elmarit R.

I imagine that for those lucky enough to have a Noctilux or the 90 Summilux the EVF will be a real benefit, but I’ll only use it when I want to see the end result before I take the picture. Surely the point of a Leica M camera is the rangefinder (at least that’s how I see it).

Just learn to talk couldn't you?

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/250th at f2.4 ISO 160

With respect to image stabilisation, of course, it would be nice to have it, but the very quiet shutter and the solid body seems to have made camera shake a relatively minor problem, and the fantastic high ISO together with the extra stop you get without the colour filter array means that you can use the ISO settings to preserve a high enough shutter speed.

In this context I found the 1/f 1/(2f) and 1/(4f) minimum shutter speed in the Auto ISO settings particularly useful.

The Drummer and the joint

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/90th at f4 ISO 64.000

Image Quality, Resolution and ISO

I’m afraid that I was dead set against Leica increasing the resolution from 24mp which seemed to me to be the perfect compromise between quality and convenience, resolution and file size, perfectly capable of a good sized print and fast processing.

But I’ve changed my mind; the extra price to pay in terms of processing power and storage space is really small in the face of the extra advantages in terms of image quality and crop-ability.

With the SL2 and now the M10M I’ve found myself shooting just with a 50 or a 35, when previously I would have used a zoom, or a 35 and a 75 (and the lens changes that implies).

The Fruit Bowl

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/60th at f4 ISO 500

The Monochrome sensor in the M10-Monochrom foregoes the Bayer filter required in colour cameras. With a Bayer filter groups of 4 pixels (with Red, Green, Green, Blue filters) are processed in a batch and then separated into 4 pixels in the demosaicing process. This means that theoretically the Monochrom has 4 times the absolute resolution of a colour sensor.

In actual fact the modern demosaicing routines are very good, and so the resolution bonus with a Monochrome sensor is perhaps more like 2 times. But that still left me wondering whether M lenses are up to a comparative resolution of 80mp.

I thought I’d test this with my idea of the Leica M Triumvirate:

Leica 28mm Summilux Asph

Leica 35mm Summilux Asph

Leica 50mm Summilux Asph

Craven "A" will not affect your throat

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/60th at f2 ISO 2500

I shot my tame copper beech hedge at a nasty 10 metres at f1.4, f2, f4, f5.6 and f8 with each lens. Each of them lost a little at f1.4 and f2 in the very extreme corners (the 35 FLE was probably the best). Stop down a little and the corners are perfect, but even wide open all but the very corner of the frame is beautifully sharp.

Unfortunately I don’t own a Leica M246 Monochrom, but I do have my M9 Monochrom with the CCD sensor, and I thought it might be interesting to do some comparisons between the original Monochrom (from 2012) and this new version.

I took pictures of our kitchen dresser in low artificial light with each camera on a tripod with ISO between 160 and 10,000 (for the M9M) and up to 100,000 (the maximum ISO on the M10M) I did 100 percent comparisons at natural resolution, and with the M10M scaled down to match the resolution of the M9M. I then made A4 prints at critical ISO values.

The Lost Boot

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/500th at f2 ISO160

What is immediately clear is that both cameras are actually quite usable right through the ISO range, but there has been a huge boost in image quality over the last 8 years, and the difference between the cameras in terms of noise amounted to about 2 - 3 stops. So that the M9M at 10,000 ISO was marginally better than the M10M at 100,000 ISO but not as good as the M10M at 64,000 ISO.

Dynamic range is quite a different thing, you still have to be a little careful not to overexpose the highlights, but the amount of detail which is hidden away in the shadows in the new camera is nothing less than breathtaking.

Conclusion

The easy part is to say that this camera is a joy to shoot with, a joy to handle, and produces wonderful images quite suitable to make very very big prints. The only possible functional criticism which I can find is that it’s a little slow processing images and writing them to disk (SD Card).

Konkik Pony foal on Redgrave and Lopham Fen

Leica M10-Monochrom with 60mm Macro Elmarit R 1/250th f8 ISO 160

But why a monochrome camera? Sure, it was exciting and interesting in 2012 when Leica brought out the first Monochrom, and arguably the resolution benefits were bigger then, when the M9 sensor was just 18Mp.

These days converting from colour to black and white in post processing is much easier, it allows you to change the conversion on different colour channels  and the higher resolution of modern sensors surely makes the increase of resolution of the monochrome sensor largely academic.

But shooting with a black and white camera imposes a discipline on the photographer which can be really valuable: It really makes you think about the structure of the image and the composition whereas colour encourages a ‘think about it later’ ethos.

The First Snowdrop

Leica M10-Monochrom with 75 mm APO Summicron  Asph 1/500th at f2 ISO160

And then there is Leica. Whilst other manufacturer’s chase each others technological tails and moan about falling camera sales, Leica have the courage to produce excitingly different cameras, free of the function fetish of their competitors and still brave enough to produce something which really is exciting.  I’m absolutely convinced by this camera and it’s been a real pleasure to have it and shoot with it for the last 4 months.

The Handsome M10 Monochrom

Leica SL2 with 75mm APO Summicron SL f5.6 1/160th ISO200

Acknowledgements and Links

Thank you to Jesko von Oeynhausen for being helpful and communicative about the camera.

Thanks also to Mike Evans at Macfilos for suggestions and being such a great guy.

Thank you to Silas Slack for reading the article and making valuable contributions, and to Adam Jennison and Saul Slack for looking at the pictures and making sensible suggestions.

Thank you also to Sean Reid at reidreviews.com for an interesting dialog and for finding the bug with 25,000 and 32,000 ISO (If you bought one of the first cameras you should install the firmware update!).

Sean is publishing several articles about the M10 Monochrom: a Field review Of M10M and full side by side studio comparison tests of MM (Typ 246) and M10M covering the full ISO range for each. Together with  Vignetting comparisons tests of both cameras with four rangefinder lenses.

grEGORy Simpson at Ultrasomething.com has published a great review of the M10M with lots of excellent urban photographs. Thanks also to egor for correcting my memory!

Very Special thanks as always to my wonderful Emma for putting up with so much whilst I take the pictures and write these articles.

The Lone Tree

Leica M10-Monochrom with 7 35mm Summilux FLE f4 1/4000th ISO160

Dirty Nails

Leica M10-Monochrom with 50mm Summilux  Asph 1/90h at f1.4 ISO 320

Lots More Images Here