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The camera, the photographer and the monochrome image
When you meet Leica photographers, it's very likely, I would say with 70% probability, that you meet a person who have a color camera or a camera is able to take colors, but the person take black and white photos.
There is the photographer who likes to take monochrome pictures, and now there are cameras that does only black and white (Leica M Monochrom). But mainly there is the the monochrome picture itself, which fundamentally can be done with any type of camera from a smartphone to a film camera to a 150MP monochrome back of a $50,000 Phase One camera.
I don't know why it's like that, but it's something I've seen over the years in my workshops and everywhere else that people that like Leica, also tend to like black and white photography. So, in that sense it's no wonder that Leica came out with in 2011, they came out with a monochrome camera, Leica M9M or Leica M monochrome and this is an 18 megapixel CCD sensor that is black and white and it's very unique. If I just backtrack the story a little bit, then Leica of course is known for the cameras that kind of set on, well they're basically you could say they are the grandfather of 35 mm photography, what we know as full frame today, because Oskar Barnack invented the Leica M or Leica camera in 1925, and that's when it was introduced. Then it went on as film camera in different models. And of course, as the world went digital, people also wondered can we get a digital Leica. And it wasn't that entirely easy, but Leica did came out with the Leica M camera, they actually tested on an M7 to put in a crop sensor from the DMR back they had made for the R system, and they said, "Oh, that works. "We can actually put in a digital sensor" They only could put in a crop sensor, so it means that if you shoot with a 28 millimeter it becomes a 35 millimeter and so on, but they did that, but then to everybody's surprise, in 2009, Leica introduced the Leica M9 and that was the first full frame, digital Leica camera. And that was a CCD sensor, it was 18 megapixels. And what happened in 2009, because I've got one of the first ones and I did a lot of work, since I met a lot of the people who had gotten Leica M9. What happened was that it was a lot of people that was really happy, they got into photography again. They might not have photographed for a long time because they had a film camera somewhere stuffed away in the closet like an M6 or something that they didn't use and now they've got an M9 digital camera and you could get like instant photographs and that was very exciting. And it felt, and still feels, like a real Leica. It's a brass build body, the lenses are amazing and you can even put on the lenses back from not from 1925 because the cameras have fixed lenses back then. But a little bit later, Leica started doing screw mount lenses, you could change the lenses and the M camera and all those old lenses, you can put on the Leica M9 or any Leica digital actually. So, what happened then was, that of course because so many people that photograph Leica apparently like black and white, it's almost in the DNA of the camera it would have to be black and white. What happened was that different people asked Leica and Andreas Kaufmann that owned Leica can you please do a black and white camera? They also asked, that's a side note they also asked can you have a camera without the screens so it's kind of like, it's like a film camera, but it has a sensor, but everything else looks like film and it only shoots black and white. That went on for a while Engel grew up in Denmark, the Wolf Oregon was one of the guys who were asked and really wished for this one and I know that there's like a handful of other people I met who said "I was the one who gave the idea to Leica" Doesn't matter, it's almost in tradition in the DNA for Leica that it shouldn't have a screen and it should be black and white. So what happened was that in 2011 Leica invented or whatever you wanna say, they came up with the Leica M monochrome and this is basically M9 camera. All of the camera looks a little bit different because it's matte black and the letterhead is very muted and it doesn't have a logo and so on. But the main attraction in this camera is that, it's the 18 megapixel CCD sensor and the Bayer filter that you use for color photography was taken away and now you had 18 megapixel, pure black and white CCD sensor. And, of course it was experiment, but it was also very interesting because, what happens if you try and make a black and white sensor because nobody had really wanted to do that before and what happened in the whole mix of developing this camera, was that Leica took off, the Bayer filter and they also did some firmware adjustments of course and what you got was, that you got really, I won't say high definition in pictures but I would say detailed pictures, because you kind of say, when you have a Bayer filter, you're kind of dividing all the information into different colors and then assemble again to something that looks like a color photo. So when you remove that you're just dealing with light, that's just black and white and all the great tones in between, so you get higher resolution, higher definition of details. And that's something you will see when you photograph with this camera. And especially with the 50mm APO lens that came out at the same time, this is like the best 50 millimeter in the world super high definition, very high resolution, it meas it can resolve a lot of lines per inches, almost like if you can remember that you had a laser printer some years ago, that it was a little bit rough in it. And today almost any laser printer you can buy for $50 in Walmart or anywhere have turned 1200 DPI or something, so that's the lines per inch, that's the resolution. And that's what came, bought a lens and a sensor that I could actually resolve more details and you zoom in on the picture, and you could actually see a lot more details. For example, leaves on a tree, you could see more of the leaves, because it wasn't blurred by the Bayer filter, or the division into different colors. They were very straight, it was just the light, meaning black and white. Like that's all that was defined and you had the edges and the shapes and the details of everything. So that was really, very cool and what happened back then in 2011, when this camera came out in the years afterwards that some people they got rid of the M9 and then they got one of these cameras, or they got this one also, and then they tried to figure out which selection should I stand on, which camera is great? And I'll put it a little detail because that's important for what I'm going to tell later. Is that when the M9 came out, one of the things I did was I said, you can shoot JPEG and the DNG in the Leica M9 the same time. And if you set the JPEG file to black and white, then when you import the pictures into Lightroom or Capture One or whatever then you have a black and white JPEG and you have a DNG file in raw file in color. So you have them side by side, it takes, it's the same pictures taken at the same time. It's not taking one, two pictures, it's like one picture divided into or copied say into two files, a color raw and a black and white JPEG. And the great thing about this was that the way the black and white photos looks straight out, they like M9 looked really amazing. So you could say that's very unique, and that's also what the Monochrome camera had to compete with that they actually had, you could say a big sister that actually did really good JPEG color photos. But one of the things that was also unique with having a black and white camera was that now it's shot raw black and white. And raw, very quickly explained, a raw file is basically just all the data that the sensor sees. So that means then later in the computer, you can adjust it. If it's same color you can adjust the color, tones and any other thing, but mainly you can go up and down exposure. You can increase shadow details and you can decrease highlight details and stuff like that. And that means you it's much more flexible, you can beat out much more information from the file. You could say if you use Lightroom, it works perfectly. If you use Capture One, seems to preserve more of the quality more of the data, more of the original raw file. So you could say, even if you shoot color or black and white these days, you should Capture One because it's the best quality of pictures because it preserve the files. Different story, I'm trying to stay on track here. So, that's what happened with the monochrome. I can take my own story with the Monochrome as an example of what does it do to get a monochrome camera? Because it's so unusual too, and it even cost more, you pay more and you get less, you don't get the colors. it's very Leica and it's also very, you could say, if you like simplicity, that is how it works. The simpler you want something the harder it is to make and the more it cost to make and there's also fewer people who want that. And we had Leonardo da Vinci that said that "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." And that is basically what it is, this is an extremely simple camera. So what happened when I got this camera was that, I took it out of the box and I was in Denmark that day and it was like, it was spring, but I went outside, I went to a cafe and I had this camera with me and the first thing that strikes me is that it's beautiful blue sky with the sun breaking through, and the grass is green and the trees, all the colors looks amazing. It's really bright and it's just after rain and I have that black and white camera and I cannot take colors. And somehow I remember I was actually amused, I cannot take those colors. I just do black and white, I don't care about the colors. And I know similarly from Engel when he took this camera to Afghanistan to photograph there. she said, "I just didn't care about the colors" I just black and white. And there's something that sensation that no, I just deal with this, there's something amazing with that, say no to everything else, I just deal with this. There's something about that and that's one of the things with the monochrome camera. Then when I moved on using the monochrome camera was that, I realized that I could take... I got into a mood and I could take, beautiful black and white photographs, but I was missing the colors. So when I had a magazine that, I went to Nepal to take, to do a reportage for five days. So, I would take also the monochrome camera. And I would take the M9 and I would shoot black and white and color with that one. And when I submitted to the magazine, there were some beautiful black and white photos from the M9 and also from the monochrome amongst them. And the art director in Nepal said, "Oh, this is beautiful, this is amazing photograph" And then when the magazine came out, the photo wasn't in the magazine, I said, "What happened with this one, "this beautiful black and white, what did you do?" I said, "Oh, no, it has to be colors" So that's what I realized that I would take photos and I would need to have it also in color or have it mainly in color. Even you say, no matter what I do, if I go to a Bangladesh and I take photographs, I take photograph maybe for a magazine, then it have to be colors. But of course I always will live in Bangladesh for some days or weeks. So I also take photos for myself and a lot of those end up black and white. So I kind of want to have both. So for me, the solution was okay, I'm not going to use this camera, that mostly I'm going to stay with the M9. And what happened with this one actually, I sold this one to my assistant. At one point, I said, look, I'm not gonna use it anymore, I'm done with it. And this is a very special camera because it has an engraving up here, it looks like it says Leica. Because I have, based on all my cameras I have an engraving made with Leica here. That is a very traditional in dreaming, its just as like Leica. This one, a four, I'm going to put a different ingredient on this one. And I put on the first word that came to mind when I got this camera and that was sexy. So it's made like, it looked like Leica but here it says sexy. And there's only two cameras there was engraved, custom engraved in the world this is one of them. But anyways, I sold it really cheap to my or a really good price for my assistant. And then I went on, they came to M240 so on. And it wasn't until recently, like a year ago that I looked at some of my old, Monochrome pictures and I found wow, this is really beautiful. And I realized, okay, I need this camera back is like, it's part of my family, give it back to me. So I wrote to my sister and I said "Hey, do you still use the Monochrome?" She said, "No, actually I don't." I have an M9 and monochrome that I don't use. So, and we did a trade, he got an M10 or M10-P for those two cameras, and then I got this baby back. So, there is something about this. Even I will admit, I don't use monochrome a lot. I really liked this camera, I like the sound of it, I like the feel of it, I like the whole history of it. And I feel like this camera's part of my history or a part of this camera's history, because I was in Berlin for the direction of the camera. And I do have, I do have used it a lot, but I do have used M9 and our cameras more M240 and M10 That was, this camera the monochrome, you could say, this is the model of all Leica and monochrome. If there is one, is this one. For me, this is the real one, because the sense of tuning and everything is so perfect. Then we can move forward. The M9 was replaced with Leica M240. If you're not familiar with Leica I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but what this hadn't worked like I said, are we going to do like Apple? We're going to have the MacBook Pro it doesn't have a MacBook Pro number. It's just have a MacBook Pro like model number. So that model number was the M240. So 240 is the model number. So the idea would be, we're just gonna do different model somehow modify a little bit and then not call it M9 or M8 and M7 of all this. The M240 came and about, I think 1 1/2 two years after the M240 was introduced, came to M246. And that was the monochrome version of the M240. So again, Leica did what they had done with the M9, they stripped the sensor that was a CMOs sensor, 24 megapixel. They stripped that for the Bayer filter and said, okay, here we have a black and white version. And I got this camera, I love it. Remember, I went to Munich, I went to Paris, I went around with his camera. And I wasn't, I wasn't that happy with it. And I wrote, I'm not happy with this, I don't like that. The highlights tends to, just going to a plastic white, look they're just they don't look pretty. I don't like the lighter gray tones of this. The rest of the scale you could say kind of the same as this one, but it was missing. This thing even had more megapixels and everything. It was, it didn't have that same feel as the M9 Monochrome or M monochrome M. So I actually got rid of mine and I wrote an article and I said, and I analyzed this tones here is not as great as they should be. I prefer to use M240, shoot the JPEG and DNG file and make that into black and white. It makes me more happy with that persona. Still a lot of people buy the M246 and they're very happy with it and even I would even get emails from people who said, "Hey, I read your article about the M246, I bought one." So, it's very personal, how this look should be there's no standard for this or other than your own. And my standard will just nor like this look better than the M246. Then we roll on and we get the Leica M10 came out and then came the M10-P, which is basically just a professional version. It had a silent shutter, again, 24 megapixel and with, with a CMOS sensor. And then of course in almost a new tradition of Leica came the M10 M the M10 monochrome, except it has 40 megapixel sensor. So they jumped a little bit and said, "Okay we actually going to give you a new sensor that is black and white." And what happened there is that, Leica did fine tune the sensor again, that took the sensor and remove the Bayer filter of course and then they had a monochrome sensor. And then they fine tuned the firmware. And one of the charges they made with Leica is that they listened to what people said, that people kind of like want to have high contrast they want to have green, green, gray. They want to have high contrast. Is not something actually the sensor would decide is something you can do in editing but I will talk about that another time. But some as in my home the bottom line is that the M10-P and M10 monochrome in black and white tend to be very much the same. The same tone the same tone has the same look, except the monochrome is 40 megapixel. So that's kind of where we at now. And, Leica is not the only ones that have made monochrome cameras, also a phase one in Copenhagen have made 100 megapixel and 150 megapixel, digital backs or digital cameras, for you would say, mainly studio photography and also for, for landscape and water architecture. Whatever else you would need a monochrome camera for, they made one. Not so many of us have made a monochrome cameras. You have 40 cameras have different filters in the camera that you can apply different footie film look, different story. And then of course, Leica have also introduced the Leica Q2 in monochrome, again CMOS sensor stripped for the Bayer filter, and then Villa you have monochrome. So, you could say, if we sum it up we have the little monochrome here that is based on a desire to have a Leica to choose black and white. Then it becomes, traditionally you could say is all because part of the magazine thing, we'd like at it. Okay, we're going to make a monochrome version also of this camera, and they do. And you could say, for me, it makes totally sense. It makes sense in the way that a monochrome camera is not about the technical thing of black and white, because you can always make black and white from a color photo and make it look great. That is 100% possible. It's just a matter of editing and it's not difficult, it's not time-consuming is something you can do. But what I see you could say based on now almost 10 years experience with the monochrome being available in different versions, and having seen so many people using it or not using it, or having used and not using anymore or only using guidance and swearing they will not have another camera. The point is that when you get a monochrome camera, you feel like a monochrome photographer. You feel I'm only going to focus on black and white, I don't care about colors. And it's almost like you could say that, some people don't like to have a film camera because, they lost the feeling of that they just have 36 pictures and they have to think about it big time. This smell, film smells nice and it takes a while before you get to pick this back. It feels old school there's something great about that, that you like to do. And that's totally valid. There's not many of them, but it do exist. And that is the reason they should film it's not because of anything other than I really liked this. Then they can argue that it's better and it's everything, but that's not the point, the point is, no, it feels right. And that is the thing you could say with any camera lens ever you want to decide to get this or not is what feels right. And I use to say, if you can, if you have to decide about a lens or a camera, you imagine that you're in a camera store and you have four maybe you are in the camera store and you have five cameras next to a drawer. And the one that appeals to you the most, that's the one. And it doesn't matter, specifications, resell value and all this stuff, doesn't matter. It's which one do you like to use? And here you have, one of the cameras can be a Monochrome and that is really something that you feel like, yeah, I want to do monochrome. Even it doesn't make sense, I want to do monochrome. Then you go for a monochrome. And that's the point of having a monochrome camera and having a monochrome line. And I know from the pictures I've taken, when I take a great picture, I took one of a cup of coffee just yesterday, just for the fun of it and I posted it online on my Instagram and somebody is, "Oh, is that the Q2 monochrome?" Because it is a monochrome photograph. It looks beautiful to have nice tones. And then you kind of compute, then it must be a monochrome camera if it looks so great. I tried the same also when the M246 came out, I was photographing actually a typic file out of the M240 of my door in Berlin and the tone looks beautiful. So, quite a few people presumed that was a prototype of the M246 I was using. But it wasn't, it was just beautiful light and great tones. And that's the whole point with black and white, that when you use black and white, you get into the mindset that you just see light. That's all there is to it that you don't have to consider colors to analysis of that. You just have to see light, how does the light fall? Where does it come from? How does it make things look? Is that a picture? So, now we know there's monochrome cameras and there's also monochrome photographers. And then there is monochrome pictures, which you could say that is the end product, that what it's all about. That's a different story, and let's just talk about that. But let me just say one thing about how you use a monochrome camera and you can see this one on this camera hacks they have a 50 millimeters 0.95 lens. There's a very light strong lens. But in the moment that you take, the same sensor as was in the M9, that was 160 ISO sensor, the base eyes of that one the lowest you could go without losing quality was 160 ISO. When you take off the Bayer filter, you give more light to the sensor. So you to have to give twice as much light, so that means that this sensor suddenly become 320. So that's the lowest ISO you can go. So that's great for night photography and in the evening indoor. But what if you want to photograph in the sunshine with a light strong lens .95 as this one or 1.4? Well, that's when you need a sunglasses for a lens like this one. So you put on neutral density filters. This one is a ND filter, and you can see here that is just, I call it a sunglasses for the lenses. It is a neutral density, and that's exactly what it is. So it's a neutral filter, it doesn't add contrast it doesn't taints the colors, you could say it doesn't matter what this one, you also use this one for color photography. It doesn't change anything. So it's not like sometimes when you put often when you put on sunglasses, I don't like sunglass because I like to see things how they are. But if you put on sunglasses, they change often that can have a color turns. And so it becomes yellow or blue is a green is or something, especially for, if you go skiing, you have to have a dark green glasses. So it changes the color off air but it also changes the contrast and also changes the apparent contrast for the eye. This one doesn't change anything. What this one does this is actually Leica's own. Once this one takes four steps away. So you could say four stops mean that if I set this camera to 320 ISO, then I'd take one step away, that's 160, then I go 80, then I go 40 ISO. So certainly I can use a light strong lens wide open, and I can stay within the maximum shutter speed of this camera which is four or five for a second. I can't shoot faster with this one, it doesn't have a transfer electronic shutter. Is a mechanical shutter that can only go as fast as it can be 1/4000, 1/4000 of a second. So that's why you need an ND filter. For this one, the same with the Leica M246 is a base ISO 400. But then comes to M10 monochrome where kinetic go way low it easier that is the first monochrome camera, where presumably you can photograph without ND filter. And that's something you can test for yourself to see if do you really believe that the result is good enough. As new sensor technology, where we'll be having kind of like two levels of base ISO, that's the first one in the M10 monochrome, so it makes total sense. But if you want a photograph with a monochrome camera, you need one of these, basically for ease lens you have that you want to use. If you want to be able to shoot them wide open. So that's a small detail, but as you could say, the camera looks and operates in many ways exactly just like M9, this one of the M9 monochrome. It operates the same way as the M9 color camera. Color camera is the same for the M246 and the same for the M10 monochrome and the same for the Leica Q monochrome. And of course also for the phase one monochrome and color back everything's the same except no colors. Here we have it, monochrome cameras, and then there are some people that they will say that they're just monochrome photographers they get attracted to this idea, just shooting monochrome. But then we have the essence of the all and the essence of the all is basically just monochrome photographs. And even before we had monochrome cameras you would see, I would see in my workshops that we would go on photograph the first day and the second day we would do workflow and we'll sit and the edit. And then we would, at the end of the second day, we would look at a handful of photos for each photographer and 70% or something would be black and white. And sometimes people will ask me, why is it that people like black and white photography? And I don't know, there's no explanation to it. And there's no explanation of why does Leica photographers in particular like black and white photographs. I tend to influence people that shoot Nikon and Canon. The other thing is also, I say, " Oh, you can actually on your camera, "you can change the settings so you can shoot black and white JPEG and color DNG." You can do that on basically all cameras, I think. And that of course changes your mindset because if you shoot everything in black and white and in color and you get it into the editing you see, "Oh, this is actually a beautiful photograph." Maybe the color one doesn't look good at all. It's not what you wanted, but a black and white is cool because it doesn't have this orange color or this blue color or some disturbing color mismatch. Just like you have color photographs where there's harmony and it looks beautiful because of the colors. You can have black and white photos that looked beautiful because now it's just a light that has nothing to do with, you could say colors have lots of things. Colors also have values like some colors are considered, truthful and valuable and all this Stuff. But making harmony in color photograph is quite a thing. And the light changes all the time. So that also changes how the colors look and how strong they look and all this. So it's like a big puzzle to get color photography to look beautiful. Black and white, different story and different view on things. And one of the great things about black and white is also, it looks instantly historic, you could say. But also, you tend to see something that you don't see with your eyes, because you don't see black and white with your eyes. So when you take a black and white photograph, you can suddenly create or more likely to create something that people haven't seen before to haven't seen it that way. So that's one of the great things about black and white photography. And, even for professional reasons I have to do color photography often, I do a lot of black and white and I have done so much black and white actually decide I'm going to force myself to make colors work. And what does that mean? Well it means that it's so easy that you take some photographs and then you just, Oh, I don't like that. But I like the black and white that works. Black and white have a unique atmosphere and everything almost instantly. So its easy to just take a black and white, But to edit a color photograph on the computer and make it look harmonic and make it look beautiful, takes work, it takes something that almost is not natural. So with the M10, I started so I'm kind of I'm going to take only color photographs, DNG files. And when I import them I'm going to edit the color photograph to look good, as good as I can. And then I'll make a virtual copy and I'll make a black and white reason of it. And sometimes or very often I'll would like to make color photographs of something where I didn't expect it to be a color photo. But I also have a color photo. And of course our archive bought the color and the black and white version. So later when I need the photograph for something I can pick which one I want. And maybe I'm doing an article or something where everything should be color. I'm doing an article where everything should be black and white. So then I have a bigger selection. So that's what I do with that and it's kind of like I say in one of my books. The book about composition. I say that, "If you want to challenge yourself "in these days you should do color photography "because nobody I've ever actually "really did color photograph." There's very few. A lot of the big masters Henri Cartier-Bresson and so on, they photograph black and white and they didn't like color when it came out. And also color film was, it was chemistry back then. So it wasn't that exact it was kind of like not, yeah, it wasn't perfect, it was new. And then, so you could say real color film high quality color film didn't really arrive and then came something that was pretty good. And that was Kodachrome and all everybody started taking, got cameras and color film and they went around as tourists and took us all over the world. Kind of like people use the iPhone today or a smartphone. And that's a lot of color photography. So we kind of get used to this and the television Big Game color and the newspaper started printing color photos. And then everything had to be color, our magazines became color. So everything is color, color, color, but nobody really thought about how is the aesthetic of this? How do I make something that really sings? How does something that looks really beautiful? And that is the challenge that when you go out and take a photograph in black and white, you look at the light, you just have to have the light and darkness and the tones to harmonize and the lines and stuff. You can play with it. If you want to do the same photograph in color, you have to deal with that orange waistband over there, or this blue sign there that is in the way, because suddenly there's just stand out in the photograph. So you have to find locations and light and angles and everything and frame it so it has harmony. And it makes sense as the same color. So that's why I see it as the new talents. If you get a monochrome camera, or if you just say everything for monochrome, you don't have that problem, but it is. If you want to have a talent, do color photography is not that easy. Basically it haven't been explored. What can you do a really beautiful color photography it hasn't. So back to black and white. Once again, into black and white, you could say, when you had film cameras, you bought a film at Ilford or Kodak film or whatever film and that film you would develop, and you would print it in the dark room. Or even if you didn't print it in a darkroom, just scan it on a scanner these days, basically the film determines this is the look of it. This is the how high or low contrast you have or this is how it deals with the tones. And so you could say, you don't have to worry about should go this direction because it's in the film. So you chose this film, if you shoot Ilford, that's the look you get, and that's your look. And with digital cameras, you get a little bit more possibilities because you can edit more. But basically monochrome cameras they don't have Kelvin. So you could say you cannot taints the Kelvin in it. You could save your change to Kelvin and then a red color. As you change to Kelvin it's gonna go from light to dark and so on, and so with all the other colors. A monochrome camera just have, they're basically set for daylight 5,400 Kelvin, and Stan's black and white conversion of those tones. It doesn't mean that if you take photographs of skin or colors, indoor in the evening wheres 3,200 kilometer typically, then the tones are going to be translated differently. So the red outside in daylight is not going to look the same as the red inside. But you can't do anything about it. So it doesn't really matter. It's just, that's how it is. And that's part of the simplicity of having a monochrome camera. Then you have one thing that people sometimes feel is important to know about and that is Ansel Adams, he had the Zone system and the Zone system, even people tend to talk about it. Like it's like some science project that one day we, when we moved to Mars we will understand it is not exactly very simple. But Ansel Adams State, is that, of course he knew that his color translates into a great tone. But also at a light as the light changes, so does how the tone translates. And basically what he did he would say he worked mainly in the landscape and he worked nearby water. For example, I'm by the water now I don't know if you can hear it. But the light or an ocean changes like it's 50 different looks in a day. It's amazing how much it change. And so does the color on the anything of it. What Ansel Adams did was he went out to the beach and he went up in the mountain, he went out in nature and he would actually measure what will the great one be of the sand in sunshine? What will be just before sunset, what will be in this line and this line. And so he basically made a category of a different color. So you could say almost he built an ability to look at, Oh, this blue color, like this color of this table is gonna be discrete tone. He just knew with this light, this color is going to be discrete tone. And that's how he could compose a photograph, because he had the concept of how does the color translate. He could basically see them in black and white. When I was a teenager, I photographed the black and white film. With, I had Nikon when I was 15. And what I did is I almost always had it red filter in front of the lens, because then I saw things in just, it was silver and black, but basically black and white. What the red filter also does is that it makes red tones lighter so the skin would be lighter. And other red tones in the picture like for some this table would be lighter than without a red filter. But I use it just as my way of just when I look for the camera, I saw the world in monochrome basically. So it's the same as Lanham's hat. He was just very technical about it. He wrote books about it and he made the Zone system. So that's what it is and that's something that you would say you learn to see or somehow you sense, this is how, this is a good photo. Even I if just have a monochrome camera, I only shoot black and white. It's perfectly fine you don't have to be able to predict exactly. A lot of things in photograph is something you feel, this is a good photo. And sometimes it is sometimes it's much better than before. Sometimes it just as crap. That's why you can take, that's why you have series of his pictures on a raw of film or you have, or you can take two fast pictures. In a memory card, some of them work, some of them doesn't and that's the same, it's the same for everybody. Nobody takes perfect photo, each time they take a photo. So the Zoner system is not complicated. It's just, those are the tones. And he kind of dedicated at this tone is the skin of a person like me. This tone is same, this is a stone. This is the green leaves in a tree. The grass is like this, a mountainside is like this, this time of year. This time of year changes to this tone, that's his system, that's how he knew. You have exactly the same that, when you take monochrome photographs, is that it goes from black to white. And you can say it's 50 different tones, or it's 256, or it's just 10 or 12. Doesn't matter it goes from black to white. One of the important things for me when I take black and white is, I liked them to go from dark black, to white, or almost white. And that's one thing I noticed when the monochrome came out, it has, you could say it's a rich gray tone. So people tended to make very grain gray photos. And I don't, I don't like that look, I like whether I take a color photo I'll make it to black and white, I'll take a black and white photo. With this one I'm going to edit it, So I get contrast. There's a basic thing in editing photographs is that for me, that I tell people is when you take a photograph, or a portrait of a person. Then the exposure of that photo should be, and the whole editing should be the skin have to look like skin. You cannot edit me, edit me and I looked like I come from Caribbean or something, or like totally white in the face, that's not my tone. So the tone has to be right in the face because that's usually when you focus, if something else is in the photo, that thing have to look real. So that's what you edit from that the first thing you edit for the skin tone, the face have to look right. Then you can edit the thing, edit the contrast and everything else so you can make the eyebrows look more contrasty and darker than they are for effect or whatever you can make it, the hair that you have, light lines and dark lines. You can increase the contrast so it, it becomes even more lines in the hair. That's perfectly fine. But this thing that you unexposed a whole photo to maintain or preserve, all the great tone this doesn't look right. Because you cannot have something that it goes maximum to 40 or 30% black test, the most white area have. And it goes to totally black as a 90% black. It has to have the whole scale from 100% black to basically you could say 2% black. The reason it shouldn't go out in screaming white, in monochrome and that's a challenge. But the reason in certain is because it just doesn't look good at something goes orange totally white. It would appear bright and white, but it shouldn't necessarily be totally white. So that's basically the simple way of edit. It doesn't matter if you take a DNG in color and make it into black and white, or you make a monochrome photo. One of the challenges of the monochrome cameras and their sensors was that, when the first monochrome came out, you took photos. I mean, you overexposed something and then you try to edit it. Editing tool change the exposure and get the white back and get some definition of white you couldn't, it was gone. It was totally blown out. And that's a unique thing for the monochrome, and you can photograph from that. So you can expose it for analysis. Of course, the things you can take photos of. There is, in my opinion what I would call Monochrome Weather, black and white weather. And that would be you go to London is overcast is perfect for black and white, the more gray it looks the day the more boring it looks to the eye the better it is for monochrome because you can capture all the shadow details and you can capture the highlights without blowing the highlights. You can get the whole scale from black to totally white, without losing anything. You have to do this in the dark and you have to do this in the white. That's perfect as Monochrome Weather. So that's overcast weather. If you have sunshine, you have a lot of contrast. And that is something that is a challenge to do with this. It's not impossible. I know a director in Hollywood, he has a whole style on his photographs with very high contrast and it's monochrome and he looks beautiful and that's his style and he just kind of mixed, okay, this is how I'm doing it and as Adam has his way I have my way you can have your way. But that's the limitations with that. What happened then with M246 was that I didn't like the highlight tones because it tends to just break over to white, no matter what you did. So you go out in an overcast day in Paris and the light is actually soft. And even though sometimes when you get out in overcast day and it looks great, you measure with a light meter. You'll see, that's actually a lot of light coming down. So you do have contrast, but even on days where you have what I would call Monochrome Weather it should be perfect. I couldn't photograph, for example, a face without blowing out at the top of the head, because it got all the light from above. Or if there's a white kind of picture, the picture doesn't work because that car is just that car just exposing in a white plastic loop. So that's what I didn't like about M246 and you see the M10 monochrome has a little bit of the same. But that's the challenge with monochrome. With black and white film, you don't have that problem because when you photograph film, even when you're overexposed until something goes totally white, you still have the film, the plastic, piece of plastic. So if you scan that or you make a print from it, there's something. So it never looks really blown out white but you need to really overexpose it to blow it out. So it looks, you better have to overexpose the negative and overexpose, just make a complete mess of the print. Then it looks really terrible. But apart from that, it's very easy to deal with black and white film is very forgiving. Less forgiving this camera. And then you can say, you go, M10, M9 M240 or any camera your photography DNG a raw in color and you edit that one into a nice color photo. Then you make a convert or virtual copy and make that into a black and white look either just decent rays or you use a filter with, for example a cup, you want to have some beautiful wine where you actually add grain. So it looked like a real film photograph. And it also, the whole tonality has that look of it. You can make beautiful stuff with it. So, that's basically what I had to say about monochrome photography. For me, most of what I do well, most of what I output is monochrome photography. Most of the cameras I use are normal Kohler cameras is the M10-P have been my main camera for the last two years then came the M10-R it doesn't matter, same stuff. It's a camera that shoots to DNG. And I use that, I edit that into a nice color for as nice as I can and then I make it black and white version. And sometimes I only keep the black and white version. I don't like the color. So it does go in the archive, but it's deep archive. So that's how it is for me. And for you, it could be the same. It could also be if you really feel attached to a monochrome camera and, and you're so stupid that you want to pay extra to not have colors is perfectly okay, because it's just means like this feels right. I want to do black and white, I don't want to deal with colors. All I want to see is black and white, and I believe I can do it better with this. Most likely you can. If you're in the mindset of doing black and white, you have a camera can only do black and white. Most likely you will see better and make better black and whites, it's very likely. But especially the story of a monochrome. And that's my standard monochrome. That's all I had to say today. If you go below the video here, there's a link to my website. You can sign up for my newsletter. You get a free eBook immediately. It actually have a little chapter understanding editing for a song in 60 seconds could be very entertaining In this context. And also there's a link down here. You can go get my presets for Capture One. And also for Lightroom, I made some special presets that translate the color raw DNG file from the different Leica cameras. And actually for more like from all color DNGs are also for footage and so on into the look of how the M9 from 2009 made black and white photos, because there's a specific way of setting. This red color have to go into this tone and it tends to be a little bit darker or more film-like look. So I made some presets where you just use those. Then it translates immediately all the colors into that look more or less, but that's free. So you can get that also there's a link below here. That's all I had to say today about monochrome. Thank you for watching and see you next time.
Disclosure:
Thorsten von Overgaard is a Danish writer and photographer, specializing in portrait photography and documentary photography, known for writings about photography and as an educator. You are always welcome to send an e-mail to Thorsten for questions, suggestions and ideas.
Thorsten Overgaard is an independent writer and photographer who write, teach workshops and publish user reports about the equipment he uses. There is no affiliation with Leica Camera AG or any camera dealers, no free gifts, no sponsorship, no kickback and no paid content. All you see is real and based on the life of an eccentric and hard-working photographer who makes his own money, buys his own equipment and form his own independent opinions - and shares with you. Enjoy the ride.
Video credits:
Produced by: Thorsten Overgaard (www.overgaard.dk)
Equipment:
This video was made with the Leica SL 601 and Leica 35mm Summilux-L ASPH f/1.4, using Sennheiser wireless microphones.
#Photography #MONOCHROM #review
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