Leica M9 and Workflow, your help is needed!

[greg]

So far, seeing the released price, M9 is not expensive considering Leica standard.

well, that's another subjective viewpoint.

that reminds me often times when people ask me why I paid a bundle wearing a patek or lange when a casio tells a more accurate time and has better complications, my answer is simply restating the obvious, "if you need a dead accurate time telling machine, just wear a Casio".

 

[gommy]

...................
I don't care what people think about my camera. I only care about how I will enjoy photography with it.

... exactly! kudos to you!

Spot on! Whether M9, M8x, MP, Mx, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus....just enjoy & be Happy!

 

[nsng]

Hi

Now that M9 is available and I'd be getting it, I need advise from the digital gurus here to help me get into the digital workflow.

Why I need your help?


Cheers

Hi,

Welcome to the digital age!

Let me give you my experience transitioning from film to digital. About 4 years ago, I bought my first serious digital camera, the Leica DMR that is now attached to my R8. The M8 joined the R8/DMR 2 years later. Prior to this I was shooting slides and scanning them with a Nikon 35mm slide scanner. But I find scanning slides to be a real pain. To cater for the high quality DMR files, I upgraded to a 24" Eizo monitor. The PC was upgraded to dual core and now I have a quad core with 8 GB of RAM. I tried various RAW processors and finally decided Capture One was the best choice. However, ACR has improved greatly. You should only shoot RAW as you will get at least 1 stop improvement in dynamic range.

With the Eizo monitor, I bought the Spyder2 Pro Suite for both monitor and printer profiling and calibration. . As I was also interested in b&w printing, I first used channel mixer in CS2 and later the b&w feature CS3 and now CS4. Along the way, I tried Silver EFX Pro and this is now my main b&w conversion tool. There are many ways to convert to b&w.

Since you are interested in b&w printing, you should look at printers from Epson, Canon or HP with 3 b&w inks, usually labelled as photo or matt black, light black and light-light black. I decided on an Epson 3850 and has been very happy wth the results.

The interesting and difficult part was in trying out various papers, especially for b&w. It has been years since I have done any darkroom work, but high quality inkjet b&w printing is different from traditional b&w printing. The diehards will say inkjet printing can never replicate traditional b&w prints. To a certain extent I agreed, but the current generation of inkjet printers have improved tremendously over the last few years. The variety of papers have increased and it can be confusing. I have tried and tested papers from Epson, Hahnemuhle, Museo, Ilford, Harman, Sihl, Moab, Innova, Inkpress, etc.

For the richest black, use a matt paper. Glossy papers with pigment inks just do not look right. Colours seem less 'rich'. The closet to the traditional F type paper, is the baryta type. The Harman baryta is the best I have tried. It looks good with b&w. My current favourites are the Epson Velvet Fine Art, Museo Silver Rag, Harman Baryta and Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.

Let us know how you feel about the M9. I am eyeing this as well, but the M8 is still serving me well.

N.S. Ng

 

[Zohan]

Hello Greg & NS,

NS, I have to agree with you. Trying out BW papers was a big pain with the transition. I used to shoot the M6, Neopan400 & Agfa Fibre and it took me a long time to get results close to the combination I preferred.

However, I finally settled on a glossy paper Epson Exhibition Fibre because it gave me the deepest blacks on that paper.

Greg, your biggest challenge will probably be matching screen to printer output due to different tonal response of screen and printer. Even with calibrated equipment. However, Eric Chan has this page http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/abwprofiles.html where it helped loads in my learning curve.

Enjoy your journey =)
Z

The interesting and difficult part was in trying out various papers, especially for b&w. It has been years since I have done any darkroom work, but high quality inkjet b&w printing is different from traditional b&w printing. The diehards will say inkjet printing can never replicate traditional b&w prints. To a certain extent I agreed, but the current generation of inkjet printers have improved tremendously over the last few years. The variety of papers have increased and it can be confusing. I have tried and tested papers from Epson, Hahnemuhle, Museo, Ilford, Harman, Sihl, Moab, Innova, Inkpress, etc.

For the richest black, use a matt paper. Glossy papers with pigment inks just do not look right. Colours seem less 'rich'. The closet to the traditional F type paper, is the baryta type. The Harman baryta is the best I have tried. It looks good with b&w. My current favourites are the Epson Velvet Fine Art, Museo Silver Rag, Harman Baryta and Hahnemuhle Photo Rag.

Let us know how you feel about the M9. I am eyeing this as well, but the M8 is still serving me well.

N.S. Ng

 

[hookonclassic]

Hello Greg & NS,

NS, I have to agree with you. Trying out BW papers was a big pain with the transition. I used to shoot the M6, Neopan400 & Agfa Fibre and it took me a long time to get results close to the combination I preferred.

However, I finally settled on a glossy paper Epson Exhibition Fibre because it gave me the deepest blacks on that paper.

Greg, your biggest challenge will probably be matching screen to printer output due to different tonal response of screen and printer. Even with calibrated equipment. However, Eric Chan has this page http://people.csail.mit.edu/ericchan/dp/Epson3800/abwprofiles.html where it helped loads in my learning curve.

Enjoy your journey =)
Z

Zohan, nice linked website info. Thanks for sharing.

 

[greg]

Ng and Zohan!

great tips my friends, I'm very glad that this post continues to thread on serious and useful information.

I'm a fan of tri-x and hp5, even when I had to shoot with them on my Mamiya7, I stuck to these films from which characters were the one most depicted my work. I never gave up shooting film since 2004, I merely shot portraiture work. That explains why I'm also eager to explore the S2, a 'medium format' equivalent of my m7 (I understand it's not exactly medium format) but the usability of a medium format equipment versatile enough to be used alike a conventional SLR in the field to achieve a medium format quality, I'm impressed by Leica's achievement. Its recent launches to me in commercial sense, make really GOOD sense and I'm sure these products will turn the company around. The X1 is truly tempting to be acquired as my backup equipment, now targeting a typical customer like me who would most likely buy these 3 cameras, I'm sure the instituitions would start snapping Leica stocks

It's a pity I can't attend the launch event due to my travel schedule and as much as I would like to be the first to own the M9, I think a little more time increases the suspense (ah Q mentality haha). Meanwhile, my minty 35mm 4th is on its way to me, and I will be exploring the Epsons, so I'm all game up for it.

cheers guys

 

[cocoa]

kudos to N.S. Ng! Not just "wu lui - 有镏" but also "wu liao3 -有料". Humble too :thumbsup: