So how good is the new Leica M? Is it a big upgrade? So I took the "M" out this evening for a few test shots under very difficult conditions. I know because I have done a lot of photography of musicians under similar lighting and several times under the exact conditions as tonight with a Nikon D4, Nikon D800E, and a Leica M9. None of these cameras performed well enough to shoot without lighting. You could get photographs but the noise level and resultant image softness just didn't work for me.
So I thought a perfect test, take the M out and see how it looks under the same conditions. Here is the very first shot of a bluegrass band. I was shocked at the quality. Right off I could tell it was better than anything I had seen under similar circumstances from the cameras I named. This was shot at ISO 3200, 90sec/f2 Summicron 50mm/f2 lens. Unless otherwise stated, all shots were taken with the same settings. No color correction by me.
So let's crop this image. Keep in mind these images are straight out of Lightroom with no adjustments other than what the conversion does. I did not move any sliders.
From my experience this is pretty remarkable! Let's go with some more images. On the image below, I just turned, focused and fired. Same settings, 90/f2/ISO3200.
Doing a crop gives you a closer look but keep in mind at f2 the depth of field is very limited. I focused on the "Thank You" only because I could see it better.
Turning again to another lighting situation the bar/cash register, you can clearly see the depth of field bokeh.
So let's crop again, no adjustments.
In this image, I just turned further to the right and focused on the chef/cook. I did try to level this a bit but it's still off.
So now comes another test. I just turned at my table and shot my wife(sounds bad). She had virtually no light.
I did change the exposure adjustment on this image in lightroom but did nothing else.
Again, I could significantly improve this image but this is straight out of lightroom with only exposure moved to the right. Now back to the band as they are back from break.
Now a crop of the above image.
The fstop is 4.8 all else remained the same for the image below.
Here's were the image was a bit off straight out of lightroom. The camera is on auto WB and the sign is actually in red lettering "Little Lou"s......." I will figure this out but it is white or sort of instead of red. This shot was f3.4 all else the same.
Now just a few more grab shots. This one f2.8 all else the same. The last one was f2.4 all else the same.
I shoot under these conditions a lot and have never been able to get images of this quality straight out of the camera. So needless to say I'm really impressed. Now I'm not going into ease of use, video, live view, focusing, etc. and all the other bells and whistles since my main concern is image quality for this blog. I didn't attempt any scientific testing, resolution scales, etc. mainly because I can read about this on the web and have no interest or skill at doing these myself. These files have a lot of data, the camera does a great job with low light conditions, better than anything I have shot with. So there you have my evening with the new Leica M. I will likely write more about this camera later.
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