Upcoming Review: The Leica M Monochrom

1/250th sec F/5.6 @ ISO 1600 converted from RAW file

When my Leica rep asked if I was interested in borrowing the Leica M Monochrom, I got pretty excited. I've been wanting to hold this camera ever since it was announced, and I finally was allowed to test it for a week...and then I got sick!! Nooooo!!! I spent most of the week playing with it in my bedroom and taking self portraits. I know, pretty sad. 

I did eventually get 2 full days to shoot with it, including the above picture of Moustafa and Miles, students at the Vancouver Film School. Speaking of film, although this is a reduced sized image from the original 35mb DNG file, you can see how film-like the picture is. The Ricoh RAW files converted to black and white also look a lot like film, but the M Monochrom does it better...much better. It's safe to say, it's the most film-like images from any digital camera I've ever shot with so far.

Is it exactly like film? Of course not. But it feels like film when shooting, and it feels like film when digitally "developing" the DNG RAW files. It has a totally different feel from the X Vario that I tested a few weeks ago. Actually, it doesn't feel like anything I've ever shot with before...except a film camera. If you like shooting film, and you like shooting black and white, I guarantee that you will enjoy shooting with the Leica M Monochrom. In fact, after taking my first shot, my natural instinct was to try and wind the film to the next frame! 

My full review is coming up in less than a week, but I may post a couple more pictures before then, so keep coming back. All I can say for sure is that I really enjoyed shooting with this very unique M camera.  Happy shooting!!

The lens used on the above image was the 28mm F/2.8 Elmarit-M Aspherical 6-bit 

Full review of the Leica M Monochrom HERE!