Do you like Black and White photos? I do. In fact, I like it a lot. However, years ago, I thought B&W photos are really boring. The world is so beautiful, full of colors. Why in the world someone would want to remove colors?
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Can you believe Leica makes monochrome dedicated digital M body? As you may know, in digital body, you can convert color into monochrome really easily. Yet, Leica M Monochrom produces black and white color only in a digital body. More surprisingly it comes with more expensive price that does both color and monochrome M body.
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I had a luxury of borrowing this charismatic Monochrom M body from my friend. It looks exactly like other Leica M (typ240) however, there is no indication of Leica. All but black, maybe this makes it look more like professional.
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When I first took this photo, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Unlike Leica M10 color to monochrome conversion, it feels quite different. I can’t explain what made me think it’s different than Leica M10 monochrome setting but I strongly felt it. First off, look at the coffee cup, it’s in focus but very soft yet; Leica M7 looks pretty sharp.
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So I wondered what if I take the same object in the same place with both Leica M10 and Leica M Monochrom. There is only one way to kill my curiosity. Let’s do it.
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You wouldn’t feel much difference in a small resolution but with full resolution, you will be blown away with M Monochrom version. I don’t know much about how it works but I was told from Leica store person that Monochrome body has the same processor as the color M body, but engineers tweaked it to process the image only in black and white as opposed to RGB (three different color and mixture of it).
I have no desire to understand the technology behind it, I simply fell in love with this body. In fact, if you see Leica M10 digitally converted monochrome image with Leica M Monochrome image side by side, you wouldn’t tell much difference. But the more you look at M Monochrom image, you build some sort of attachment.
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Here are some of more images with Leica M Monochrom.
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Well, I haven’t made up my mind. It’s simply too expensive to add another M body. But evidently I now have a very different opinion about the Monochrom Leica M body.