Leica M10 Monochrom

Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. This is the Leica M10 monochrome. You've probably seen me use it a few times on camera and then, you know, promptly exited those videos. This one's definitely got a few battle scars for sure. I don't always baby my cameras, but maybe I should. This camera costs roughly five grand on the used camera market. And well, here's the twist. It cannot shoot color photos whatsoever. It doesn't even have video and definitely doesn't have autofocus. You can't even flip the damn screen out to take selfies, which honestly is probably a good thing. If I ever saw somebody do that with this machine, I think my tie to humanity would forever be severed. Truth be told, I have been kind of struggling with my black and white work on film lately. And I don't really know what the reason is yet. I'm still trying to figure it out. I have found that at least for now, that this Leica M10 monochrome brings back my film-like intentionality when I'm out shooting. But with that price tag and those missing qualities, why the hell would anyone want this thing? I can think of a few reasons. Let's break it down. Like me having a claustrophobia breakdown in an airplane bathroom. Let's start with some basics. The Leica M10 monochrome is blacked out, like the Batsuit. Even got the bat nipples right here. As an added bonus, no one even took a pen and scribbled something across the top plate here. Honestly, you wouldn't even know this was a Leica unless someone told you, which is likely considering who buys these. This is a 40 megapixel camera that does not have a color filter array and thus cannot shoot color natively. It's a rangefinder system, which many people consider to be antiquated technology nowadays. But they're wrong, that is gangster as hell. Rangefinders work to acquire focus through parallax by lining up two mirrors on the top shelf of the camera here. And in my opinion, that can actually be a lot quicker than many SLRs. And dare I say it, quicker than that digital focus punch in confirmation. You have your ISO dial over here. You can pop it up to change the value of it or set it to A if you're absolutely insane. You've got your shutter speed dial over here that also has A for auto, for those of us that are sane. And it's got a flash sync up to, I think 1 180th or something like that, if you care about that kind of thing, which apparently I do because I used it. It's also got luxurious back screen buttons as well. I mean, what do you think you're paying for when you buy one of these? My typical setup for this camera is the Leica Summicron 35 mil version four, it's the latest one, I don't know. And yeah, I don't have any money anymore. It's an incredibly sharp lens, which pairs really well for a super sharp sensor. Speaking of sharp, someone here, I guess, broke a window upstairs, I think, and it hasn't been cleaned up yet. A monochrome sensor is, I guess, typically regarded as sharper than a color sensor for basically one reason. So I'll give you two. There's no need to de-mosaic because there's no CFA, not to be confused with PFAs, those little microplastics running around in my brain, making it hard to understand art. Someone, anyone, honestly, can probably do a better job of explaining this, but here you go anyway. All digital sensors by default are actually black and white, but manufacturers take, I don't know, an Elmer's glue stick probably and adhere a thing called a color filter array on top of those sensors. Tiny little red, green, blue, more green for some reason, filters placed over the sensor tiles that tell each black and white cell how much of each color is in that scene. It's like tiny little trichromes, except times a million. The camera then takes this info and either it or your photo processing software runs a de-mosaic algorithm to figure out what each color, each pixel should be. If it didn't, it would look something like this. Whoops, sorry, wrong photo. It would probably look something like this because the de-mosaic is averaging several and neighboring cells together to figure out what color a pixel should be. Sometimes weird fringing things can happen and there is some minuscule amount of loss of quality to the image because of it. The Leica M10 monochrome doesn't have to do any of this. Therefore, many people make the argument that straight piping a monochrome sensor can produce sharper and more tonal images than I guess the alternative, shooting color and then using a digital filter to convert an image to black and white. But pause real quick because this photo is absolutely gorgeous. It's definitely romantic. Nice. So is it considered a crime to be shooting the orange ass Staten Island ferry on black and white? Yeah, probably. Still gonna do it. Don't worry, I did secretly take some E100 shots as well. But let's talk for a minute about why I leave the monochrome set to 1600 ISO on this thing. The low light is incredible. Such a fast ISO allows me to, you know, close down the lens quite a bit, which makes shooting from the hip on the street far, far easier. I mean, look at that. This image is super clean for 1600 ISO. But for whatever it's worth, I think because this camera doesn't need to de-mosaic, the noise at super high ISOs does render a very film-like grain. Obviously it's not film, it's digital, but come on. Doesn't that image fidelity look like some medium format black and white film? Feel free to find me and kiss me on the lip sometime if you disagree. It looks like it's doing a sick drip. But because the ISO dial can be cranked up and still provide a beautiful rendering, it allows you to use slow lenses on this camera's native Leica M mount, like this one, the Konica 21-35mm, sitting at around like F4 at its fastest. I love this lens. Being able to punch between two of my favorite focal lengths is quite a dream, you know, until I forget which one I'm on and shoot the wrong one. I'm not gonna lie. Either way, this shot is a total banger. But uh-oh, there's a problem. No, don't worry, the boat isn't sinking and I don't have to reenact Titanic with David. But actually the frame lines for this camera only go about as wide as 24mm, I believe. That's why I have this big-ass Tri-L-Mar viewfinder on top here that definitely picks up radio signals from space. It acts as my 21mm frame line guide. But hey, no one's making you use this thing if you don't want to. I personally just like making things as difficult as possible. Alternatively, you can use the camera's live view function, which raises the internal shutter and lets you see through the sensor for things like critical focus and framing. It's probably also how the sensor gets like dust on it from time to time because I can't figure out any other way those f**kers get in there. But it does give a bit of a more accurate meter reading for your photo because when you're using the rangefinder, the shutter obviously is down and I don't know if you're gonna be able to see it, but there's a little dingleberry in here that is metering the bounce light off of the shutter curtain there. Another tried and true method, you know, left over from the film days, but nothing's ever really gonna be more accurate than actually seeing the image through the sensor. That being said, I rarely have ever used live view because I'm an analog purist and live view doesn't exist for film. Well, it kinda can. You just have to be really fast. In fact, I rarely ever use the screen on the back of this thing, which is apparently made of crystallized one-ply toilet paper because literally everyone I talk to says they've chipped it at some point. Definitely consider getting a screen protector if you have this camera, like I haven't done for some reason. But yeah, because I don't use the screen on the back, my battery loves me for it. I can typically go a couple of days without needing to charge it. It's just softer, has more air. Oh, what's stopping me from getting a 16 by 20? Nothing. It's a cool shot with the city in the background. City of Jersey. That's Brooklyn, bitch. You don't have to use slow lenses on this camera. You can do whatever you want. I don't give a. You can use some of the fastest lenses ever made like this Voigtlander 50 millimeter F1 that lets in so much goddamn light. You might as well drop the ISO down to this camera's base of 160. Just don't let anyone catch you using a Voigtlander on a Leica. 160 ISO on this is clean as hell and allows you to shoot uncompromised wide open portraits of your reluctant so-called friends who make you Venmo them a hundred bucks for a portrait. Hi, why are you taking pictures? Nice to meet you. I like to branch out. Creative. I don't know what's happening. He's different. Because the frame lines for 50 mil are a little pinched in on the viewfinder, I recommend using a magnifier attachment to scale it back up in the window. This one that I'm using is 1.4 times and just kind of screws on and I'm surprised I haven't lost it yet. It's kind of small. I mean, it's pretty average sized but that of course won't actually stop this meaty ass chunk of glass from partially blocking the viewfinder. There's really not too much you can do about that, honestly. That's not very satisfying. The first all's fair in loving Leica. What are the downsides to this camera? Well, there's one that I can think of. You know, besides it costing more than my luxury 1996 eight cylinder Lexus LS 400 with 130,000 miles on it, brand new ECM and tan leather interior. It is arguably more practical to shoot color and then convert it to black and white in post. You could simply just use the red channel of a color photo and get a similar result to something of like a photo taken with a monochrome sensor and a red filter. You can actually simulate the effect of any color filter from a color photo if you're converting it to black and white and practicality says that makes more sense. But Jason, who's always level-headed says, that's stupid. You're just being indecisive and trying to save your photo in post. But let's talk about probably my favorite aspect of this camera. And yeah, it's totally a manufacturer defect. You can shoot true monochrome sensor infrared on this thing. I've done it tons of times in Utah, Texas, and now New York, and it looks amazing. Basically the hot mirror, which is that cyan green swamp filter over the sensor that blocks infrared light is kind of thin on this camera, probably for some budgetary reason. The Leica M8 famously had this issue too, though in this case, I don't consider it to be a problem, more of a feature that should be utilized. To get started, I usually have to crank the D, I mean the ISO dial, same size, up to 3200 and then slap on a lens that's reasonably fast. This Tide Pod Challenge 50 millimeter F1.4 will do the trick. Throw an R72 filter over the lens to block all visible light coming in and it's optional of course, but you can also use a diffusion filter to get a little bit of that traditional infrared glow. Lastly, infrared light focuses on a different plane than visible light, which is super weird to me, like the later Dune books kind of weird. In any case, the range finder will not give you an accurate focus anymore. So you'll have to rely on live view to lock it in, which conveniently auto punches in when you focus the lens, a nice mechanic. Or if you wanna make the camera look sexy, you can use this handy dandy Vizoflex, a shiny and really expensive accessory for Leica digital cameras that basically gives you live view in a viewfinder. It doesn't require its own battery either, it just parasitically sucks light from your power source, like a relationship. And reportedly, it will do it kind of quick, but I've never really had issues with it. Oh, and apparently on the Vizoflex 2, which is the one that I have here, dust will kind of somehow start to get in through the diopter dial here. So I definitely recommend just setting it and taping that down. Anyway, out there amongst a bunch of abstract sculptures that all look like my fear of women for some reason, infrared was the obvious choice to get some moody shots. And you know what? I wasn't working on an effective six ISO like we have to when we shoot infrared black and white film. These were all handheld. Actually love how simple and dramatic this shot is that we all creatively took from the exact same spot. The infrared images come in pretty flat as well, plenty of room to work with in post if that's your thing. I typically just add a pinch of contrast like salt down my elbow. But if you're in a pinch for a new website, look no further than today's sponsor, Squarespace. Need a professional website fast? Squarespace is what you're looking for, the industry leader in building an online presence for you and your business. With the best SEO tools the internet has to offer, you can make sure your new website rises to the top of the search engine results. Every website is indexed with meta descriptions and an auto-generated site map that allows potential customers to find you and your products or services easier. Start with one of hundreds of professionally designed templates and utilize Squarespace's own proprietary tools to build a bespoke online presence unlike any other. 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I really just wanted to cover my experience with this camera and why I've been using it so much lately. I do feel strongly that this brings back my, you know, film-like intention when I'm out using it. Wish it didn't cost five grand to do so, but hey, here we are. Does this mean that I'll never shoot black and white film ever again? Hell no. Do you even know how goaded Cameo 400 is? I don't know. You know, for now, this camera just brings back some semblance of shooting film and that workflow, you know? You're forced to shoot black and white, so you gotta think in black and white. You can go full range finder, which is comfortable for me coming from film. You can even switch to infrared at like a moment's notice. And that makes this camera a good all-in-one solution for my own monochrome work across the board. In a rare moment of honesty for this channel, which has never happened before, and I hope never happens again, thank you, Leica, for taking the chance on something I consider to be quite unique in this age of stagnation with digital cameras. I have shot many portfolio photos with this thing over the two or so years that I've owned it, and I'm sure the future will supply many, many more. And before you dislike this video for it being a digital camera review, take a good look in the mirror and, I don't know, consider going to anger management or something. I had basically 1,000 people in my DMs requesting a video on this exact ******* topic, so here it is. Which means that the only real lesson we learned today was that I fold under peer pressure pretty easily.