360Photography

The sensor in the Leica M Monochrom (Typ 246) is an interesting one. Without a color filter array, the 24MP CMOS sensor doesn’t lose sharpness through interpolation, much like a first-generation Foveon sensor or Pentax’s pixel shift mode found in the K-3 II. The catch is, of course, no color. However, it also means the sensor is more… well… sensitive at base ISO, making this ones’ base ISO 320 instead of 200 like its Bayer counterparts.

There is another issue, however. Even without a mirror flipping out of the way in this rangefinder, the shutter causes blur at speeds near 1/125sec when using the 90mm F2 Summicron. To see the true sharpness of the camera at base ISO, we recommend switching over to low-light mode where the shutter’s effect isn’t present.

You’ll notice that the M Monochrom is marked as non-standard. Keeping true to its rangefinder roots, it can only change shutter speed in half-stop increments, whereas our standardized Raw exposures are based off of third-stop increments. However, the M does do exposure compensation in third-stops, even though it will only report half-stops. Therefore we shot the M in aperture priority and bracketed +-1 stop EV. We then, since it didn’t report accurate shutter speeds in its metadata, chose the Raw exposure that was closest to Lab 50 without adjustments. JPEG images still follow our normal procedure.

See the M Monochrom Typ 246 in our Studio Scene

See our Leica M Monochrom Typ 246 real-world sample gallery

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)