8 25 January 2020 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
Leica M10 Monochrom
Andy Westlake takes a fi rst lookatLeica’slatest
rangefi nder dedicated to shootinginblack&white
LEICA is a company that plays by
different rules to everyone else. By
building cameras in low volumes and
charging a premium for them, it’s able to
pursue different avenues than the
mainstream Japanese makers. Most
obviously, it’s been able to maintain a
healthy market for its M-series
rangefi nders, despite this type of camera
having generally fallen out of favour in the
1960s. It also makes cameras dedicated
purely to black & white shooting, with its
M Monochrom series.Ataglance
£ 7, 2 5 0bodyonly
■40.9MPmonochrome
full-frameCMOSsensor
■ISO160-100,
■Opticalviewfinderand
rangefinderfocusing
■LeicaM mount
■3in,1.03m-dot
touchscreenLCDBaseplate
In a nodtoLeica’s35mm
filmM cameras,thebattery
andSDcardareaccessedby
removingthebaseplate.Stealth
TheM10Monochromis
basedontheM10-P,which
meansit inheritsthesame
super-quietshut ter.Cable
release
A mechanicalreleasecan
bescrewedintotheshutter
button,butthereareno
electronicconnectors,
suchasUSBorHDMI
ports.the Monochrom cameras are capable of
recording black & white images directly.
This gives visibly superior sharpness and
tonality, along with higher sensitivity and
lower image noise.
The M10 Monochrom is the third
generation of the series, after the original
2012 version based on the M9 with an
18MP CCD sensor, and its 2015
follow-up, the Typ 246 with its 24MP
CMOS. However while these previous
cameras used existing sensors without a
CFA, the latest model differs by employing
a completely new 40-million-pixel
full-frame CMOS sensor that doesn’t
have a conventional colour counterpart.
Leica says that it’s specifi cally optimised
for use with M-mount lenses, which
requires a careful arrangement of offset
microlenses over the pixels towards the
corners of the sensor. It provides a
broader sensitivity range than its
predecessor, of ISO 160-100,
compared to ISO 320-25,000, and is
claimed to deliver lower noise and
increased dynamic range.Purist design
The camera body is based on Leica’s
current top-end M10-P rangefi nder. At
fi rst glance it has much the same styling
and layout as previous M-series cameras,
dating right back to the M3 of 1954,
which originally debuted the lens mount. It
has a decidedly purist design, with
relatively few external controls. The
shutter speed and ISO are controlled
using analogue dials on the camera body,
while the aperture is set mechanically on
the lens. You have a choice between
shooting in aperture-priority or manualSo how, and why, would you do such a
thing? The basic principle is simple:
conventional cameras sense colour by
arranging red, green and blue fi lters over
the light-sensitive photodiodes of their
sensors, with the image data being
converted to a visually meaningful
photograph through a complex process of
demosaicing, noise reduction and
sharpening. To produce a black & white
image, the colour then has to be removed
again. In contrast, by doing without a
colour fi lter array (CFA) over the sensor,EVF
Leica’sVisoflex
electronicviewfindercan
bemountedonthehotshoe,
andshouldproveespecially
handyforaccurately
focusingsuper-fast
lenses.