But if they’d both been bayer sensors, I doubt even putting a Master Prime on the 18MP and a Samyang on the 36MP would’ve made the former come out on top (well, that might be hyperbole ). To me that general point is the interesting take-away.

could you please do a test of the lens on the left side of the cupboard ;-?

Greets
Ralf C.

I think what summs up the Leica M Monochrom is the fun factor: It’s a camera you want to play with and see where will bring you.

If it doesn’t have that factor, then forget it anyways.

It’s interesting that I bought the Leica M9 when it came out as a “fun camera” to play with besides my Leica dSLR cameras. As it turned out, it became my main camera in less than a year.

I don’t see how a black & white camera can become a main camera in a world where clients and all demand color (but do like black & white when they see it), but I think the Leica M Monochrom will open up new ways of viewing photography and black & white photography.

/Thorsten

“dcraw -D” should process a raw file without applying any Bayer demosaicing (you can also tell that this is quite fast). Imatest should be able to process the resulting grayscale file without problems.

I would be happy to take a look at the files (just email me some Imatest chart shots).

Some further comments:
1. That value of 2050 for the MM JPEG image sounds a bit high. The MTF50 for a diffraction limted lens at 550 nm wavelength, mounted on a sensor with a 6.8 micron pitch (i.e., the MM), would be more like this:
f/5.6 : 1618 lp/ph
f/2.8 : 1861 lp/ph
f/1.4 : 1981 lp/ph (but obviously the lens is not that good)
I suspect that some sharpening has indeed been applied to the MM JPEG, or something else is amiss.

2. The Bayer colour filter does not prevent you from measuring MTF values near to the expected resolution limit given the pixel size, provided that you measure MTF using the slanted edge method applied to only one channel of a raw file. In other words, on a D800E, you should be able to measure right up to the diffraction limit if your lens is diffraction limited. Note that this is possible because the slanted edge method (used by Imatest) measures resolution over a large number of pixels spanning a step edge — in real world photos the Bayer filter will indeed appear to reduce resolution in certain orientations.

If you demosaic the image first, then you may measure MTF50 values that are quite a bit lower than what the individual channels can give you, which is consistent with what you are seeing on the MM.

Excellent point about distance. We were at roughly 15 feet with the 50, which is why I believe the 35 was a better choice for comparison (I think it’s a bit better close). At the time I thought perhaps the 50 close up was a resolution limiting factor. I’m still not sure what the jpg / raw difference means, but I can say when I converted in Photoshop it was obvious the conversion was lightning quick compared to color files, which wasn’t the case with Imatest’s conversion in DCRAW, which is what got me thinking about this

And please link away — comments on this blog teach me more than anything else. That’s a great link, if for no other reason than it’s one of the few times I get Lens Envy. I wish I had one of those

It makes for a difficult comparison once you go to jpg: there’s variation about how much sharpening is applied and there’s the possibility of spurious resolution in some cases (although we saw none of the signs of it here). I can say jpgs are generally 25% to 40% higher resolution than raw files and these were way more than that.

Until I hear back from the people at Imatest, and know exactly what’s going on, though, I’m not sure which numbers involving the MM are real. But looking at the image resolution I’d say it’s close to D800 anyway. Since it’s a Leica camera, though, I’m required to say it has a different look. But actually, it does have a different look. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I think Black and White HDR is kind of a good description.

Roger

Regarding Uncle Mike’s question: Ming Thein did an MM vs. D800E comparison, but take what you will from it, as it’s essentially also a comparison of the new super high resolving 50AA vs. the Nikon 45 f/2.8P. Not sure what your policy is to links, but this is his review: http://blog.mingthein.com/2012/05/27/leica-m-monochrom-vs-d800e/