My Journey with the MM....

raumplan

Many of us here use the MM, I'll start by sharing some of my feelings toward it after using it for a year and accumulating 8000 clicks on the clock.  Feel free to chime in!

Anyway, the MM is my first digital leica, I have had no PP and RAW experience before owning it.  To me, it will never be able to replace black and white film but it gives me a greater flexibility to do things I wasn't able to do before, for example using the elmar as my night time lens.  The wide dynamic range still touches my heart!

There is always a love-hate relationship in anything!  As much as I like the MM, there are many silly things that make me hate it too!  Bandings can be easily produced in base ISO (guess at the same time its easy to avoid).  Even after the firmware update, the discreet mode sometimes still behave strangely.  And for some reasons I get shaky photos much easier with the MM, etc.....the list goes on to be honest.  

But since the A7(r) is not as promising as I anticipated it, I guess I'll be using the MM for a long while.  When I need colors, I whip out my iP5s or my resurrected X100!

To end, here is one of the very first photos I took when I got the MM

raumplan

and one of the recent photos (repost):

vincecharus

I got used to MM after only about one month of using it.  People say it has the same sensor as M9's, but they don't behave exactly in the same way.  In my experience, MM has more dynamic range than M9, particular in highlight.  Most of my MM pics so far do not use the whole MM dynamic range towards the highlight end, while most of my M9 pics so far needs almost the entire M9 dynamic range (including some clipping).

For high resolution, in my experience M9 has about one more stop of usable high ISO than M9, usable up to about ISO 1250 (comparing with ISO 640 with M9).  If grain is not a major concern, I have taken usable pictures at ISO 6400.  ISO 6400 + f/1.4 is a very potent combination in extreme low light, as long as one can still focus properly with the rangefinder.

MM will be my main camera for a long time to come (at least next 2-3 years).  M9 will be my backup camera for color shots.

So far, I can't think of anything really bad to say about MM.  All cameras have strengths and weaknesses, but MM suits me really well.  When I use it, I stop thinking about cameras and lenses and stuff but instead focus on taking pictures.  For me, that's the ultimate proof of successful camera design!

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MM + 90/2AA (ISO 6400, f/2, 1/180s)

vincecharus

MM + 90/2AA (ISO 1250, f/2, 1/180s)

raumplan

Nice Vincecharus hing.

vincecharus

raumplan 發表於 2013-11-8 15:57
Nice Vincecharus hing.

Nice thread raumplan c-hing!

Btw, where is ghost???

鬼啊，鬼啊，來吹下啦！

raumplan

yeah, what happened to Ghost? haven't seen him in a while.