CAMERA TEST
The colour-free version of Leica’s most modern M camera, the Leica M11 Monochrom offers black & white fans a truly unique experience, says Damien Demolder
It’s easy to understand how a digital camera that costs over £8,000 but can only shoot black & white pictures might seem the height of foolishness to many people. That the Leica M11 Monochrom is the fifth no-colour camera launched by the company in the past 11 years perhaps demonstrates that either Leica is a glutton for punishment, or there really is a market for this kind of product. Crazy or not, Leica holds something of a monopoly in this area, as no other brand has previously seen fit to apply itself to this artistic little niche, although Pentax has recently announced a K-3 III Monochrome. There is a very healthy level of activity in digital black & white photography, but only these two firms ask that we devote ourselves absolutely to the form.
While most black & white fans choose to shoot in colour and convert later, the Leica Monochrom series offers those really dedicated to an existence without colour far better image quality in return for their commitment. With no coloured filters on the pixels they gather more light, and without the need to aggregate their findings to produce a coloured image, each pixel acts on its own to provide much greater resolution of detail than would be possible from the same number of pixels under a Bayer pattern filter array.
Previous models have demonstrated that the principle is sound and effective, and that image quality benefits a great deal. This new version advances the idea in two new directions – with a greater resolution, more modern sensor, and with all the up-to-date features and functions of the company’s excellent M11 camera platform.
Features
The Leica M11 Monochrom is a 60.4MP rangefinder camera that only records monochromatic images. Of course, all digital cameras can be used to create black & white images from their colour captures simply by removing the colour in software, but the way the Monochrom is designed delivers superior resolution. In a normal digital camera, the readings from the sensor’s red, green and bluesensitive pixels have to be demosaiced to determine the output at each pixel in the final image. But with a monochrome sensor, each pixel reports individually. As a result, Leica claims we should expect detail resolution 100% greater from the Monochrom than from a standard colour sensor.
This camera gives users a choice of DNG raw files and/or JPEGs, and gives us a choice of three pixel counts for our full-frame raw and JPEG images in case the full-size files prove larger than necessary. When smaller images will do, we can
