Leica M9 Digital Rangefinder

Leica M9 Digital Rangefinder

What a pleasure it is to shoot this camera! A friend of mine (thanks, Marsh) was kind enough to loan me his for my recent trip out west.

For me, this is the ultimate stills camera - built like a tank, feels great in your hand and at your eye, and it's the only full frame digital camera that fits in your jacket pocket. Even the sound of the shutter is pleasing. The M9 is everything that's great about a classic rangefinder - small size, low profile, super accurate focus - with the immediacy of digital. But with a list price of 7995 USD and lenses ranging from $2000-7000, it's definitely not a cheap system to get into.

We've seen these charts 1000 times already but the appeal of the M9 is obviously that big fat sensor so here it is in context -

Another advantage of the digital Leica experience is the wealth of vintage, manual focus M Mount lenses available for it. You can find decent deals on Leica and Voigtlander glass from vendors such as Tamarkin and Keh Camera but they still aren't cheap - the average cost of a used lens being over $1000. When I had the camera, I was working with a lovely old, uncoated 35mm Leica lens with a soft focus similar in quality to a 1/2 Pro Mist. It's a lot of fun experimenting with old lenses but in a digital, raw format. 

The specs at a glance -

- 18 Megapixels

- Full-Frame 35mm CCD Sensor

- 2.5" LCD

- Classic Rangefinder Design

- Intuitive Controls

- Quiet, Metal Blade Shutter

- High Sensitivity (ISO 2500)

- M Mount Compatible 

QUALITY!

Menus and functionality are simple and intuitive. A person with a basic working knowledge of digital photography can be up and running on this camera in minutes.

When I think of Leica, I think of mechanical and optical excellence and not necessarily sensors and image processing. For digital, this is obviously the other half of the equation and while I'm not dissappointed, I'm not overly impressed with this camera's low light performance. You start to pick up noise at 800 ISO and at 1600, it's pretty bad. It's not the ugliest noise I've seen and I suppose in some regard it has its own artistic merit but for what you're spending on this camera, one would hope to have more flexibility with the ISO. Canon and Nikon have been at the forefront of sensor design and image processing and the sensitivity / low light resolution in their latest batch of DSLR's has been remarkable. You will not find performance like this with the M9 sadly. The sensor in this camera is the Kodak KAF-18500 CCD, interestingly enough a 2/3" iteration of this same sensor is found in the Silicon Imaging SI-2K motion picture camera. 

Enough yammering, some shots - 

Higher Res Versions are available in my Stills Gallery >>>

2 Clarifications -

2 Clarifications -

Regarding the syncing of audio to video files - In the United States, this is the job of the assistant editor. Really, no person on the set should be asked to do this as it's someone else's jurisdictionally protected job. This may be the case but it certainly hasn't stopped producers and interestingly enough, editorial houses from requesting that it be done. However like many other recent developments, the whole topic has become a bit of a gray area. We'll see how it all shakes out. I would not encourage anyone to violate any rules or regulations or to do the work of someone else if asked. How you choose to use any software or hardware discussed on this site is completely up to you.

In my previous post on Resolve Lite, I said it's great for generating a production's "deliverables" on the set. What I should have said is "editorial media" which is the most commonly requested deliverable. Resolve excels at this but isn't the best solution out there for creating multiple files sets simulataneouly with burn in's, etc. There are several dedicated systems available that can do this with far greater efficiency. We'll take a closer look at those on this site in the near future.

James Cameron's "3D Rules"

James Cameron's "3D Rules"

1. There is no screen

2. Stereo is very subjective

3. Analyzing stereospace on freeze frames can be misleading

4. Convergence CANNOT fix stereo-space problems

5. Convergence is almost always set on the eyes of the actor talking

6. Interocular distance varies in direct proportion to subject distance from the lens shots

7. Interocular and convergence should both vary dynamically throughout moving shots

8. In a composite, the foreground and background may want to have different interoculars

9. When stereo looks bad to the eye (visual cortex) it is important to eliminate the problems sequentially: Sync, reverse stereo, Vertical mismatch, color/density mismatch, render errors, highlights, image warping, vibrations

10. Some shots just can't be fixed

via Stereoscopy News

Update

on 2012-02-05 02:17 by Ben Cain

I'll add my own 3D Rule to this list -

When troubleshooting alignment, start at the front of the lens and work your way back. Check for lash and that the cameras are securely and correctly seated on their plates. You can end up wasting a lot of time futzing with the rig and mirror when alignment and calibration problems are often lens motors that are too close to the mirror box or a camera that isn't fully seated or correctly seated on its dovetail.