That is the interesting thing about photography, what makes a shot work for one person, makes it crap to another. We do not claim to be veteran street photographers, that's for sure. But whether we shot in manual, aperture priority, shutter priority, etc..., is less a matter of ignorance, and more a matter of making the most of the few hours you might have with the gear. In a lot of cases, I think we each embraced the spirit of rangefinder shooting, insofar as, we looked through the viewfinder and focused on the composition more than we worried about perfect settings, potential shutter shake, a little blur, etc...

By the way, I looked through your site, and for what it's worth, I really like your point of view.

Cheers~

@scott everett- I wasn't commenting on the value of street or other samples, only on the studio comparison shots. Those were botched by using the wrong metering mode (the monochrom I used had classic as the factory default, so I am surprised that yours had a different default setting...) and compromised in terms of side-by-side comparison (which is basically the purpose of the studio shots, no?) by not at least anchoring your series with manually selected, known shutter speeds in whole stops. Don't you agree?
Thank you for looking at some of my pictures--very generous comments. I hope you'll take it as a form of compliment that I expect better from dpr's reviews--and again, wasn't commenting on artistic merit or what mode people should use for street photos, just on making studio comparison shots comparable.

There is absolutely nothing appealing about these sample photos. They are bland, muted, uninteresting and detract from any desire to sell or promote this camera. I understand no one wants to throw their best work on the web but buildings focused at infinity, at dusk, do not inspire. I am a lifetime Leica shooter and I would tell Leica marketing to get some "Magnum" professionals behind their gear and show what these cameras can do. It was a huge gamble to create a B/W only camera. Find someone to show us why the idea is sound. I am still using M9s in Ethiopia and Dakar and see no reason to upgrade to a CMOS. I have a Canon 5D Mark ll for that look.

Not to be overly critical, but isn't that a grave injustice on Leica if the fuzziness of the image is just a camera setting you did not have right for the test. When people look at a controlled image like this they expect a fair playing field when making a comparison; particularly with a product line from a company like Leica, which most cannot afford anyway. I might suggest you withdraw the sample tests until you have it fixed.

@HowaboutRAW Not a Leica hater, but the ISO 6400 shots are absolutely not noise free and the banding is absolutely brutal.

Yes I do. Leica make superb lenses, but their sensors are not up there with the best.

That's why I said "recent high-resolution sensor" - think 42MP or more. The ability to pick individual hue's in lightroom etc and increase/decrease their luminosity selectively is a much bigger advantage than increasing "luminosity resolution" from ~ 16-20 MP (starting from 42-50 MP but taking into account the bayer array) to the Monochrom's 24 MP. Add to that that even a physical colour filter will not nearly give you the same level of control on hue luminosity as postprocessing does, and it's clear that this camera doesn't make sense unless one is sentimental for "the good old days".

Greg, with all due respect, that does not make sense.Sensors do not actually capture colour but the values of counted photons. Or in other words Luminance, not colour. Your man in the lab determines what colours you will experience.

ju-ju, I'm trying to understand your comment but I'm not getting there. Do you sometimes take colour images that you convert in post, and how do you do this? Simply desaturating the image will show you the luminosity recorded in each pixel (in case your RAW converter didn't apply curves already), but the real power of digital postprocessing lies in the ability to use channel mixing (on colours or hue's) before discarding colour information. Anyway, I'd be interested in knowing which man in which lab you were talking about :-)

The advantage in the Monochrom is that you can use contrast filters the instant after you press the shutter, you can see their effect and decide to leave the filter on, or take it off. The relatively high Base ISO means that the exposure reduction from using dense filters is relatively minor.The monochrom is aimed squarely at B&W purists, it is not a camera designed for dilettantes.

Your reasoning might have made sense up to two or three years ago, but with the present crop of high-resolution, low-noise (sometimes iso-less) sensors, the penalty to pay for a bayer filter has in practice become negligible. Meaning that yes, the colour channels actually DO give you more control than physical BW filters ever could. But well, the way this discussion is going it looks like we'll have to agree to disagree...

Greg is right in the sense that post conversion of colour to B&W done with channel mixing is like owning an infinite number of filters with non linear responses that you can blend at will after the fact. You can't reproduce the range of possible outcomes by shooting in monochrome. But in many ways, B&W shooting is about the interplay of light and shadow - forcing oneself to see those interplays and highlighting them - in essence it is a colourless process. What this boils down to is the same argument about getting it right when shooting vs. getting it right in post. Neither are right or wrong, they are differences in style, preference and more than likely one will work better than the other in some situations, while it won't really matter in most.

You need to see a Dr, Jon.
It appears you may have sarcasm deficiency.

Canon make more money than everyone else put together. Nikon make decent money. Sony probably make a little money on ILC cameras/lenses (it's hard to tell as the camera division got merged with the very profitable pro video division and they only rarely split out the figures). Leica do okay. GoPro do well.

The negative comments are consistent with just about every new product release shown on DPR, especially if the product is different or makes an unusual claim or costs a lot.

Joe:

Nope, good Sigma lenses don't hold up against good Leicas.

Now good Sigmas are better than weak Leicas, which definitely exist--as used items.

Sigma digital cameras aren't great for shooting moving objects on a street. The Quattros are better than Merrills.

It's hard to use even the Quattros above ISO 400. It's easy to use this Leica at ISO 6400.

Hope you're not one of the "likes" for the interpolation claim. That would be embarrassing.

All NancyP said was that if you wanted a camera with a non-interpolated sensor like the Monochrom, you could buy an inexpensive Sigma - seems a perfectly valid point to me.

HAR -you completely missed the point of the original post...They were pointing out the Sigma accomplishes a similar result, for a bit less cash,
not saying the Leica was interpolated.

EH:

Except the Sigma can't be used at ISO 3200, doesn't have the lenses.

And there is the ambiguity of phrasing, but I guess it reads both ways.