There have been a few questions about why the Leica M Monchrom doesn't have the compression options for DNG files that the M8 and the M9 have.
I previously wrote about the Leica M Monochrom's sensor in this post. In summary, what I said was that I doubted that the sensor was simple a "naked sensor" - in order to get reasonable spectral sensitivity, there would have to be a filter of some sort.
My previous two posts about the Fuji X-Pro1 ( here and here) drew some interesting (and amusing) comments on the web. What those comments did show is that there's a lot of misunderstanding about how the relationship between camera manufacturers and software developers works.
Jono Slack over on the L-Camera-Forum was kind enough to post a raw DNG from Leica's new M Monochrom, so I a took a bit of a root around inside it. No surprises - it's very similar to a M9 DNG. For those interested, there's a field level dump of the interesting fields below, but the highlights are:
14 Bit data, much the same as an M9, with non-zero black level Uncompressed DNG version 1.0.0.0, so still the original DNG spec, none of the new stuff Camera name specified as "M9 monochrom" The MakerNote with its lens info still seems to be as for the M9; in this case the lens shows as "Apo-Summicron-M 75mm f/2 ASPH", which is consistent with what Jono reported The famous "blue dot" is still there The only thing that might surprise a few people is the "PhotometricInterpretation: LinearRaw" part. But that's actually quite correct - the way the DNG spec works, you can either set that to CFA (aka a Bayer array type camera) or to LinearRaw. And this sure isn't a CFA camera.
There is one slight side effect of LinearRaw though. When ACR or Lightroom load a normal raw, they apply a tone curve by default. However, with a LinearRaw, they don't. So, for those intent on comparing a M9 image to a M Monochrom image shot side-by-side, be aware that by default they have different tone curves.
I'd guess that once the M Monochrom is shipping ACR and LR will have a built-in M Monochrom camera profile that will probably have a tone curve.
The other issue to be aware of with LinearRaw is that most raw development programs don't support it, so until Aperture, Capture One, etc are updated, don't expect M Monochrom DNGs to load in much except Adobe products.
There's a good article, complete with a step-by-step guide, on using CornerFix with the 15mm Voigtlander Super Wide Heliar f/4.5 Asph. Well worth the read. The photographs are pretty good as well.
Check it out here.
Check it out here.
