- The camera is using what appears to be production software - version 1.0.0.4.
- The camera name shows as "LEICA M MONOCHROM (Typ 246)"
- The image data is 12-bit. There is no compression used in the DNG I looked at. The data is packed, four 12-bit values in 6 bytes, as is the case for the Leica T.
- The DNG version is 1.3, with a "backward version" of 1.1. There is nothing in the file that goes beyond the DNG 1.1 specifications; no opcodes, etc.
- The DNG is encoded as "LinearRaw" ("PhotometricInterpretation: LinearRaw"), as was the original Monochrom. 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 are a few EXIF string fields that aren't properly terminated. This isn't usually a problem as most software will still be able to correctly read the fields, but it's kind of sloppy work by Leica.
Generally, the DNG seems to be quite standard - it happily works with current versions of all of my software - PhotoRaw, AccuRaw and AccuRaw Monochrome "out of the box".
It's a little surprising that the file is 12 bit. Actually, with a white level of 3750, true bit depth is slightly less than 12-bits. This is lower than the 14 bits of the original M Monochrom, although in practice its very unlikely that anyone will notice a difference.
A fairly frequent complaint about the original Monochrom and one that seems to again be coming up with regard to the new one is that the images appear flat. Something that I mention back when the original Monochrom came out is that there is one slight side effect of LinearRaw. When ACR or Lightroom load a normal raw, they apply a tone curve by default. However, with a LinearRaw, they don't. (AccuRaw, AccuRaw Monochrom and PhotoRaw do apply a tone curve by default, btw.) There is no law as to whether tone curves on monochrome images are required or not, but when comparing images, it's important to compare apples to apples.......
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