You don’t get that tonal separation though. The photographs from monochrom are visibly smoother, as some say have more of this “pop”. But still, totally agree with your statement.

And who shoots at iso25000 99% of the time????????????

Thanks!

Thank you.

yep I agree and that is so much more interesting than just taking two images with ISO 25000. No one in real life will consider doing this on the "normal" camera. People would try to find a way around. Using low ISO but putting in more effort in post. From my POV it is NOT worth the money going for the Mono version.

like a Fuji X100 in monochrome .... would be something

Exactly, it was more contrast not merely lighter.

Thanks for your positive feedback. Regarding exposure time constraints in dependence on ISO your thoughts are spot on. But, other camera manufacturers don't have such constraints and images are nevertheless good so I wonder for a long time why Leica restricts us here so significantly.

If you are not exclusively shooting B&W, go for the Q2 Reporter. If you exclusively shoot B&W and don't care about color at all, the Q2 Mono is the better choice.

Yes, it is a greatly different image if you shoot on monochrom sensors. Thx for your comment.

@@mathphotographer I am an indie filmmaker considering renting the Q2 monochrome to shoot a clack and white movie in. Would you recommend this over shooting with a Black Magic and converting in post later? Right now, I'm leaning towards shooting with the Q2 Monochrome.

Limits? Who needs color? B/W is the real deal!

Thanks!

Very interesting comment, thanks Alexander. I have a Leica M4 film camera which I use with B&W films and the "atmosphere" you create with B&W film is very special, I agree. I should say that in general I am a digital shooter, grew up with tech from childhood on. Likely you are better positioned to judge about film vs digital sensor since my "film roll" experience is not as broad as my digital shooting experience.

This is my question as well. Have you found any videos or other information on this question?

I sometimes set my Canon R5 to B&W to simulate the Monochom experience and I wonder if I would notice the difference.

Interesting point, many thanks. I need to dig deeper to look into what you suggest to explore.

@@mathphotographer looking forward to your feedback...

@@GiancarloBenzina Thanks, that’s not often experience with Foveon is found. I have read a lot about Foveon,s fantastic BW photo and even color. Yes it depends on what photographer you are, me as a fine-art taking one picture at a time photographer could maybe live with a Sigma camera. I read somewhere else that printing pictures from Foveon I fantastic. I am in process to buy a new monitor (Benq) and printer soon.

T L - yes my thought exactly, you gain one thing with the Q2 Mono but give up the advantage of Post conversion to B&W from colour: the tonal placement and gradation control from a digital colour file, which is a pity as it has such outstanding native colour separation for you to work with. My pet interest is towards "longscale" gradation, that was a look achieved with 5"x4" (or even better 10x8) medium speed B&W negative film developed in tanning developers. The high ISO world is fantastic but that is another thing.

I think the reason is this: 1. The Monochrom Sensor without Beyer Filter delivers a full greyscale from black to white for each pixel. e.g. the furniture is brown, zoom in until you see a 4x4 pixel pattern, they will share the same greyscale, means they all look the same 2. The Beyer Filter of the color version creates a Pattern of 2x green, 1x blue, 1x red. These four pixel must deliver a brown color combined to one new color pixel in the same example at the furniture. Lets jump into a basic color pattern were each of the 4 beyer pixels have full green, blue, red tones. Convert it to monochrome and the 2 green pixels become 100% white, and the red and blue pixels convert to 50% grey. So the green pixels always tend to white (at the lowest green value the convert to 50% grey as the lowest b/w value I think ...sorry not sure about it. Thats why the conversion overall looks brighter but when you go for a perfect 50% grey area like the whine bottle these look similar. Thats also why you have more noise, because green is now white or 50%+ grey. Thats also why you think the resolution of the noise or grain or pixels look 4times higher on the monochom version while they both have 40MP ...or 48 here I dont know the resolution of the Q sensors. ...it is all because the green. Overall lessons learned: shot with a color version and do plain mono conversion you are fine ...adjust from hell and you will fail. PS: Micro Contrast is the same game

@@bodofelusch interesting and technical answer. Thx Bodo. Just one last question : what do you call plain conversion ?

@@philmtx3fr I mean a simple bw conversion only, without adjusting colors individually

Yeah exactly. Just clicking the B&W button isn't a realistic comparison because anyone who knows what they are doing is going to do other processing, at the very least adjust the contrast and adjust the B&W conversion color sliders. By shooting on a B&W camera you give up those sliders and loose a HUGE amount of creative control. Even filters at capture do not have the latitude of adjustment the sliders do. And is more expensive, and time consuming, and eats your light, and is more stuff you gotta lug around. A monochrome digital camera+filters is just worse in pretty much every way if you think about it objectively. Unless you enjoy a more hands on analogue process and prefer using the filters and are willing to accept less creative control over the look of the final image to get it. But in that case I say just shoot B&W film if you want to use a film like workflow. Especially if you're also going to the trouble and expense of using B&W M10-D/converted to simulate a film camera as much as possible. I feel like just let the film cameras be film cameras and let the digital cameras be digital cameras.

@@josh885 You gain an enormous amount of light sensitivity, there is no Bayer and low pass filter in front of the sensor. The four RGB pixels are now used for just registering light intensity, he clearly demonstrated that less noise as a result. This is giving you enormous creative opportunities, shooting in low light with fast shutter speeds. You keep playing with your sliders, these Monochrom camera's are the real deal. It is a niche market, not a gimmick.

@@josh885 Not true at all. I shoot a Q and a Q2M. I can assure you that I have full creative control of the Q2M files, including use of the sliders in Lightroom. I lack the use of many presets, but using them is giving creative control to Adobe's software engineers. And, I shoot street t night quite often where the Q2M is king.

There is a comparison on a French website "les numériques" and the Q2M has a clear advantage over the M10M. But I'll be glad to see a comparison by Math.

@@FrankWestPR Many thanks for your precious info 👍

I actually looked it up the review you mentioned and used Google translate. The difference between the two cameras on High ISOs are so big, it makes me skeptical of their test methodology. Id love to see what math’s findings are.

@@missbaorestarauntcocktailb9615 Well, the Q2 sensor is more recent so it would make sens, and it shows what the M11 Monochrome capabilities could be 😂

Thanks for your thoughts, Karl. Leica does not make their own post-processing software but bundle their cameras with Lightroom from Adobe. Typically in their camera boxes you find a voucher for Lightroom. They collaborate with Adobe to get best possible compatibility. To make an example, if you want to use automatic perspective control on a Leica M11, you NEED to use Lightroom to get it to work. So Lightroom is THE software for Leica cameras and Leica and Adobe have a long-year cooperation.

Thanks for your comment and yes on dynamic range, I could have spend more time on it. On the Q2 Summilux lens I am not sure that it really "limits" the sensor except that Summilux lenses are typically a bit less sharp and crisp than Summicron lenses. If you refer to this, then I agree: a Leica Apo-Summicron lens would get even more out of the sensor :)

As said in the video, the B&W conversion yields good outcomes in most of the cases. If you want to push the envelope on B&W, then the monchom sensor is an excellent choice.

agreed, it reminded me of Hasselblad X1D vs A7RIV comparisons, the full frame comparisons were higher contrasted I'd call them 'glossy' by comparison. Seeing the flatter Q2M image made me happy :)

Possible, thanks for sharing your observation.

Fully agree!

Did you see the 25000 ISO part?

@@PaulHobbs23 If you want to shoot at 25000 I guess its worth it to you, I have a camera that can make usable images some say to 25000, I never go past 3200, 6400 on rare occasions. I find this obsession to crop in 2-300% on KZfaq to make a point is often made by "content creators" not photographers

@@longrider9551 yeah I’m never going to buy one of these cameras but it’s interesting how much better a monochrome sensor can be in low light.

@@PaulHobbs23 Im never gonna criticize someone else's choice for a camera, after all its their money, it just irks me a little the people the masses rely on for information don't do a very good job. While I appreciate the historical place Leica has, I also think they heavily market that street café, scarf wearing lifestyle some find appealing. When you get down to brass tacks most of the components are all made in the same factories and assembled with a different wrapper and some software tweaks. I would like to see more people focus on the photographers ability to create some magic, rather than selling the masses the camera he or she made the magic with

@@longrider9551 ok but that's not relevant to the technical superiority of monochrome in low light. You'd think it would be at most 1-2 stops better but it seems more like 5+ stops better at reducing noise.