So I went ahead and got myself a neat Leica M9-P.
This move was totally bonkersville for me because I've been shooting my M240-P happily for 2.5 years and what shortcomings this camera has, it is the M10 lineup that fixes them for me, not M9...
Yet I have gone for M9-P. I will be shooting the two M cameras side-by-side for a while and evaluate things.
There's no denying that M9-P (in silver) must be one of the prettiest digital cameras of all time. Frameline illuminator window, the works. I hope I can find reasons for my purchase other than the looks... Much like some cameras before M9P I bought them for a price that I thought made them safe bets for good reselling later on. If I don't like the M9 experience, I'll sell it for little loss and gain the experience from it.
The first impressions after 24 hours of ownership
I visited a nearby town 90 minutes away where I picked up the camera and a new lens (CV 35/1.4 Classic) and I made it a minivacation by booking a room overnight. It's been a heat wave around here and it wasn't all that easy to spend much time on one's feet but I got my touristy shots and some nice lakescapes. I approximate about 12 hours "shooting time" outside.
Here's the immediate first impressions about M9 for someone who'd been shooting the 3-years-newer model MP240.
This move was totally bonkersville for me because I've been shooting my M240-P happily for 2.5 years and what shortcomings this camera has, it is the M10 lineup that fixes them for me, not M9...
- Better-behaving high ISO. Banding-free 6400 would be nice, banding-free 12500 is even better.
- Quiet shutter is nice.* M10P would be a dream.
- While I don't use live view regularly, M10 models have some improvements there that I could enjoy. Also they have help for tripod work.
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Colors "kept" but lifted shadows from the background and leaves.
Yet I have gone for M9-P. I will be shooting the two M cameras side-by-side for a while and evaluate things.
There's no denying that M9-P (in silver) must be one of the prettiest digital cameras of all time. Frameline illuminator window, the works. I hope I can find reasons for my purchase other than the looks... Much like some cameras before M9P I bought them for a price that I thought made them safe bets for good reselling later on. If I don't like the M9 experience, I'll sell it for little loss and gain the experience from it.
The first impressions after 24 hours of ownership
I visited a nearby town 90 minutes away where I picked up the camera and a new lens (CV 35/1.4 Classic) and I made it a minivacation by booking a room overnight. It's been a heat wave around here and it wasn't all that easy to spend much time on one's feet but I got my touristy shots and some nice lakescapes. I approximate about 12 hours "shooting time" outside.
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Colors "kept intact", applied contrast.
Here's the immediate first impressions about M9 for someone who'd been shooting the 3-years-newer model MP240.
- M9P is slimmer and lighter in hand. But without the thumb grip that I have attached on my MP240 the ergonomics aren't comparable as is.
- The shutter sound is not as loud as people make it to be. It's a very sharp click followed by the whirr. The whirring noise after shot is a nice feedback indicating when the camera will be able to take another exposure. Nice!
- I immediately enabled the soft shutter advance and while it's nice, it could be softer still. I realize there still has to be a two-step shutter because the camera has to wake up before anything can happen. The camera goes to sleep pretty quickly and I have to be constantly wake it up to be ready for action. I didn't miss anything critical but when the camera is asleep the shutter doesn't do anything.
- Despite using the soft shutter feature, my shots using 50mm at 1/60 sec came out mostly blurry from camera shake. M240 is way more dampened and usable. Is it the lighter weight of the camera, is it the shutter mechanism, is it the shutter trigger?
- I tend to shoot a bit more frantically than the usual M shooter but I never encountered the limits of the tiny buffer or the 2 FPS shutter. M240 has a rating for 3 frames per second but in my practical shooting they're very similar.
- The buttons on the back are super nice. The back wheel skips occasionally but is better than what MP240 has.
- But the controls on top: shutter release, shutter speed and drive mode switch are all cheaper-feeling than what M240 has.
- The ISO selector is much nicer than what's on MP240. I can make quick changes in full stops if I want to (and I want to).
- The screen... all the reviews warned me about it but no review could prepare me enough for the reality. The pictures simply cannot be judged from the screen. It's like staring at a bowl of oatmeal, resolution wise.
- ...can't judge color or white balance, can't judge focus, super tough to judge composition, you can just barely judge exposure...
- ...but the highlight clip blinkies are somewhat overly conservative (or/and the sensor is just more clippy) so that even the blinkies shout "false alarm" quite a bit. If I enable the histogram it blocks the view from judging the composition and edges.
- Overall I think I get why Leica didn't make an M9-D: because M9's screen is already so useless that seasoned shooters regard it as good as nonexistent?
- Judging from the screen the DR is abysmal. Much more difficult to make a neat exposure. (Luckily the raws have pretty much recoverability so this is only a problem out in the field when trying to make the optimum compromise.)
- Likewise the sensitivities seem pretty hot for the ISO. (Or the screen is just too limited, rendering tones in a harsh way.)
- The optics in the viewfinder seem a bit unclear to me. M240 has a different coating and probably fares better in the sun. I had marginally more trouble focusing the M9P -- observing the rangefinder patch.
- The framelines of M9P are "much more way off" than what I'm accustomed to with M240.
- I shot almost everything with CV 50 Heliar because it's a known lens and I wanted to evaluate the new lens separately. CV 50 behaves a bit differently on M9 than on M240. It's probably the pixel density that does it. The files are smoother on the M240.
- I don't get many files that have the extremely sharp/crisp pixels that M9 is famously capable of. Then again, I shot my CV50 wide open, no exceptions (maybe one shot is closed down to f/4, out of 500+).
- M9 doesn't record the aperture approximation even to EXIF data? Not a big loss but anyway.
- Red and blue channels tend to clip first and green comes much later.
- More moiré. Explained by the lesser pixel density!
- The files may have that Kodachrome look, I don't know. People love to bash the M240 colors but that's what I have grown to. If in 2012 M240 files had that magenta cast all over, well to my eyes the M9 files have a cyan cast instead.
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Maybe the very cold-running auto white balance of M9P in part contributes to the Kodachrome look? "SOOC" out of camera.
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