True black and white image sensor. Live View with focus peaking. ISO 25000 support. Sharp rear LCD with sapphire glass cover. Bright optical viewfinder with rangefinder patch. Brass and magnesium construction. Dust and moisture resistant. Includes Adobe Lightroom license.
The manual focus, black and white-only Leica M Monochrom (Typ 246) rangefinder camera isn't for everyone. But if it's for you, you'll love it.
You have to hand it to Leica for being bold enough to put the resources into releasing a niche version of its already niche M (Typ 240). The M Monochrom (Typ 246) is the second iteration of the black and white digital rangefinder, following in the footsteps of the trailblazing M Monochrom, first released in 2012. The new Typ 246 ($7,450, body only) updates the technology inside to better stay in step with the modern world, adding a rear LCD, Live View, and video recording to the classically designed camera. It's a lovely choice for photographers who see the world in black and white, as it offers some real advantages over shooting with a color camera. Our Editors' Choice in the full-frame mirrorless category is the much more mainstream Sony Alpha 7 II, but for rangefinder devotees it's no substitute.
Design and FeaturesLeica hasn't made any radical changes to the basic design of M cameras in the past 60 years, so it's no surprise that the Monochrom is nearly identical to the top-end color M rangefinder, the M-P (Typ 240). It measures 3.2 by 5.5 by 1.7 inches (HWD), but is heavy for its size at 1.5 pounds. The weight is due to the materials used in the M's design; it has a magnesium alloy body with brass top and bottom plates. Leica offers the Monochrom as a black body only; unlike the M and M-P it is a black chrome finish rather than black paint. Black chrome is more durable and won't wear away to show the brass underneath with use. The chrome also has a more matte look, as opposed to the glossy black paint that Leica uses in its color Typ 240 cameras.
The M's viewfinder and coupled rangefinder focus system set the Monochrom apart from other mirrorless cameras. The finder is fixed, capturing the world at a wide-angle 0.68x magnification. Depending on which lens you attach, frame lines are projected to show you the field of view that it will capture. The Monochrom has three pairs of lines: 28mm and 90mm, 35m and 135mm, and 50mm and 75mm. A preview lever sits on the front plate and is most comfortably activated using your left hand; it allows you to override the automatically projected lines. The thought is that you can get an idea about how a different lens would capture a scene without having to change lenses.
Older digital (and all film) M bodies use ambient light to illuminate frame lines. The Monochrom (Typ 246) uses LED lights instead. There's some good and bad with that method. The good is that the frame lines are visible even in very dark environments, and you can choose between white and red lines. The downside is that the Monochrom must be turned on to view the frame lines. What's a definite improvement over the original Monochrom is frame line accuracy—the older version of the camera had frame lines that were optimized for fairly close focus (about 3 feet), which means that they weren't that accurate when focusing on more distant objects. The new Typ 246 has frame lines that are most accurate at about 6 feet, which gives you a better setting for most photographs. If you are focusing very close (Leica lenses are generally limited to about 2.3 feet), you'll find that your frame is narrower than what the lines show, but you can always switch to Live View for a truly a ccurate preview of your shot.
Focus peaking, which highlights in-focus areas of your image in red, is available when working in Live View. You can use the rear LCD to work in this mode, or frame shots using the optional Visoflex EVF2 electronic viewfinder ($568). If you can still find an Olympus VF-2, which is no longer in production, that will work as well. You can also magnify the view of the frame—pressing the silver control button on the face plate (easily reached with your right index finger when holding the camera) will magnify it by 5x or 10x. The rear control wheel toggles the magnification factor, but only the exact center of the frame can be magnified—you can't change the area as you can with most other mirrorless cameras.
When not working in Live View, the front control button and rear wheel are used in conjunction to dial in exposure compensation. It's adjustable in third-stop increments from -3 to +3 EV. If you prefer direct control over EV, you can change a setting (via the menu) and use the rear wheel for direct adjustment, without the need to hold the front button while turning it. The lens release is the other silver button on the front of the body. Like all digital M cameras, the lens mount has an optical scanner that reads a 6-bit code on modern Leica lenses to identify the lens, save that information in the EXIF data, and perform optical corrections that improve image quality at the edges of the frame. If you're using a lens that isn't coded you can manually select it from a list of lenses stored in the camera. That's helpful if you regularly shoot with an older lens, or are using a Leica R or another manual focus SLR lens via a mechanical adapter.
The top plate is largely bare on one side, housing just the internal microphone at the far left. The hot shoe sits in the middle; a protective cover is included to cover both it and the accessory port that sits below the shoe. You'll want to leave the cover on as it completes the M's dust and splash protection. The shutter speed dial sits to the right of the shoe (it can be adjusted from 8 seconds through 1/4,000-second and also has automatic and bulb settings). The power switch and shutter release are next in line; the switch controls the drive mode as well with Single, Continuous, and Self-Timer positions. And finally there's the silver M button that starts and stops video recording.
A column of buttons sits to the left of the rear LCD (Live View toggle, Play, Delete, ISO, Menu, and Set). Most are self-explanatory, although you should be aware that in addition to confirming choices, Set is used to launch a single page menu that allows for adjustment of ISO, image and video quality settings, exposure settings, and user profiles. A directional pad with center Info button sits to the right of the LCD, just below the rear control wheel.
The rear display is a 3-inch LCD with a 921k-dot resolution. Despite the M being a black and white camera, it is a color panel. You can see this in menus, or if you opt to use red focus peaking, or when reviewing images shot with a sepia, blue, or selenium tint (all three are available in-camera, and can be applied subtly or strongly). You'll have no issues reviewing photos to confirm focus and framing using the LCD, and you won't have to worry about scratching it thanks to its sapphire glass protective cover.
The're no Wi-Fi here—Leica has put it in more recent ground-up designs, including the full-frame Q—but it does support wireless memory cards like the Eyefi Mobi Pro. The brass bottom plate limits the range of the Eyefi card, but it does include a cutout (covered by rubber) over the card slot. If your phone is next to the Monochrom during Eyefi transfers they'll work without issue.
Performance and Image Quality
The Typ 246 isn't the first black and white digital camera to hit the market, but it's one of only a handful. It's easy enough to desaturate a color digital image, and software like Silver Efex Pro (which was included in the first Monochrom, but not with this one) can add grain effects to simulate many classic film stocks if you're going for that look. So why buy a camera that doesn't shoot in color?
From a technical perspective, a black and white image sensor captures more detail than a color sensor because there's no need to interpolate detail in images. Each and every one of the Monochrom's 24 million pixels captures information. With a color sensor there's a Bayer filter that makes each pixel sensitive to either blue, green, or red, and the camera's image processor (or the Raw converter of your choice) interpolates the missing color information to create a full-color image. I set up a quick shot on my kitchen table with both the M (Typ 240) and the Monochrom, shooting a static subject at f/8 with the Summilux-M 50mm f/1.4 ASPH.. I desaturated the color image and took a close look at the photos side by side in Lightroom. There's no question that the Monochrom shows more detail; it's especially notable in the printed pattern at the edge of a Kleenex box; the dots from the color printing process are distinct and visible in the Monochrom image, but blur together in the shot captured by the M (Typ 240). The image below is a magnified view of a side-by-side comparison of the two images; the Monochrom is on the left and the M (Typ 240) on the right.
But it's not just the resolution advantage—although if you try to capture texture with your work, and often print images, that's certainly a selling point. The Monochrom is able to recover details in both highlight and shadows that color sensors can't quite manage, and has a big advantage in low light. Its image sensor has a base ISO rating of 320 (compared with 200 for the M—the Bayer sensor cuts out some incoming light) and can be pushed as high as ISO 25000. The M (Typ 240) is only able to be pushed to ISO 6400.
Imatest tells us the Typ 246 keeps noise under 1.5 percent through ISO 1600 when shooting JPG images at default settings. That's not a great result for a color camera, but since there is no color noise to speak of, the noise is much more like film grain. I took a close look at images from our ISO test sequence (and have included pixel-level crops in the slideshow that accompanies this review) and, to my eye, JPG images show very strong detail through ISO 6400. There's a slight drop fidelity at ISO 12500 and 25000.
The Monochrom also captures Raw image in DNG format. Raw files retain more data than JPGs, so you have more room to open up shadows and make other exposure adjustments. And there's no noise reduction applied, so you can shoot all the way through ISO 25000 and capture images with crisp detail—although noise is noticeable when pushing the camera that far. But even at the top ISO, it's a fairly fine pattern, not far off from what you'd get with a good ISO 400 film stock.
One disadvantage to the sensor's ISO 320 base sensitivity is photography in brightly lit conditions. The Typ 246 has a shutter that can fire as quickly as 1/4,000-second, so it can be a challenge to shoot at wider apertures—especially if you use the 50mm Noctilux-M f/0.95 ASPH. ($10,995). A yellow filter is always a good idea for black and white photography, so you may want to opt for a stronger one that cuts out more light—they vary from 1/2-stop to 2 stops of light loss. But a 3-stop neutral density filter is also a good option if you want to shoot at a wide aperture, especially if you're shooting with the intent of capturing a bit of motion blur in images.
Video is recorded at 1080p or 720p quality at 24 or 25 frames per second. Those frame rates give footage a cinematic look, but you don't have the option of recording at a more traditional 30fps, which delivers smoother motion. Images are crisp, but show the rubber effect associate with a rolling shutter during quick pans and when recording fast motion. The M has an internal microphone, but you'll want to add the Microphone Adapter Set ($195), which plugs into the accessory port and mounts in the hot shoe, for more serious video work. Aside from the shoe and accessory port, the Monochrom doesn't have any sort digtal ports. The SD/SDHC/SDXC memory card slot is accessed by removing the baseplate. There is an optional Multifunctional Handgrip ($895) that replaces the baseplate and adds a front grip, GPS, and USB port.
ConclusionsTechnical reasons aside, there's also a certain mindset that goes with picking up a camera that shoots only in black and white. Sure, you can set your SLR or point-and-shoot to capture monochrome images, but the temptation is always there to turn it off—and if shoot in Raw format, images from a color camera will always be in color. Using the Monochrom is not unlike loading an M3 with a roll of Tri-X. although you don't have the option to change to color after 36 exposures.
When I shoot with the Typ 246, and when I've used the original Monochrom in the past, I remember how much I appreciate the purity of black and white shooting. Of course, there are subjects for which color is a better choice. But after a few weeks with the Monochrom in my hands I started to see more shots in black and white, even when holding a camera that shoots in color. My position is a little bit out of the ordinary, as I'm often shooting with the intention of using shots as art to run in my reviews, and a black and white conversion isn't indicative of the look a particular camera or lens is going to deliver. But if I were shooting for myself alone, I wouldn't discount choosing the Monochrom as my primary camera. Paul Simon was wrong; not everything looks worse in black and white.
But let's not forget that the Leica M Monochrom (Typ 246) is, for most of us, an expensive camera. Leica did cut its cost when compared with its predecessor, but $7,450 is nothing to sneeze at. And if you've got a serious investment in M glass, or simply don't see the EVF offered by the Sony Alpha 7 II (or one of its sibling) as an reasonable alternative to a true rangefinder, you'll need to spend Leica money to scratch that itch. Color Leicas, even the current M (Typ 240) are more readily available on the used market, but it's rare to find even the original Monochrom at a substantial discount.
That's good news for photographers who own the original Monochrom and are mulling an upgrade. It's held its value pretty well, which makes the idea moving up to the Typ 246 a bit easier to stomach. And there are real benefits to upgrading—you get frame lines that are more accurate at common shooting distances, a battery with a much higher capacity, a modern rear LCD, video support, and a higher top ISO for low light photography. Those perks are also reason to choose the Typ 246 over the original Monochrom if you're shopping for a new camera.
The Leica M Monochrom (Typ 246) may have a narrow appeal, but photographers who work exclusively in black and white are in for a real treat. Its sensor does a better job capturing fine texture than the color equivalent, there's plenty of latitude to bring out details in shadows and recover information from highlights when working in Raw format, and it excels in dim conditions. It's easy to fall in love with the Monochrom; I certainly have. But I'm not quite willing to call it Editors' Choice; the Sony Alpha 7 II is a much more affordable (and practical) option for photographers who want a compact full-frame camera that can use Leica M lenses, and the M (Typ 240) is also there for rangefinder devotees who wish to shoot in color. But if you always kept a freezer full of Tri-X, with nary a roll of Portra to be found, the Typ 246 is the camera that you've been waiting for.
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By Jim Fisher Senior Analyst, Digital Cameras Senior digital camera analyst for the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team, Jim Fisher is a graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he concentrated on documentary video production. Jim's interest in photography really took off...
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Source: Leica M Monochrom (Typ 246)
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