The thing which struck me most about the M11 (..besides it being the fastest route to Cambridge from east of London..)[footnote]The M11 motorway, that is. In Britain, we have a motorway, freeway, Autobahn (call it what you will) for just about every M camera ever made, save for the -Ps and -Ds and suchlike[/footnote] is that its sensor and pixel count, as we all know, have been bumped up to sixty. But the viewfinder — the thing you use to focus an image onto those 60 mega dots — hasn’t been upgraded since 1954’s original M3 (another road, this one to Winchester).
No: correction; it’s actually been downgraded since ’54: the original Leica M3 finder shows a view at 90% of lifesize, but the M11 shows everything reduced down to 70% lifesize: further away, smaller, and less easy to focus.
Upgrade a ’54 car engine, make it more powerful, faster to accelerate; upgrade the tyres to radial instead of cross-ply; update the rest (smoother gearbox, springs, drive mechanism) but leave the BRAKES as they were, with old-style internal drum shoes (which notoriously ‘fade’ the harder they’re squeezed) and what have you got? Disaster, no less.
It drives fast, but it can’t stop fast.
I thought I’d check all this — the usefulness of the almost 70-year-old glass ‘M’ finder — when Mike (our Editor) and I went for a walk along the Thames the other week, with a Leica M11 and a few other cameras. We took some photos.
I took a few of the Old Ship pub, facing the river where the rowing eights were practising, to see if I could get its sign in sharp focus with the M11’s old-style 70% finder:
The thing about 60 megapixels squeezed into the same overall sensor area as, say, the 24MP of the M10, or the 12MP of Sony’s A7S full-frame cameras, is that with every pixel being so very small, you really do need extremely accurate focusing if elements of the image are not to “spill” across several groups of pixels, which would drop the resolution down to about 24 or maybe 12 MPs.
All these scores of megapixels sound great but the real resolution is always about a quarter of anything that’s claimed (unless you’re using a Sigma Foveon) because the final photo is always a blend of a red, a green, a blue, plus another green, adjacent pixels. So 60 MP blended to form a single photograph actually consists of about 15 million pixels overall — if you’re lucky. But 15 doesn’t sound as impressive as 60, huh?
That’s the situation for colour photos. But for B&W — as on the Leica monochrome cameras, which have no colour filter arrays — every pixel delivers a unit of B&W information, and so the 40MP resolution of, say, the Leica M10 Monochrom really is a full 40 megapixels. And with no averaged camera ‘guesswork’ of what colours or B&W values ought to be at individual pixel photosites, it can deliver — so the maker’s description says — up to ISO 100,000.
Unless the camera’s – or photographer’s – focus is accurate enough, with any fine-detail subject you’re shooting, you may as well just use a fewer-pixels camera and get exactly the same result.
Eye test first
Similarly, getting your eyes tested, and maybe buying new glasses for £250, may give you better images with your existing rangefinder than you’d get by splashing out the best part of £8,000 on that newer one! Aren’t I a spoilsport?
The same is true with camera-shake: if a high pixel-count camera isn’t held steady enough, your image can shake onto adjacent pixels, thus halving – at least – or quartering your resolution. So, instead of shooting at 1/50th sec with, say, a 50mm lens, you’d really need to shoot at about 1/150th or 1/200th sec.
Why autofocus, and why all these different cameras? To see how focusing with them compares with focusing the manual M11, and which would give the sharpest, best-focused image.
I took along – altogether – the previous model M10-P, a previous M9, a 42MP Sony A7RMkII, a 12MP Sony A7S, a Ricoh GXR with its 12MP Leica ‘M’ module, a 6MP Epson R-D1, a 5MP Leica Digilux-2 with its built-in Leica zoom lens, and – just for fun – a 2MP Fuji Finepix 40i pocket camera from the year 2000, which gives 4.3MP photos by ‘interpolation’, that is, by guessing what’s hidden between its interlocking diamond-shaped pixels – oh, and it also doubles as an .mp3 player!
Image stabilisation
My original thoughts were that if the viewfinder’s not good enough to focus incredibly accurately, then it’s pointless to buy an M11. The increased resolution of the new Visoflex 2 electronic finder for the M11 is meant to cope with this need to focus extremely accurately when using 60 megapixels. Plus it gives, at last, stabilisation of the electronic finder when it’s zoomed in.
I thought, for comparison, I should use an original M3 (with its 90% life-size finder) but my stock of colour film being past its use-by date, I employed the same (kept chilled) roll of B&W Ilford XP2 at ISO 125. It should give really fine grain and should show how accurate the combination of viewfinder-plus-eyesight is.
After a couple of tests with the 80%-lifesize-finder M7 and the 90%-lifesize M3, I used the same roll of film (I wound it out of the camera, put it into at the next one, and shot black shots till I was back at the previous shutter count) for more test shots with (A) an old Diax rangefinder, and its famously sharp Schneider Xenar 50mm f/2.8 lens, (B) a small 1952 Barnack-style Leica IIIf which has a conveniently larger-than-lifesize 150%-magnification finder, using a 1953 50mm f/1.5 Leica Summarit lens, (C) a bit of auto-focus accuracy with a ‘Contax’ (Yashica) G2 with its superb interchangeable Zeiss 45mm lens. (I used the same lens on a Sony digital A7SMkII as well, to test that result against Sony’s own-brand brilliantly good 55mm E-mount lens.)
Now here’s the difference between focusing a 50mm lens on something – a cat, for example – eight feet away, as seen through the finder of the M10 or M11.
Let’s re-position that focusing rectangle over the cat’s face, without all the frame-line clutter…
Which is what you get, of course, with the stabilised rear screen, and stabilised, electronically magnified Visoflex 2 finder!
Cat focus
So what’s the difference in results, then, between focusing on the cat with the normal M11 rangefinder, and using the magnified electronic finder? Here’s the result after I’d focused as accurately as possible, at eight feet, with that 50mm lens, using the traditional glass M11 rangefinder, and then viewing the image with the magnified Visoflex:
The trouble is, though, that if using a 90mm lens to make the cat look ‘closer’ and to fill more of the frame with it, the rangefinder is no more accurate with a 90mm lens than with a 50mm or any other lens. Actually, less accurate! (That’s due to the gearing ratio used within the lens to convert a large change of barrel length as you focus, into a small change of cam movement inside the camera to superimpose those rangefinder images.)
So, with less depth-of-field of a 90mm lens (at the same aperture as a 50mm), accurate focusing becomes much more crucial. But you cannot get increased accuracy with the traditional ‘M’ rangefinder. In fact, the opposite is true! That’s why the zoomable Visoflex 2 electronic viewfinder is so important.
Aperture choice
Let’s see what apertures Jono used for his demo shots in the article “The Leica M11 after seven months of testing”… f/6.8 (distant shot), well, everything should be, and is, in sharp focus. f/11 (close-ish shot, deep depth-of-field) everything in sharp focus. f/4.8 (medium close shot) tricky to get sharp, but he’s nailed it. f/4 (distant shot); f/3.4 (distant shot); f/5.6 (medium shot); f/16 (medium-ish shot); f/2.8 – ah, now we’re getting to where accuracy really counts.. 35mm lens, at five feet away? Next: f/2 35mm close-up, but only a central zone of those fish is in focus, so which bit was he aiming for? We don’t know. Then, f/11 (extreme distance), f/4.8 35mm (close-ish); f/4 35mm (food close-up – sharp!); f/5.6 35mm (close-up, sharp!); f/6.8 35mm (mid-close); f/4.8 75mm (distant); f/2.4 35mm (distant-ish); f/8 35mm (medium); f/2 35mm (close-up, sharp foreground, food); f/11 35mm (really distant); f/6.8 35mm (medium-distant)… and so forth.
Well, that’s a good selection of apertures and distances. But wait a minute: how did the camera know which apertures he used? f/2.4?, f/3.4? f/6.8? There is no linkage between an ‘M’ lens’ aperture and the camera… so maybe these are just the camera’s own guesses, or maybe Jono jotted them down. (Ed: All the later digital Ms show an estimated aperture in metadata). And for which photos did he use the Visoflex 2 electronic finder for the greatest accuracy? We don’t know, but he does say “With my M10 I almost never used the EVF, but with the M11 I’ve used it extensively”. Very wise. You need that extra accuracy with 60 megapixels.
There are a few of Jono’s specs that I just can’t reproduce: that B&W ’Best of Mates’ photo, for example. At that distance, focusing on a face, and with a 50mm at the specified f/5.6, I just can’t get the left man’s sleeve buttons to go that far out of focus. So was the aperture actually f/5.6, or something wider?
Note that none of Jono’s shutter speeds is slower than 1/125th – except ‘Scarlett’ (supposedly 1/60th sec with a 90mm lens, although he says in the Comments beneath it that it “…was actually taken with a 35 Summilux…”). So he’s used speeds that do give extra shake-less-ness to his photos by using throughout a faster shutter speed than the usual or common 1/focal-length. [Ed: My M11, which you used, was set to x4 focal length, I believe].
Back in the ship
But, back to those comparative results of the Old Ship… with the old 18 megapixel M9:
And here’s a 100% crop of that lettering…
I went back a couple of days later with the 12MP Sony A7SMkII, and I put the great Zeiss 45mm f/2.8 on it, the one which is usually used on the Contax G2 autofocus film camera, and which didn’t focus too well on the 42MP A7RMkII.
Here’s what I got with the 45mm, and the camera set in APS-C (crop) mode, which gives only 5MP images, with an equivalent focal length of 67mm:
And here’s a crop from that…
How does that compare with what we saw right at the start, above? The similar crop from the 60MP M11…? It is certainly smaller, but is it any less sharp?
The results, though, of all these assorted tests, done over a few days, rather than over several months, convinced me that the manual glass viewfinder of the M11 actually IS good enough to achieve sharp pictures (with depth-of-field allowing for any misfocus) at, say, 20 feet and beyond. It’s also OK for fairly close focus photos, say 3 feet to 8 feet. But between 8 and 20 feet – especially if you use longer than 50mm lenses and wide apertures — you don’t get the accuracy that you really need unless you use the Visoflex 2. At least, I don’t.
Accurately-focused M11 photos don’t look, though — in some mysterious or magical way any better than photos taken with fewer-megapixel cameras. The 60 megapixels just let you enlarge a photo more before it becomes pixellated.
A crop too far
The supposed advantage of the 60 megapixels in the M11 is that you can selectively crop your photos, and still have many megapixels of resolution left, with the results not looking like poor quality, low-resolution shots. In other words, then, you could — theoretically — shoot everything with a 28mm lens, and afterwards just crop things so that some photos look as if they’ve been shot with a 75mm or a 90mm lens. Just like using the Leica Q or Q2, really.
But alas no; the background blur, or ‘bokeh’, which you’d get from, say, an f/2.8 28mm lens does NOT look like the far greater background blur you’d get from the same position but using an f/2.8 75mm or an f/2.8 90mm lens. The 28mm — cropped or not — pictures will always have the characteristics of the lens which was used to take them, that is, a 28mm lens.
So shooting with just one lens and cropping is fine. But only if you want all your photos to always look alike! Here’s what I mean…
The perspective here, whether taken with a 28mm or a 90mm lens — or anything else — is always the same (when photos are taken from the same position). But as you can see, the background separation is NOT. That’s the whole Q/Q2 problem. Cropped shots from a wide lens will always appear to have been taken with a 2x or 4x smaller aperture than was actually used, thus giving minimal bokeh.
However, that is a problem only if you do like to separate foreground and background. For all-in-focus landscape shots, shooting with a wide lens and then cropping wouldn’t affect the depth-of-field. But then, for a landscape you probably want the full width which a 28mm — or wider — lens gives, and so you wouldn’t want to crop anyway.)
That’s why we use different lenses, instead of sticking with just the one lens and then cropping what we want from 60 megapixels!
Conclusion
So what’s the result of all this fiddling about with different cameras, lenses and viewfinders?
Let’s itemise:
- The 60 megapixel M11 takes great photos, which can be cropped down to deliver small areas of the original 60MP photo, and still be sharp and have great resolution.
- A crop from a photo taken with a wide-angle 28mm lens, or just a normal 50mm lens, at its widest aperture will NOT show the same amount of foreground/background separation, or out-of-focus ‘bokeh’, as would a l-o-n-g-e-r- lens at the same aperture, from the same position, and so cropping from a wider picture may look disappointing.
- It may be very difficult to get really sharp photos at wide apertures with the M11’s normal glass rangefinder — using all 60MP — of anything that’s between about 5 or 8 feet to 20 feet (6 metres). It can be hit and miss. You’d really need to use the magnifying electronic Visoflex 2 finder. Beyond 20 ft (6m) the depth-of-field of lenses of 90mm or less will probably disguise any mis-focusing. Otherwise, you may as well be using a lower-megapixel camera, such as the M10 or M9.
- To avoid shaking — or any slight trembling — with the 60MP setting of the M11, thus reducing your photos’ resolution down to that of, say, the M10, you really need at least a 3x faster shutter speed than you’d normally use… or else rest the camera on something solid. When using a 3x faster shutter speed, you’d thus need a 3x higher ISO setting than normal. The M11 does, though, give great photos at high ISOs.
- The M11’s stabilised add-on Visoflex 2 (and stabilised rear screen display) is really important when using its magnified view to get sharpest focus onto those tiny 60 megapixels. For serious shooting (not just snapshots or landscapes) at wide-ish apertures — for which one buys f/2 or wider-aperture lenses — the add-on Visoflex 2 is really necessary. Otherwise, you may as well be using a 24 megapixel camera. Because any slight out-of-focus blur instantly knocks down the resolution to something much less than 60 megapixels.
- Battery life of the M11: really great!
- Huge (64GB) internal memory, as well as using an SD card. Excellent!
- Unprotected ‘waterproof’ bottom-sited cable socket? Daft and awkward. It reminds me of Apple’s worst design idea of the century — the Magic Mouse with the charging port on the bottom.
What I’d like to see
Leitz/Leica took a big jump forward with the old 1954 M3 because — besides the all-in-one viewfinder/rangefinder, the bayonet-mount lenses, and the parallax-sensitive viewfinder frame-lines – the camera had three separate viewfinder frame-lines which are automatically selected when you attach any of the 50mm, 90mm or 135mm lenses.
And from 1955, a frame-line selector lever was added, which meant that you could (and can) – manually choose which frame lines you want to see in the viewfinder.
Whoa! You can manually select what framing is seen in the viewfinder! That MUST mean that with some mechanical ingenuity — which the firm seems rather short of nowadays — Leica could give that lever (or the bayonet-activated auto-select system) the capability to insert the most relevant focusing magnification into the finder for whichever lens you’re using. Focusing with a 90mm lens: the centre of the finder would magnify the 90mm view for better focusing accuracy. Using a 28mm, just the central ‘focus-patch’ area could be magnified to make focusing even more accurate, while leaving the rest of the 28mm framing area unaltered.
This is really important when using 60 megapixels — which is why the Visoflex 2 provides a magnifiable and stabilised view — otherwise focusing on the ancient rangefinder system just isn’t accurate enough for many distances at which you’d shoot. (Note that the M11 instruction book says, on page 91, that the M11’s rangefinder is optimised — that is, at its most accurate — for shooting at two metres away [6.5 feet] and that at other distances, and especially with long lenses, it doesn’t necessarily show exactly what will be in your picture, and there will be some inaccuracy. This has consistently been the case with most rangefinders.)
Will I be buying an M11? No. I’m happy with my 24MP M10-P (the first really quiet digital M) and my 12MP Sony A7S, and other low-pixel-count cameras.
And that old 1952 Leica IIIf with its screw-fit Summarit lens is also really good. It’s also a quarter of a kilo lighter than an M11 in case you’re wondering.
And now, just for fun, a selection of photos NOT shot with an M11, but with a variety of far-fewer-megapixel cameras. They go to show that you don’t need 60 megapixels to take appealing photos. (Most of these are presented here at just over 1 megapixel in size.)
So, finally: Who really needs 60 megapixels?
What do you think? Am I being over pernickety or is the M11 really the camera that floats on water and raises pixels from the dead? Are you happy with 24MP or do you lust after those 60 megapixels or even more?
Read more from David Babsky on Macfilos
Leave a reply and join in the discussion
The comments section below every article is a friendly, non-confrontational space where you can air your views without fear of stirring the sort of hornets’ nest that is so often a feature of websites. We welcome your views on the content of our articles, and your opinions on all aspects of photography are a lifeblood for Macfilos. Please let us know, in the section below, if you agree or disagree with our authors’ opinions — and please have no hesitation in adding your advice if you think we’ve overlooked anything important.
Well – magic! ..The replies which were classed as ‘spam’ (above) have magically re-appeared.
Thanks again, J-P.
Nothing magic, David. I just unspammed them. One click of the button and no disastrous results this week.
Hi J-P,
I don’t know what happened to my previous reply (..Mike must have swallowed it!..) ..but I’ll reply properly tomorrow.
Yours, David.
Dear David,
unfortunately I am only now getting around to thanking you for this truly excellent article. This is very thought-provoking, and pixels alone never ever made a good image. You have shown this and took considerable effort to give us these super interesting comparisons. Personally, I very mich liked the fact that you included some really old and low-resolving cameras. This is an important statement againt the pixelmania of the last 20 years, and every line of your article is showing how independent you are in your arguing. Very well done.
In many points, I agree with you. In my expericence, it is far more important to nail focussing, prevent any shaking blur, use no aperture beyond f/11 to have no or little diffraction, get the exposure right and so on. I personally would never buy and M11 because of its 60 megapixels, and I think 24 megapixels are some kind of a sweet spot for a digital rangefinder (with its well-known strengths AND limitations). I think battery/charging, the better Visoflex and (if you need it) far better connectivity are much more important.
That’s just my five cents, ehhh, pence. Thanks again and all the best for you,
JP
Thanks, J-P.
“..I very mich liked the fact that you included some really old and low-resolving cameras..” ..well, that was, I thought, essential ..to show that it’s not necessary to have huge pixel numbers in order to deliver interesting photos.
I don’t think that – unless they were working in industry, and needed the highest possible resolution images – anyone obsessed in the film era about the resolution, or resolving power, of different films. You considered a film’s ‘speed’ – ASA or ISO – versus resultant ‘graininess’ of a particular film, but then you just chose a film and shot pictures.
I think that Sony were absolutely right – and quite brave – to buck the trend, and produce 12 megapixel cameras – the A7S series – when others were going for ever higher pixel numbers. The result was that with fewer, but LARGER, pixels, Sony’s A7S cameras could gather more light and deliver marvellous photos in very -l-o-w- light. Ditto Nikon’s 16 megapixel Df.
It may look impressive to see ridiculously high numbers, like 195 mph, on some cars’ speedometers, but I’m never going to drive that fast, so it’s meaningless to me. Ditto super-silly-high megapixel numbers ..unless I was shooting advertising photos to display on huge billboards. But I’m not.
P.S: ..I like your word “pixelmania”..!
Hi, J-P..
I don’t know what happened to my two previous replies ..but they’ve magically disappeared ..maybe Mike’s had enough of my Comments!
But I’ll reply properly tomorrow (I hope!)
Yours, David.
Well, thanks, J-P ..this is my fourth attempt at a reply: let’s see if THIS one works!
David.
A wonderful question, as usual David, well posed, presented and dissected. I do hope you are keeping well?
What I would say, is that image trail at the end is amazing – I love the cinema queue through window – for capturing one of those unique moments. But then the wine bottle perspective shot, the airship need i go on. I love interesting perspectives, unique ideas and just plain old creative invention.
You have left me with a few answers to things that float around in my head from time to time. Firstly my Df and X keep me honest, and are still providing me with sufficient equipment to deliver on my need. The second, that it is not the gear that counts, but the person stood behind it. As many who write and comment on here regularly prove, the right person, at the right time can wring the right answer out of whatever piece of equipment they hold.
Enjoy the weekend.
Dave
Hi Dave ..I hope you’re fully recovered, and don’t have that -l-o-n-g- -C-o-v-i-d- ..
“..I love interesting perspectives, unique ideas and just plain old creative invention..” ..me too (..I mean “I also”..) ..BUT, of course, you’ve got to have the right lens on the camera to be able to get those “interesting perspectives”! ..So if you have an interchangeable-lens camera which doesn’t take zoom lenses (apart from, say, a one-and-a-teeny-bit varifocal lens like a 16-18-21mm, or ditto, a 28-50-35mm lens ..I’m looking at you, ‘M’ cameras..) you may not be able to get the shots which you want ..unless you think ahead!
(When I went on that airship – this was a shot of it taking off, when we’d left it, after our ride on it for my birthday one year – I’d taken with me an Olympus micro-four-thirds camera – with an adapter and old Olympus 65-200mm lens (equivalent to 130-400mm) for taking shots from the airship to the view below – andan M9 with the very wide 16-18-21mm for taking shots of the airship itself, inside and out.)
You know what the Boy Scouts say ..”Be Prepared”.
But YOU, Dave, are prepared, as you’ve a great wide-angle zoom for your Df! ..And you’ve got the zoom lens on your X ..it is an X-Vario, isn’t it? (Please say it is.)
“..it is not the gear that counts, but the person stood behind it..” ..true, but that person has to have the right gear with them ..I mean, standing in a field with a pinhole camera might not get the shot. Don’t be limited by the camera! ..Have the right lens on the camera! Know what kinds of pictures you’re likely to want to take ..and make sure you have the right lens with you ..and preferably ON THE CAMERA instead of packed away in some voluminous camera bag!
The smiling cat needed a long lens, so that I didn’t frighten the cat by getting too close, and didn’t disturb it so that IT STOOD UP. That’d have been a different shot. The spiral stairs needed a wide-angle ..wider than the camera’s built-in zoom lens ..but I carried a wide-angle adaptor which I could hold up to the front of the fixed zoom lens. The Darth Vader film poster shot needed a -l-o-n-g- lens, so I was prepared, and carried a pocket camera which HAD a long zoom on it. I had no idea that this poster would be put on the screen ..but when I saw it, I knew that I wanted a photo of it, and I’d come prepared (..it was a two-day talk by Gary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars, all about the genesis of Star Wars).
The shot looking down through the hotel atrium to the tables and chairs below needed a very wide lens (16mm equivalent) ..but I had that lens ready-to-hand in my pocket!
It’s the right lens which gives you the picture you may want, not really the camera. People get obsessed by buying cameras. But that’s like getting obsessed about buying the right record-player, or the right MP3 player. But if you buy just the player ..you won’t get any sound out of it at all ..till you buy – or obtain – the music which you want to hear. The thing to obsess about – for photography – (in my opinion, anyway) is the lenses which will give you the kinds of photos which you want to take, and then choose a suitable camera which will fit those lenses.
Long zooms – for birds, animals, distant people, distant events, racetracks – which are small and light? Choose, say, Olympus m4/3 zooms, and then an Olympus or Panasonic camera to go with those lenses.
Wide aperture lenses for low light? ..we-ell, not really necessary any more, as most digital cameras now shoot successfully in low light. OK ..wide aperture lenses for very shallow depth-of-field? ..not necessarily needed, as you can get the same shallow effect with -l-o-n-g-e-r- lenses, which probably cost less ..but they’ll need a faster shutter speed ..but that shouldn’t matter, because ..most digital cameras now shoot successfully in less light.
So think ‘back to front’ ..which lens(es) will probably give you the photos you want? Get the lens(es), then choose the most amenable camera to go with them.
Yes thanks, I’m keeping well ..and I hope you’re properly recovered, and you have the best weekend possible yourself!
Evening – sorry for the delay in responding, my day job has been getting in the way.
Long Covid is pants, my heart and lungs have been impaired by the disease, but while I have some challenges, I am fitter than many. So things could be so much worse and I will continue manage the issues as I try to get a little more out myself.
Sadly my X, is the fixed lens variety – I love it, it helps me think composition and positioning with every shot. Yes I passed over several x-vario’s at the time I bought it, purely because I did not fully understand the camera’s, Leica, and the whole ethos. I don’t regret it, but I am sure I would have wrung some decent images out of one.
And in my bag is the X and Df combo, and in my backpack is the wider lenses I may need should the occasion demand it – always on hand.
If it cheers you, I have a break later this year, where I intend to camp out at a certain point, and hope that low tide and sunset pass together during my time there – and my aim is to return with a specific image, caught on a lens you may recall well – if I succeed there is an article more or less in the making.
Keep safe, and enjoy the new found freedoms.
Thank you David, for reinforcing what I have to convince myself whenever I think about a new or different camera.
That is, it is the image that is important, not the gear that is used to capture the image.
I just luv the look of the Lumix LX-2 “tungsten” seaside. You’ve got something special there from an old and tiny sensor 😱.
😀
Thanks, Wayne.
Yes, I like to use these things ‘creatively’ ..so, for me, the ‘Tungsten’ white balance setting isn’t just for shooting pics under tungsten (light bulb) lighting, but gives what I think are wonderful results when used just after the sky has become pitch black after dusk ..about, say, 10 minutes after dusk ..and that’s what you get! ..Better than the eye alone can see!
Hi David. I agree that you don’t need 60MP’s (no, not members of parliament) most of the time, and that 24MP is great for an M, or for any digital 35mm or APC size camera for that matter. This is the idiocy of our modern age. A recently introduced electric car is called “slow” in a review, with an acceleration time of “only” 5.2 sec from 0 to 100 km/h, simply because there are other electric cars that do the same job in 2.9 sec. Same thing with camera resolutions and to a certain extent with every new smartphone model. But yes, Leica had to choose the most modern sensor for their new camera and solved this problem for you on the M11 right from the start, by letting you choose your preferred resolution from three options, 60MP, 36MP or 18MP. 36MP is the resolution of the venerable Nikon D800, and the resolution that gives the best dynamic range of the three resolutions on the M11 (by a small amount; Sean Reid). So you can choose that but still enjoy the use of a SOTA BSI sensor, which doesn’t get hot (Sean Reid; less prone to noise) and practically eliminates the moiré problem (Sean Reid; yes, with all 3 resolutions).
A few remarks though.
– It’s not correct to state that a 60MP sensor effectively only is 15MP because of the Bayer filter and subsequent demosaicing. More realistically is a resolution reduction in the order of 20-25% due to the Bayer filter and demosaicing, which would make the resolution of the M11 more or less comparable to that of the M10-M. In practice the M10-M still appears to win.
– Focusing with the rangefinder is not going to be any problem with 60MP, that is to say no more than it is with any of the other full-frame M’s. Why? Since the visibility of focussing inaccuracies only depends on the print size / level of magnification. So, if you are used to print on A4 or A3 size, the effect of the accuracy of your focussing remains the same, whether you use an M9, M10 or an M11. It is only when you start to print on even larger formats, because your new higher resolution camera makes that possible, that less accurate focussing could potentially become a problem, i.e. will become more visible. But that is not something that’s unique to the M, it is true for every camera, autofocus or not.
– The same applies basically to camera shake. If you keep printing on A4 or A3 size, the higher resolution of an M11 doesn’t influence visibility of camera shake, compared to the older M’s. Of course high resolution cameras can make camera shake more visible. Coming from 12MP, I learned that shooting my first series of 21 quite important pictures with my then new D800, mounted with my 80-200mm f/2.8 lens. Only 6 were perfectly sharp at pixel peeping, despite having chosen a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second to be “safe”. When printed on A4 format this minimal camera shake however proved to be invisible, as explained above. And of course using a wide-angle or standard lens on the M is a different story than working with a long telephoto lens. Plus the M is mirrorless. For sure, the higher the resolution, the more one has to pay attention to avoiding camera shake, as Daniel rightly said. Ming Thein called this the “shooting envelope” of a camera(system), on his excellent blog. Given the freedom of choice Leica gives us on the new M11, I don’t mind the 60MP if I want to take that occasional photo that I really want to print a meter wide at 240 ppi, because that’s what you can do with 60.3MP (9528 px. wide / 240 x 2.54 = 100.84 cm).
– The current M’s rangefinders have a 0.73x magnification, to be more exact, compared to the 0,91x magnification of the M3. But then, you can’t use the viewfinder of the M3 for the 35mm and 28mm focal lengths, do you? The M7 with 0,85 magnification neither can be used for the 28mm focal lenght.
– The beautiful Zeiss Contax-G Planar 45mm you mention is an f/2 lens, not an f/2.8.
Thanks, René.
Yes, the M11 does let you “..choose your preferred resolution from three options, 60MP, 36MP or 18MP”. And you suggest – or you say that Sean Reid suggests – that 36mpxl is probably optimal.
But if 36 mpxl is ‘optimal’, and “that gives the best dynamic range of the three resolutions on the M11” then – it seems to me, anyway – why pay for a 60 mpxl camera just to use it at 36 mpxl? ..Is it really necessary to buy a 60 mpxl camera in order to get a really good 36 mpxl camera?
And following your car analogy, that’d be like buying a 6 litre Aston Martin V12 Vantage just to get a smooth motorway ride at 70mph. Why buy a super-high-resolution camera, just to use it at a lower resolution?
“..It’s not correct to state that a 60MP sensor effectively only is 15MP because of the Bayer filter and subsequent demosaicing. More realistically is a resolution reduction in the order of 20-25% due to the Bayer filter and demosaicing”. There are many different assessments of demosaicing loss, but I’ve tried to keep it simple by explaining the basics. For a more thorough treatise you may like to plough through hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00683233/document and others.
You say “It is only when you start to print on even larger formats, because your new higher resolution camera makes that possible, that less accurate focussing could potentially become a problem”. In other words, if you DON’T take advantage of the extra high resolution, then you won’t notice the potential inaccuracy of the focusing. But if you DO, then you will. Which is the same as my point, I think, that you’ll likely get the same results by using a lower-resolution camera, unless you take steps – such as using the Viso 2 EVF – to ensure that you do get the most accurate possible focusing. No?
“..The current M’s rangefinders have a 0.73x magnification, to be more exact, compared to the 0,91x magnification of the M3”. Yes, I was simply rounding-down to be less ‘academic’ and pedantic about this.
“..But then, you can’t use the viewfinder of the M3 for the 35mm and 28mm focal lengths, do you?”
Well, my 35mm Leitz ‘Summaron’ – designed for the M3, but usable on any of the M cameras – has those ‘goggles’ fitted as part of it, which broaden the M3’s 90% – whoops: 91% – life-size finder to show the view seen by a 35mm lens. So, yes; you can “..use the viewfinder of the M3 for the 35mm..” lens ..but not a 28mm, as far as I know.
But – as I’ve mentioned before – I don’t normally use a 28mm lens, as I find it neither here nor there ..I tend to use a 21mm.. but I did use 28mm for this assessment of the M11, as that’s the finder width – at 73% life-size – which the M11 finder shows. I did that to demonstrate the difference between cropping an f2.8 28mm view to a 90mm (equivalent) view, to compare that with the view seen by an actual f2.8 real 90mm lens.
“..The M7 with 0,85 magnification neither can be used for the 28mm focal lenght”. Well, it can be used ..you just need to fit an external finder, or just use your own experience of what’ll be in the picture when using a 28mm lens. That’s what I do, if I ever – hardly ever – use a 28mm lens on my M7 with its (specifically chosen) 80% – whoops, sorry: 85% – finder.
You’re absolutely right: “..The beautiful Zeiss Contax-G Planar 45mm you mention is an f/2 lens, not an f/2.8”.
With all that thinking and writing about lenses at f2.8, I forgot that the Contax 45mm is indeed actually an f2 lens, as you say. (Am looking at it now to check.)
Thanks for pointing that out!
I am also a low pixel person, a Sony A7s, and a Sigma fp. I am very happy with the images I get out of both cameras. I have two friends one with a M-11 and the other with a Sigma fp-L both 60 Meg’s I still prefer mine with the lower pixels. But that’s why not every ones married to redheads, viva la difference.
Hi Bill,
I married a redhead and it has been 41 years of character building but people have said I am a better person. Unfortunately, I was a slow learner.
I would be very interested to the same with this one.
Thanks!
Well, I think you’d have to ask for Mike’s permission first, Luca, as he’s the publisher. He may want you to provide a link to, or a mention of, Macfilos, for example.
But I don’t want my photos to be splattered all around the web, so you may use my text, giving credit to me as writer, and the photos within the text, down to “Click on images to enlarge and view a slide show”.
But I DON’T give you permission to copy and paste, or to republish, any of those last photos from Number 29 (the blue beach shot) to Number 51 (the smiling black-&-white cat). That’s because I DON’T want them scraped off the web, and then repurposed for anyone else’s website, or for anyone else to ‘monetise’ them. I hold the copyright of them. Sorry, Luca.
Thank you, that is fine.
I’m interested in the text, which is very interesting in the discourse on Leica’s newest. If Mike is ok (he was as far as his review was concerned), people will have a link to Macfilos and look at the photos here, no need to reproduce any of them. I respect your policy.
Thank you, Luca.
“who really needs 60 megapixels”?
My take: now that they are available, they will be used.
I find this article very interesting and as I am translating several ones (Mike Evans; Claus Sassenberg; Jonathan Slack) into Italian obviously quoting the sources.
Hi David,
“Who really needs 60 megapixels?”.
I do and have an order in for the M11. I agree on the extra care of holding the camera still and faster than film day shutter. speeds. Much faster shutter speeds are needed for telephoto lenses to ensure sharpness. I found that any sensor at 36MP or higher needs careful camera technique from handling to careful focus.
I use the M10M and love the rendering; resolution and tonality. But expertise is required to take advantage of that. High megapixel cameras quickly expose unskilled use. They are not the right camera for beginners or low skill photographers.
I’m intrigued, Brian!
Why is it that you really need 60 megapixels? Do you shoot photos for billboards? How do you display your photos ..very large prints? Obviously not on a computer screen, as top of the range screens manage to display only about 5 megapixels or so. So-called ‘4k’ Ultra High Definition screens – think Digital Cinema at your local digital picture palace – is about 8 megapixels (though other versions of so-called ‘4k’ can be, say, 4096 × 3072 pixels, which is about twelve and a half megapixels, but that’s in the old 4:3 shape of traditional old TVs, and would be far fewer pixels in widescreen ‘CinemaScope’ format).
So ..I’m really interested in what you shoot and for what purposes, and how you show or display your photos: why do you need 60 megapixels? “Need”, or “just like the sound of”? But how on earth would you display, or print, or even discern those 60 megapixels?
Hi David,
I have a large format printer and print large prints for personal use as well as selling them. I used to have them in a gallery but dropped that after sobering up on my net profit after framing costs and gallery rape and pillage.
I only do cropping of 50mm and longer focal lengths as I do not like the look of significantly cropped wide angle images.
I shoot a variety of subjects including landscapes, cityscapes, street, concept, models.
That’s weird, Brian, as most of the large format printers I’m familiar with print (some of the largest) at 1440×1440=2.3 megapixels, and the majority print at 2400×1200=2.8 megapixels, and the highest resolution Epson/Fuji print at 2880×1440=4 megapixels.
Of course, the apparent sharpness depends on how far – or close – you stand to a printout, rather than the actual size of the printout.
But starting with 60 megapixels, which the camera’s output will have reduced to about 15 megapixels (..because of the way the Red+Green+Blue+Green pixels are blended to make a colour picture..) and then, let’s say, you crop to an image that’s a quarter of the original photo, then you end up with a photo comprised of about 2.3 pixels.
None of the large format printers I know of could produce a 15 megapixel printout ..and they could only give true 1-to-1 pixel-per-pixel printouts with parts of an original 60mpxl photo ..for example a cropped section of about a quarter of the original. It seems a waste, somehow, to get a big printer and use it to print just a small area of an original photo.
Hi David, I am aware of and agree with your math but I find it not quite so simple with the inaccuracies and artefacts introduced by the interpolation software. I also find better tonality with high resolution sensors.
I have the M10M and it seems to have at least the equivalent sharpness of an 80MP sensor. I probably would be quite happy with 50MP but Leica made a lovely 60MP sensor according to Jono and others so I will have to put up with 60MP. This is probably my last colour rangefinder so I decided not to wait for the 100MP beast.
“..I find it not quite so simple with the inaccuracies and artefacts introduced by the interpolation software … I also find better tonality with high resolution sensors”.
Ah, that’s where you’ve got me: I’ve good – or great – ‘acuity’ ..I see (and hear) things sharply.. but my colour vision’s not so great, so I wouldn’t be able to see the difference between colours produced by, say, a 24 megapixel sensor versus a 60 megapixel sensor. That’s probably why I love really vivid colours (see above), as weaker ones can be indistinguishable – to me – from black-&-white sometimes.
So that’s the reason, huh? More accurate colour rendition.
Colour isn’t my strong suit. (..My Beloved loves Turquoise ..apparently – to her – a vivid blue/green ..but to me it’s just dull grey! There you are – I don’t know what I’m missing.)
David the numbers reported for printers are usually dots per inch (a dot being a single ink colour), not pixels per inch. A typical inkjet printer with six ink colours prints well at 240 pixels per inch, when you multiply by six that gives 1440 dots per inch. A 60MP M11 image would print at approx 40 inch x 26 inch if you work on 240 pixels per inch, or 31.5 inch x 21 inch if you aim for say 300 pixels per inch. I believe that Epson printers work best at 300 pixels per inch, Canon at 360 pixels per inch.
Thanks, Tom.
Yes, I was describing 1440 dots per inch (or 2400 or 2880) ..I should have clarified that, instead of saying pixels.
I get – by maths, not on an actual printer! ..I don’t have one that wide! – 22 megapixels printing at about 24″ wide by 16″ high, so your figure of 40″x26″ for a 60 megapixel photo sounds right.
(Except that a colour photo from a 60 mpxl sensor results in about 15 mpxl real resolution, as the different single-colour (Red, Green or Blue) pixels are averaged to give blended colour at each point in the picture, unless using a Sigma Foveon sensor, or shooting in black-&-white with a ‘Monochrom’ camera.)
Hi David, another compelling reason for the M11 for me is significantly less colour drift with difficult glass which also results in better total frame sharpness.
Unfortunately, I am number 3 on the waitlist for a M11. I wish the two people ahead of me would realize that they do not need the M11 and let me waste my hard earned money. But C’est la vie.
Hi David,
I am very sensitive to tonality in colour and there is a huge difference for me in the Leica SL2 versus SL. This provides a strong sense of roundness to objects for me. The best camera for this was the Hasselblad X1CD for me, they calibrated the sensor of each camera, but the system was too limiting for me. The readout of the sensor was insanely slow for m glass! However, they have an XCD 2 coming soon..,
I am impressed with the effort that you put in to show real world results on resolution and they do apply to most usage.
I agree with your point on correct viewing distance for a picture, but buyers tend to look close at a print in my experience.
Couldn’t agree more. I am a long time user of M cameras, with both analog {and still using} (MP) and digital (M8->M9->M240->M10->M10R) and started to have the same interrogations with my M10R already. 24Mpix is the sweetspot for a M camera. The best photos I took were not with the M10-R, they were with the MP and with the M9. Doesn’t mean the new M’s are no good, but there is a simple question everyone has to ask : what is a great picture. The more pixel you have, the more you are tempted to zoom after every shoot to look if it is perfect, and you miss the pleasure of taking photos and enjoying the present moment. Back to basics and simplicity. Less is more.
“..The more pixel you have, the more you are tempted to zoom after every shoot to look if it is perfect..” ..really?
I’d never thought that it depends on the number of pixels you’re shooting with. I generally have a look at each shot after I’ve taken it, whatever the number of pixels, to see if I could have done better, or to confirm that I got what I wanted. Even with 2 megapixels. I hadn’t noticed the correlation – mustn’t have noticed it.
Well David, that was a slapper of an intro to the whole article ! Read in entirety and initially felt you were being disingenuous but I find much to agree with you. Perceived sharpness doesn’t seem sufficient anymore with expected sharpness being the order of the day. Attaining sharpness is no longer just influenced by optics alone and inherent software inside many of the current digital cameras apply additional sharpness and contrast to some degree. I think we’ve lost something in exchange for access to technology and it’s conveniences. Digital still hasn’t come anywhere near in terms of black and film rendition in film though. Camera makers possibly have to cater to market ideals of resolution and better image quality. My compliments on the bevy of admirable images. By the way no mention of the M6 ? Possibly the longest highway in the UK if I’m not wrong ! Cheers and take care David ! PS. I was partial to The Harp at Covent Garden.
Hi Gireesh,
“..Digital still hasn’t come anywhere near in terms of black and film rendition in film though..”
..Really? I thought that digital b&w can easily be tweaked to deliver deep blacks and not-quite-whited-out whites, which can look just like the b&w of that Leica receptionist, above. Or perhaps you’re thinking of the deep blacks and bright whites in chemical prints from b&w film. I’m not sure that ink-jet b&w prints can look as great as b&w prints which emerge out of a developer solution ..but I probably haven’t looked at a sufficient number side by side and under really bright light.
The outage prevented me from replying. You’ve guessed right ! Don’t we often wish to print our best pictures but never get around to it ? (Chuckle) I’ve made more prints from my images made with film in 6 months compared to my digital work for the past 2 years with a wide range of b&w film stock. T Max 100 is by far my favourite. Lush blacks with rich contrast and exceptional retention of detail. I had the opportunity to choose recently between a M6 and M3. Wasn’t much of a choice when I peered through the viewfinder !
Possibly the grain too. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that. Grain seems to confer some degree of the image being tactile. Your image of the receptionist is a great example.
“..tactile..”
Yes, I think that’s part of the disconnect between film use, and images, and digital pics.
I think some people subconsciously miss the feel of holding a film, and loading it into a camera, and thinking “this is me, putting an image onto a tangible piece of material”. You don’t get to physically hold the image when using a digital camera ..an SD card doesn’t seem to have the same effect.
And as most digital images are seen on screens, rather than in tangible form, there’s that extra physical loss, too.
I made a book every year of my best photos – I used ‘Blurb’, the layout and printing app, to translate the images into ink-printed photos in a bound book – but haven’;t done since Covid began ..as I hadn’t taken many photos ..hadn’t been travelling except to one wedding after lockdown ended.
So I have a dozen tangible hold-in-your-hand 80-page hardback books of my images ..they don’t just sit invisibly on a hard drive.