Leica M Monochrom — Arrives Tomorrow 9/13
Related: black and white, Leica, Leica M, Leica M Monochrom, Leica monochrom, rangefinder
From LensRentals.com, I have a Leica M Monochrom on the way.
At some significant cost, I’ve rented the MM for three weeks because I could not get one any other way (very few have shipped, Leica has none to loan (to me), etc). Since I’ve rented it, my time will be dominated for several weeks with covering the MM— no breaks to be had when a rental period is a hard deadline.
My gear pages all have handy buttons for LensRentals.com— highly recommended.
My sense is that I must provide in-depth coverage of the MM in my Guide to Leica, coverage which I expect will extend in interest even to those doing color photography— if nothing else the MM puts extreme demands on lenses.
Monochrome’s future
I am quite interested in the level of interest in the MM , as I see it as a vote on the future potential of monochrome.
Meaning that I will gauge the serious (non-dilettante) interest in monochrome by one hard fact: new subscriptions to my Guide to Leica. It will be an interesting commentary on whether monochrome has a real market, or a very thin one.
If monochrome is a real market (and my presumption is that it is a small but viable market), companies like Olympus or Sony could produce a monochrome camera that 99% of the audience would buy instead at 1/8 the cost— maybe some wisdom there to Leica when charging about $8000 for the MM, with its stale technology (rangefinder only, crappy low-res blurry LCD). But nothing beats the resolution of a monochrome sensor.
