I recently acquired a Leica M Typ 240 after having watched a video by a photographer called Dotan Saguy. I already owned a few Leica's including one of my favourites; the M7. But after having watched his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgCOyDKXhow I became intrigued and wanted to try one for myself. Plus, the positive thing was I could use all my existing lenses on it too. So after doing my research and slowly establishing which digital Leica to invest in, I chose the M Type 240. Leica had recently released the the M10 and the M9 was well out and established and already at very good prices on eBay. However, when I considered all the pros and cons, the M Typ 240 made the most sense.
I have been using it for a little over a month now and it is quite the quirky beast to use. The first thing I was advised to do was to upload the latest firmware, so after doing that I went out and started shooting. My first trip did not go too well and I came back with little to nothing to show for it. I then reset the camera to all factory defaults and started reading up and doing more research. It was also a huge help talking with Peter too, as he had the M9 and between us we figured out a few things that made a huge difference.
The first thing was the film mode settings, I had originally had them set to vivid colour, which I thought would emulate some of the Velvia and Provia films. Some of the shots would indeed do this, but in some cases they would also be very contrasty and saturated, resulting in a lot of loss of data and tone.
I quickly read up and discovered that the camera is best set to DNG with fine jpeg and black and white film mode. This leaves you with a colour DNG file and a black and white jpeg file. Kind of the best of both worlds.
I am still working with this camera and overall, it is very quirky and high maintenance, nothing like sticking a roll of tax in the M7 and off you go. I will push through and when I have time will share more, but for now these are a few of the shots I have taken so far...
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Thanks and happy shooting..
Photograph taken at a book fair in Saint Louis, with camera set to black and white mode. i spotted this chap sat alone at the top of the bleachers with the cardboard boxes in front of him. I also like to contrast of all the rigid squares of the windows and panels again the chaotic patterns and geometry of the boxes.
I could not resist his shot, this guy looked like he was in heaven amongst all the books and on his own.
I wanted to get a closer shot here, but was one row too far way and would of run the risk of being noticed, it's hard to capture those moments before someone notices you. Once they do it's all over.
I photographed this lady watching the solar eclipse this year and it looked like she was praying for something, not sure what but pleased with the shot.
This was a colour shot I converted to black and white to compare. I later learned you can get both and don't need to convert. I now have the camera set to DNG with fine jpeg.
Much happier with the results here, this is the jpeg set to fine, with no conversion and straight off the camera with no photoshop. Much happier.
This is the DNG file with no Photoshop too, i cropped it for framing, but no adjustments. Though I wish Photoshop had an ironing board....