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Pan F's a wonderful film, so that's encouraging news, and thanks. I'll give it a try this weekend.

Do you find that the orange filter has the same effect as a red filter does on film such as Tri-X?

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Good intel RE: DOF. I'm just being anachronistic and techno-resistant. And, yeah, truly the Nocti is pricy, and given that I've lived this long without one, and survived, it's more a wish-lister than a gotta-haver. I have so much digital homework to yet confront that all I need is another lens demanding time to learn how to use. Best to ride the horse in the direction it's going...

Still, you're spot-on, linking that lens with a Monochrome does offer possibilities that other combinations may not be able to attain.

Yes, well, to paraphrase my grandmother: "If wishes were Porsches the wheel-less would ride..."

Just traded my 262, which lacked the LV and Video for the Monochrome 246, which has both. I've have preferred a Monochrome /MD such as yours, no LV, LCD screen, no nada. Essentially, a film M, but digital.

Have had for years both a red and a green filter that fits my 50mm Summicron. Recommend anything else? Any experience/suggestions on using a red on a Monochrome?

Luckily, shooting film with old IIIf and M4-P, all I've ever used is the optical rangefinder, often shooting hyper-focal when there's no time to use the rangefinder.

For lenses: have a 21mm Elmarit-M with a Voigtlander viewfinder, since my M4-P,.M-262 (and I presume my Monochrome) lacked frame lines. Recently bought a 28mm Elmarit, and have an old Summicron-M 1:2 that's a wonderful old workhorse. W/probably use the 28 and 50 most of the time. W/eventually get the new APO Summicron f2 50s. or a Noctilux.

The 246 Monochrom has Live View, but it seems clumsy, so it's probably a feature I'll avoid. Being new to digital, the tendency to chimp seems like it's for chumps.

[quote=wj cody]i've used leica m2, m3 and m6 film cameras all my life in combat/conflict situations. they have never let me down. and we are speaking of 40 years in the field. i have subjected them to physical abuse that no other camera can stand. my contemporaries in the same situations can readily attest to that. in situations where a quiet, unobtrusive instrument can make a "get the picture and come out alive" nothing beats the leica. it might surprise you to learn that many "combat/conflict photographers limit their lenses to 35, 50 and 90mm/105mm primes lenses. a number of them use only a 50mm lens, as they believe in the immediacy of what they photograph.


Yes, well, we share certain level of enduring combat-based respect for the old M's. As to lens selections, I started out as a journa-grunt in 1960s, when USMC Combat Correspondents and civilian photo-journalists traveled schooner-rigged (light) and relied on more limited resources. In the field for weeks at a time we had to choose between carrying extra lenses or extra film. My only lenses in the past were the 1938 50mm Summicron collapsible that came with my dad's IIIf, a 35mm as my backup, and a 90mm on my second body. That's still my favorite combination, though like you, I've used Nikon's for a longer reach on occasion. When I carried a Nikonos II it was usually with just the 35mm. lens. That camera also did well in the desert. During the Gulf War in the lobby of there Holiday In in Abu Dhabi there was a trash can full of discarded SLRs. The rime, the mixture of humid salt air and microscopic silica, just ate everything. I wonder how today's digital sensors hold up in that?

Thank you all for your generous and ongoing contributions relating to the Monochrome. Though I'm a baby-stepping beginner, fumbling to understand much of the vocabulary, you've provided -- including Dan the Great Dissembler (;-} -- a great fund of information for me to process. The ISO and shutter-speed examples recently posted should prove valuable.

Having braved L.A. traffic to fight my way to the Hills of Beverly and the gleaming white Leica Temple, traded my M-262 for a new 246 Monochrome, so I'll be able to begin putting some of the intel to use. Again, warmest thanks.

Dan, I joined this site some months ago, unknowingly, as one of your woefully misinformed "Leica dummies,” who, without doubt, boosts digital photographic ignorance to the highest clinical levels. I qualify categorically. And with my simple question to the group about their experiences with a Leica Monochrome, I’ve somehow set you off. All I wanted was to learn from others who might have used a Monochrom. I had several Leica lenses, liked the idea of a camera exclusively shooting in B&W, and wanted to eliminate as much converting and post processing as I could.

I’m absolutely not a “photographer.” Despite having taken thousands of images over a 50-year career as a reporter/journalist/author and having published hundreds of those images, I'm really, authentically, photographically dumb. And, as I wrote before, I actually used the inside directions on Kodak Tri-X boxes as my exposure guides until I learned to use a very simple light meter.

So whatever you accuse Leica owners of, I’m guilty. To further validate your demeaning assertions of incipient snobbery, I drive a Mercedes, and live in Laguna Beach.

My father was a newsman. A "overseas correspondent" who, in the 1930s, was a Staats Zeitung correspondent (SZ was the U.S.-owned German News Service) and for a time an AP (Associated Press) Bureau Chief in Lisbon. He reported on much of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and while working in Germany purchased two Leicas, one very early model sometime around 1927, or ’28, and the other a III-f, prior to the war. He was killed, seven days after Pearl Harbor, and my mother kept, used, and later loaned me one of the Leica's when I was hired for my first newspaper job for the local Laguna Beach newspaper ( I was raised in Laguna Beach), just prior to graduating from college.

If you think Leica's are high on the desirable gear-snob scale now, by contrast, at that time they were something on the scale of “mythic.”

That year, my girlfriend was taking a beginning photo class from the noted L.A. art photographer Robert Heineckin, who taught at UCLA, and being informed by the editor that being able to use a camera was, if not demanded, certainly recommended I eagerly tagged along with said girlfriend to a couple of Heineken’s classes and weekly to the darkroom, in an effort to learn the rudiments of developing and printing.

Heineken, a former Marine Corps officer, discovered me in there one day and began grilling me like I was a POW. I flat-out told him I was “…on the range, Sir, without authorization, Sir.” and because I was in the Reserves, hadn’t been able to enroll in time for his class. All that old Semper Fi stuff you've no doubt heard about helped.

Then Heineckin saw my old Leica lying there — most of the students in his class were using 35mm Pentax SLRs —- and instead of kicking me out, he softened, and let me continue to develop and print my stuff the rest of that quarter. Heineckin, a Marine Corps captain who’d flown jet fighters, was more interested in art than technology. So there wasn’t a lot of technology dispensed beyond the basics of development and printing.

Because these old cameras worked, had a extra lens, and continued to work year-after-year, from Southeast Asia (Vietnam) to assignments in South America, Southwest Asia, (Pakistan, Afghanistan,) Iran, Iraq, Jordan Beirut, Cairo, etc. I kept using them. On occasion I had and used a Canon FT-B, several Nikon Fs, the old Nikonos I & II underwater cameras which had only two available lenses, a 35mm and a 90mm and were wonderful jungle combat and patrol cameras as they were Leica-silent, and damn-near indestructible.

Those old Leicas were like Jeeps, versatile. They were compact, functionally rugged, light, fit in a pocket, had very quiet shutters that didn't give you away like a mirror camera's KLAK, required little attention, and made images editors purchased. Since Leicas could be serviced, when they did need attention — almost anywhere in the world — I kept using them. I bought a replacement in the late 1980s which I still have and occasionally use.

In 1994 and 1995, as a journalist and still using film, I covered the longest murder trial in American legal history here in Orange County, where I live. Many judges at the time would only allow Leicas in their courtrooms as the shutters were essentially silent and wouldn’t interrupt proceedings. Superior Court Judge Jack Ryan, who presided over that case insisted on this. Now, with the advent of many mirrorless cameras on the market, that’s probably no longer the case. One less distinguishing feature.

Thanks so much for taking the time to share your experience and thoughtfully consider and illustrate the question I originally asked relating to the Monochrom. Wonderfully helpful.

Holy Halibut, for a few posts I was reminded of when I’d wandered into a pub in an English village, wearing a green pullover sweater. Only to discover that this particular shade of green was the team color of the neighboring shire's football (soccer team). I had to remove the “jumper" as the Brits call them, before being served. Nevertheless there was a good deal of stink-eye sent my way by individuals who were convinced I was either a provocateur or some sort of soccer spy.

Please understand that I was unaware of the existing sub-cutaneous vein of brand-partisanship and ire that my simple question seeking anyone's experience, intel, or insight using the Leica Monochrom would invoke. Certain remarks suggested a level of economic envy, and what read like bitter disdain disparaging anyone who would even consider paying thousands of dollars for a technologically minimal camera that had such an apparently limited scope.

So, please let me apologize. I’ve stayed alive by avoiding walking into mine fields. Somehow, I missed this one.

I was simply asking for some insight and intel under the presumption that the members of this forum are more skilled photographers and much more competent post-processors than I am, or can ever hope to be. And I’m grateful for how much I’ve learned, thanks to your collectively sharing that knowledge.

Even, Mr. Dan, if it comes as a backhand slap, a teaching’s a teaching. Thank you, sir.

Again, please understand I make no claim to be a “photographer." I’m just a writer who's happened to have a camera on certain occasions under uncertain circumstances and eked out a living with words and pictures as a result. My sole claim to photographic technique comes from either reading (or guessing) my exposures from chimping the inside of a flattened out Tri-X Kodak box I kept in my shirt pocket.

Well, we all know that world's long gone. I'm staggering around suffering from Post-Traumatic Digital Dyslexia. I can develop film in Belsonal and canteen water, but have failed at turning color convincingly into B&W and thus sought solace with simplicity, i.e., the Leica Monochrom.

So, I’m not always well-informed and selective. I'm an "…f8 and be there" guy who used any camera I've happened to have with me--that I can figure out how to use. Most of which, Nikon, Canon, Leica, Contax, Rollie, etc. I’ve picked up second-hand, or got cheap when a guy with a lot of knowledge and a lot of cameras couldn't pay his bar tab, got scared, got Malaria or Dengue, got wounded, was threatened with divorce and bailed out.

As to paying thousands of dollars for a camera with a good combat reputation? Dude, life's pitifully short. Get the big fries.

Stunning. You surely know how to make that program work. Thanks.

Good intel. Thanks!

Good intel. Thanks!

D'accord and copy that, Counsellor. In the immortal words of Dr. Suess: "If I owned a zoo," said young Gerald McGrew, "I'd make a few changes, that's just what I'd do!"