[Leica] Leica MM and M9 Comparison

[roark.paul at gmail.com (Paul Roark)]

> Erwin has this statement here:
>
> "The Monochrom produces absolutely neutral monochrome tones."

Talk about stating the obvious...

> When you take a M9 image file and transfer it to black and white there is 
> always a slight color cast.

I assume he means from the printing.  If he thinks the 16 bit
grayscale file is different than an MM file in terms of color, the man
is losing it.

> It is well-known that even the Epson 3800, when set to bw-printing, will 
> add slight amounts of color ink.

More than a little.  The Epson "Advanced B&W" adds color inks to the
gray inks, and the gray inks themselves are a blend of carbon pigments
plus color inks. The Epson MSDS for the 2880 stated with respect to
ink composition that there is ">2%" carbon black and ">2%"
"proprietary dyes and pigments."

In http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/ fade testing (the best) after 60
MLux Hours of exposure (about 30 Wilhelm years of display) the Epson
ABW print 50% gray test patch had a delta-e of 1.6.  The 100% carbon
inksets had a 50% patch delta-e of 0.2.  (See p. 2
http://www.paulroark.com/BW-Info/Eboni-6.pdf)  We know that carbon is
king with respect to fade resistance and color stability.  The 8 times
larger delta-e of the "Advanced (?) B&W" mode print might be something
B&W purists and collectors should consider.

>" One can safely claim that the Monochrom is the only digital 35 mm camera 
>that delivers pure neutral tones, identical to the ones you get when using 
>silver-halide emulsions."

Silver prints are not totally neutral.  Erwin is spouting nonsense.

I just printed a 100% carbon pigment print on Arches watercolor paper
for one of my customers.  It's not totally neutral either, but I know
there are no color dyes or pigments in it, and I know it will look
virtually the same many years from now.  In fact, the major change
will be that the Arches paper will bleach a bit from light exposure.
With carbon pigments the paper is the weak link, but Arches is as good
as it gets -- better, I believe, than the wet darkroom prints &
papers.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com