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Annoyance with the monochrom

I've found a usability issue with my monochrom, actually it's the only a minor thing but it really tripped me up and left me with a bunch of overexposed images, so just a warning as some of you may walk the same path.

Setting the scene, previously used the press and hold of the shutter then dial the back to get exposure compensation. I was playing with the new firmware which allegedly fixes the hangs on soft+discrete release, so obviously set to soft and for some reason I set to not use the press hold and turn the rear ring for exposure comp.

So ... I went into the set menu, turned the exposure comp from 1 back to zero (was shooting some backlit subject prior). Basically Set -> Move to exposure comp -> rotate dial to zero. I then pressed the shutter to carry on using the camera, was on aperture priority in bright conditions, did not check my shutter speed. Discovered later when chimping that things looked too bright, sure enough over exposed. You have to press Set again for the setting to hold!!! Gah, lucky the images were nothing special.



Is it really September last year when I got my MM ... I can't believe it! Still the discrete release is not for me anyway, so in a little under a year, I found 1 minor issue with my camera!!! The refinement of Leica is so simple!
 
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jaapv

Subscriber Member
Basically these cameras ar a development from the M6, the first M to have TTL metering. It was never really meant to have an A setting.
The A setting is fine as far as it goes for convenience, but as soon as you go into things like exposure compensation you run into impracticalities.

The concept of the camera is thus:
Instead of guesstimating the exposure by dialling in some compensation which can never be accurate, just take the camera off auto by turning the shutterspeed dial.

The strongly centreweighed metering allows you to adjust exposure to the most important parts of the image, or you can scan the scene to see the exposure spread. That way you can be precise and you will never again misexpose accidentally.

The triangles are very informative. Not only do they indicate the direction you need to turn the aperture ring or shutterspeed dial in, they indicate the amount of over/underexposure as well. Both lit plus dot = spot-on, one burning faintly = 1/2 stop under or over, one burning brightly indicates one stop or more under/over.

I cannot understand why people insist on using the exposure compensation controls on this camera. It is simply not conceived to be used that way, and it shows.

One point - this will not work with Auto-ISO enabled - something Leica thankfully corrected on the M - they will make the auto-ISO handling in manual user-selectable in some future firmware update too to cater for all flavours.
 
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Jaap ... you are of course perfectly correct. I agree with all your points entirely and confess I was being lazy! In actual fact I now realise I could keep the exposure compensation working with both soft and discrete set. It's AE Lock that is disabled ... another sin ... such a bad boy.

:angel:
 

Paratom

Well-known member
I cannot understand why people insist on using the exposure compensation controls on this camera. It is simply not conceived to be used that way, and it shows.
I am coming from a M6 long time ago but now use auto all the time. why? a) because I am faster this way and b)I like to see exp time in the viewfinder. It is enough if I have to remember the f-stop.
I dont understand why Leica could not show us exp time AND the arrows in the viewfinder in manual mode.
 
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