The New Monochrom - a fine report

[rayyen]

Thanks for your report Jon!

 

[jlm]

just realized we had a rayyan and a rayyen

and i'm getting a thing for the M246...

 

[docmoore]

Fair does - each to his own -

So can you find out what Leica means by HD video?

Unlimited files ... 4Gb limit ... HDMI output compressed or uncompressed?

Focus assist with magnification during exposure?

Peaking, Histogram, Waveforms in monitor?

Thanks,

Bob

 

[Godfrey]

Just came across this review of the MM246 and thought others would appreciate it:

LEICA M MONOCHROM (TYP 246) REVIEW by David Farkas (Red Dot Report)

enjoy,
G

 

[jonoslack]

Just a quick note about the "crashed library" part. If this happen, either use time machine to restore a previous version or ctrl-click the library file (it is actually a "package", that is a directory presenting itself as a file) and choose "show package content". Then you'll see the files in the library "package". Presumably, all what is needed is to delete the offending file in the "masters" directory.

Thanks for this Jerome - that's true - and helpful, but if you have a managed Aperture library with 50,000 images in it, it may not be quite so easy to find! I also didn't manage to make that work with Photos.

Fortunately it should soon be fixed.

All the best

 

[Biglou]

Thank you also to you Jono, you helped me a lot understanding what to expect from the M246, and as always lovely pictures.
Long ago your pictures and comments decided me buy the first monochrom and i am still very happy with it.

 

[algrove]

+1

 

[jerome_m]

Thanks for this Jerome - that's true - and helpful, but if you have a managed Aperture library with 50,000 images in it, it may not be quite so easy to find! I also didn't manage to make that work with Photos.

It works with Photos and it is easy to find. The directory structure makes sense for humans. If your picture is called 1234.dng and was taken on march, 1st 2015 it will be found in:
masters/2015/03/01/1234.dng

 

[aDam007]

It works with Photos and it is easy to find. The directory structure makes sense for humans. If your picture is called 1234.dng and was taken on march, 1st 2015 it will be found in:
masters/2015/03/01/1234.dng

Ummmmm... You're doing yourself a disservice by having 50k photos in your LR cat.

You should make a new cat. every session and just name it the date you were out. You should also keep those said sessions on an external SSD (preferably thunderbolt drive). And have LR on your internal SSD. Have all the cat files in one folder, and have all the images in their respective dated folders.

Performance wise, that's the fastest way to work. AND, a bit of preplanning every time you unload your memory cards will save you a lot of headache down the road.

 

[jonoslack]

Ummmmm... You're doing yourself a disservice by having 50k photos in your LR cat.

Well actually I was talking about my Aperture LIBRARY - not my LR Catalogue
. . and that's important so that you can find everything on a particular subject without trailing through lots of different libraries (eg kingfishers in Crete - or pictures take with the 28 summicron).

You should make a new cat. every session and just name it the date you were out. You should also keep those said sessions on an external SSD (preferably thunderbolt drive). And have LR on your internal SSD. Have all the cat files in one folder, and have all the images in their respective dated folders.

Now I'm using LR and . .
Well, internal SSD / external thunderbolt SSD is exactly what I do. but as I say, lots of catalogues has the problem of searching across lots of different dates / periods (unless you know a wonder way of searching across different catalogues?

Performance wise, that's the fastest way to work. AND, a bit of preplanning every time you unload your memory cards will save you a lot of headache down the road.

Thanks for the help, date based folder structures etc. etc. been doing it since I started scanning pictures 20 years ago. But if you know a wonder way of keyword searching across multiple LR catalogues then I'm quite open to suggestions! Otherwise I'm going to need to keep an overall catalogue - and one day I'm going to have to convert my Aperture Library - but the plan is to reduce it to a couple of thousand quality images.

 

[jonoslack]

It works with Photos and it is easy to find. The directory structure makes sense for humans. If your picture is called 1234.dng and was taken on march, 1st 2015 it will be found in:
masters/2015/03/01/1234.dng

HI Jerome
Imagine - you have 4 Leica cameras, all with filenames starting with 'L' you've been importing jpg+dng into your Aperture Library with jpg as master for 3 months - still using 10.10.2 - you aren't very computer savvy (like lots of photographers I know). Then you decide to update to 10.10.3 and BAM - you can't load your library. You have lots of Lxxxxx.dng files scattered through folders and directories in your Aperture /Photos library, you aren't sure which is which, and anyway nobody has told you how to look inside the folder

My warning wasn't personal - it was generic - It only caused me irritation . but it could be quite bad for someone in the above situation.

all the best
Jono

 

[aDam007]

Yes, use tags for your images in each cat. But other then that, no not really a smart way to flip between cats.

I use a word document to keep track of notes/cats etc. And organise each cat. by month, and then within the month work vs personal, and as a side bar vacations are in folders by vacation w/dates separate from work and personal. Thats for the actual RAW/jpg files. Then all the LR cats are in one folder and I tag them by color to search faster through the OS. Then within the cats I have tags on images within LR so I can pick out images quicker.

Really not much else you can do about it I suppose. Since you need to go back and forth so much it seems.
If you really need to fast switch between cats, then all images on one cat. with every image tagged appropriately is your only method. But your workflow will be slower for it. Though tags do make things faster (when it comes to searching) within LR itself.

EDIT: Also want to add that I usually buy 2 HDD for every 6 months. Each HDD has the same data on it. As in, I load the photos in the same way to each HDD. I edit off of one HDD, then I save the CAT onto the other HDD when I'm finished for the night. Usually 2 HDD (really just one, since the other is redundant) lasts me 3-6 months, depending on the type of work I'm shooting. Once I get a HDD near full, I print labels and stick them onto the front of the HDD and have my wife write the date, and I have a number on each HDD which corresponds to the LR cat notes on my desktop.

 

[aDam007]

HI Jerome
Imagine - you have 4 Leica cameras, all with filenames starting with 'L' you've been importing jpg+dng into your Aperture Library with jpg as master for 3 months - still using 10.10.2 - you aren't very computer savvy (like lots of photographers I know). Then you decide to update to 10.10.3 and BAM - you can't load your library. You have lots of Lxxxxx.dng files scattered through folders and directories in your Aperture /Photos library, you aren't sure which is which, and anyway nobody has told you how to look inside the folder

My warning wasn't personal - it was generic - It only caused me irritation . but it could be quite bad for someone in the above situation.

all the best
Jono

This is a good point. I always rename the first character of every camera I get. I use to be cleaver, now it's just A, B, C, D...

 

[jerome_m]

HI Jerome
Imagine - you have 4 Leica cameras, all with filenames starting with 'L' you've been importing jpg+dng into your Aperture Library with jpg as master for 3 months - still using 10.10.2 - you aren't very computer savvy (like lots of photographers I know). Then you decide to update to 10.10.3 and BAM - you can't load your library. You have lots of Lxxxxx.dng files scattered through folders and directories in your Aperture /Photos library, you aren't sure which is which, and anyway nobody has told you how to look inside the folder

My warning wasn't personal - it was generic - It only caused me irritation . but it could be quite bad for someone in the above situation.

I was only trying to help. Sure, Apple gets the blame for the crashed library. All I wanted to say is: if that happens to you, there is no reason for panic. It can be fixed without trashing the whole library and that is the procedure to do it.

It is not very important whether one has 50 thousand files and 4 cameras, BTW. Since the files are organised internally by date, you only need to look in the directory holding the files for the day.

 

[jonoslack]

Yes, use tags for your images in each cat. But other then that, no not really a smart way to flip between cats.

I think it depends really on what sort of use you need of your images - I shoot the same subjects from season to season, and I want to be able to create collections etc. from all of my images. Having a separate document to pull it together really doesn't do it.

If you're shooting events, or specific jobs for clients, then they're pretty much lone standing, and having lots of catalogues is clearly a way forward.

I have to say though, that my Aperture library (which has all undeleted images from 2000 onward - some 75,000) is perfectly fast, no issues.

I've only been using LR this year, so my catalogue is a mere 15,000 (I tend to cull at the end of the year). But it's perfectly quick.

. . As for naming files for cameras - I do that as well - intelligently, and it's much easier now with the M cameras as you can name them within the camera. . . . but when writing an article like that the point is to think of other users rather than knowing what one can do oneself. . . . . . and of course, without the warning you wouldn't know what was the cause - it took me some time to work it out.

 

[jonoslack]

I was only trying to help. Sure, Apple gets the blame for the crashed library. All I wanted to say is: if that happens to you, there is no reason for panic. It can be fixed without trashing the whole library and that is the procedure to do it.

It is not very important whether one has 50 thousand files and 4 cameras, BTW. Since the files are organised internally by date, you only need to look in the directory holding the files for the day.

HI Jerome.
I know you were trying to help - but I didn't need the help - someone might some day though

. . . . but if you had converted a 10.2.2 Aperture library they might be spread over months . . . and you might have used several cameras with similar file names on identical days.


I quite understand what you're saying - but the point in the article was to
a) warn people so that they UNDERSTAND if it happens to them
b) to make it clear that it was an issue that Apple would resolve.
c) to save them the trouble of having to fix it

Putting solutions in articles is rather fraught as you then become responsible for them, and you can perhaps imagine how many emails something like that might cause,

Of course, if it DOES happen to anyone, and they email me I'll help them to sort it out . . .

 

[jerome_m]

HI Jerome.
I know you were trying to help - but I didn't need the help - someone might some day though

Exactly. This was the only reason for my post: someone may have a crashed library, use google, and find this thread. Nothing more.

 

[Godfrey]

Ummmmm... You're doing yourself a disservice by having 50k photos in your LR cat.

You should make a new cat. every session and just name it the date you were out. You should also keep those said sessions on an external SSD (preferably thunderbolt drive). And have LR on your internal SSD. Have all the cat files in one folder, and have all the images in their respective dated folders.

Performance wise, that's the fastest way to work. AND, a bit of preplanning every time you unload your memory cards will save you a lot of headache down the road.

Um, no.

My main Lightroom "work-in-progress" catalog contains (currently) 99,233 images, which allows me to search and find images across hundreds of sessions and projects from 2002 onwards. The Lightroom catalog folder is on the internal SSD, the original image files are stored three 2T external FW800 hard drives. For what I do most of the time, this is the fastest way to get what I want done.

When I'm working on a specific project, I often take what I've pulled together from the main catalog and output it to a smaller catalog to work on until finished. I do this not to improve performance, but to reduce distraction. Once I've finished that project, I import the small catalog back into the big one for the live 'work in progress'; I also export all the finished work to a new directory as full resolution, 16bit TIFF files plus whatever other photo deliverables were required.

Your workflow does well for certain kinds of business efforts ... I used to do that when I was shooting client work, aggregating each client's work into a master catalog for that client after finishing the deliverables for each session. But it doesn't change LR performance by much at all; it simply makes it easier for you to keep your work organized on a different granularity.

G

 

[Godfrey]

This is a good point. I always rename the first character of every camera I get. I use to be cleaver, now it's just A, B, C, D...

If I had multiple, identical cameras, I might do that kind of thing. Normally, though, I'm pretty uninterested in which camera produced what image, and only marginally interested in what lens or exposure was used most of the time. It's useful when testing equipment and tracking usage, but I don't need to do that any more.

G

 

[rga]

Going back to the new Monochrom, I'm reading that it produces 12 bit files, which severely limits the information available in the white areas. This could be a major show stopper for many. Anyone know more about this? Link to what I'm referring to is here:
Monochrom M246 DNG technical analysis - Leica M9 / M-E / Leica M Monochrom - Leica Forum

Thanks,
Bob