Tests and reviews for the camera Leica M Typ 240

I just wonder why all pictures that I have seen taken with a Leica look better than the ones taken from Nikon. However the marks are not very great. It seems that there factors that are not measured. I did return my D800E back. It seems that the Technology is not there yet. 

The point  of shooting rangefinder, and any way investing in a Leica M is not cracking burst shots at sport events, I take it...

One thing though, Leica did really make a fuss about this new sensor and all, well at least here in Europe, got some friends who were invited to a couple of events by the store in London (they're customers and Leica tends to take care (cling onto) their customers, well Leica does not sell potatoes...).

And, here is the result, you'd think given what they ask for a M, they would fit it with top notch sensor technology (I'm thinking what Canon or Nikon (I mean Sony) manage to achieve).

But the SNR curve is not that impressive and most of all the dynamic range, which is wrongfully labeled as landscape here on DxO, drops quite rapidly to below APS-C sensor average past ISO 800.

And well DR at base ISO does not tell you the whole story, it's quite the opposite. At base ISO you'll barely even use more than 12 ev, unless you fancy over-everything radioactive HDR finish.

BUT DxO measures DR from where the noise levels cripple the shadows to the highest reproducible gradations in highlights. Thing is, as you increase the amplification of the signal, the highlights are always maintained very well, the shadows however... that's a different story.

Meaning, despite the score of ISO 1800 in acceptable SNR, the shadows turn to mush quite fast, which means the camera is already under-performing above ISO 800.

Canon for instance has never done too well in the low ISO DR department, however what made their cameras perform "low light miracle" is that they manage to keep a reasonably good DR at high ISO, on par or even better than their Sony (I mean Nikon) counterparts. Sony's chip manage a tad cleaner SNR.

My point is it's better to have a better headroom than sacrificing tones for the sake of a bit cleaner file... Cause when you have 8 ev of DR in your Raw file, in general it's game over, and well, the M does it two full stops earlier than its competitors, or so it seems cause the graphs do not display the data, DxO has not updated the site as of now.

Isn't it a bit disappointing? (guess it still is an improvement over the M9).

Looks like rather low quantum efficiency.