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 p.1 #16 · Leica Monochrom Users - M246 vs M10 Monochrom | |
karimnasser wrote:
It is less about tonality and more about lighting, the neon lights would meter a shutter speed too high to allow dim areas to be this much lit, keeping in mind monochrom vs. CFA. I could be wrong of course since I've never shot in B&W camera. I did see a M9M photo of a man, taken in dim light, his face was extremely dark (He appears to be a white male) his eyeballs white as snow in daylight, just a very odd photo, so yes I can see that tonality is different in monochrom sensors. Maybe you can enlighten me about this subject. Thanks!
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Gotcha, wrt to your "obvious".
Allen would certainly be the expert to ask about this, but I'll chime in (welcome to corrections) to kinda start the conversation to why "obvious" may not be so obvious.
You mentioned the metering, as it pertains to the neon lights. Allen may not have metered that way at all. He may have shot manual exposure, based on his goals for the image, zone system, etc. ... and correlated to how he post processes. Here, again, I can't speak for Allen on it, but I reckon he had more control over things than a reflective metering of neon might have rendered.
Next up on the list is the lighting. I understand your point about the falloff from the neon illumination. I think that would be more prominent if the neon was the only source of illumination. I'm not sure that's the case, here.
Depending on the time of day / night / evening / moon / etc. the amount of ambient light may be providing some of the "fill" lighting that the neon doesn't reach. In that regard, one might consider the difference between the neon being exposed as a "key" light vs. that of an "accent" or "kicker" type of light ... exposing instead for the broader ambient light.
Staying with the notion that there are light sources beyond that of the neon signage ... take note of the strong shadow, directly behind the neon sign. This suggests that there is a different light source in play, and it may be that source that has a different falloff rate than that of the neon, and is illuminating the broader area than the neon reaches.
To this point, none of this has anything specifically to do with monochrome camera differences vs. their RGB BFA counterparts.
Stepping into the monochrome realm, we have to take a bit of a look into the difference in how things are constructed ... and this is then relative to light, and specifically light color. I know, seems odd to suggest light color matters, but it kinda does.
RGB BFA construction is typically an RGBG or RGGB arrangement. In either case the amount of light that reaches the sensor signal is related to what color of light is passing through. Where narrow spectrum color light is in play (say very warm), then the amount of light that can pass through is essentially 1/4 that of full spectrum light (e.g. only ONE red). Similar for very cool, where blue light (think twilight) would only receive 1/4 that of full spectrum.
Now, enter the monochrome sensor that does not have the filtration quadrants of the RGB BFA. Instead, 100% (vs. 1/4 or 25%) of the available illumination reaches the sensor. If the ambient lighting in the image is either twilight influence (vs. solely the neon as a light source) and / or other light sources ... the monochrome camera can capture MORE of the illumination that exists, because it isn't filtering out 3/4 or 75% of the light. Thus, what we are used to seeing being captured by an RGB BFA can be different tonal values than what we see from monochrome.
So, here ... the "not so obvious" is that if we are capturing 100% of the available illumination (colored light source), instead of 25%, that is a factor of 4X, which is two stops more ... and a much lesser need to "lift" the shadows, because you captured more of the shadow illumination (which is often narrow spectrum, in nature).
Now, the premise for the "obvious" ... has a few additional / different elements in play that may actually be part of puzzle that may not seem to be superficially "obvious". The details of the available lighting to the scene and Allen's choices for exposure are going to be key ... but, the principles are something to consider when taking a deeper thought about things. Bear in mind, that "real world" may not be a 100% perfect correlation to the academic treatise, but it's a piece of the puzzle for how / why mono can render tonality different from the RGB BFA approach.
HTH
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