p.2 #1 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
CampK wrote:
Recently had to sell my M11 for financial reasons and looking for a "downgrade" I can afford (3k) and still put all my M glass to good use ... M260 seems the obvious choice, but interestingly, in searching through the archives of the forum, I see very little discussion of this camera.
Just curious if this community has thoughts/experience with it ... what to expect, etc.
Thanks!
Camp
I wouldn't. I owned an M240 from 2013-2018 - great camera at the time and my first Leica. But even then the sensor tech felt dated and behind the times. I presently shoot an M11 and it, like the M240, is not as modern as contemporaneous SoCaNikon cameras in terms of sensor tech (the other features like AF barely matter since you're not really buying a Leica for automation). However, the technical obsolescence of the M11 not limiting. Response time is much better than an M240, software is reliable with the latest firmware updates, and the sensor is good enough to feel almost timeless. Also, the M11 has some nice touches that make it feel modern, like USB-C based charging, and integrated memory.
If I had to go from an M11 to an M240, I would not be happy. The M240 is fatter, slower, and has much worse battery life. If the M240 felt a little behind the curve 13 years ago, I don't know how it would feel now, especially after using the state-of-the-art-for-Leica M11. I actually consider the M11 to be something of a forever camera for me.
p.2 #2 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
Arka wrote:
I wouldn't. I owned an M240 from 2013-2018 - great camera at the time and my first Leica. But even then the sensor tech felt dated and behind the times. I presently shoot an M11 and it, like the M240, is not as modern as contemporaneous SoCaNikon cameras in terms of sensor tech (the other features like AF barely matter since you're not really buying a Leica for automation). However, the technical obsolescence of the M11 not limiting. Response time is much better than an M240, software is reliable with the latest firmware updates, and the sensor is good enough to feel almost timeless. Also, the M11 has some nice touches that make it feel modern, like USB-C based charging, and integrated memory.
If I had to go from an M11 to an M240, I would not be happy. The M240 is fatter, slower, and has much worse battery life. If the M240 felt a little behind the curve 13 years ago, I don't know how it would feel now, especially after using the state-of-the-art-for-Leica M11. I actually consider the M11 to be something of a forever camera for me. ...Show more →
Are you sure about that battery life? I don't have the M240, but on my M-D (which is basically the same camera without the screen) the battery easily lasts for weeks. It really does feel like shooting film because you never have to worry about the battery running out.
p.2 #3 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
Fred Miranda wrote:
Are you sure about that battery life? I don't have the M240, but on my M-D (which is basically the same camera without the screen) the battery easily lasts for weeks. It really does feel like shooting film because you never have to worry about the battery running out.
Agree on this. I have both an M240 and an M11 and the M240 lasts much longer (not that the M11 is bad and by all accounts is a huge improvement over the M10). I have gotten through almost an entire trip on a single charge. M11 needs to be replenished fairly frequently but not daily. M240 is in a different league. I think this is a function of the battery itself but also the limited demands placed on it in contrast to the M11 - eg, Bluetooth, higher res LCD screen, metering off sensor and the extra shutter lift that requires.
p.2 #4 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
ColginPhoto wrote:
Agree on this. I have both an M240 and an M11 and the M240 lasts much longer (not that the M11 is bad and by all accounts is a huge improvement over the M10). I have gotten through almost an entire trip on a single charge. M11 needs to be replenished fairly frequently but not daily. M240 is in a different league. I think this is a function of the battery itself but also the limited demands placed on it in contrast to the M11 - eg, Bluetooth, higher res LCD screen, metering off sensor and the extra shutter lift that requires. ...Show more →
+1 for the combination of "demands" and the larger battery (AA-ish cells vs. AAA-ish cells) size makes for a different battery life experience.
I've even suggested that if they DID make an M body with IBIS, it could be the size of the M240, so it could accommodate the space for the IBIS, but also to accommodate the larger battery capacity to run it.
p.2 #5 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
I bought an M-P 240 earlier this year.
My impressions so far:
- fatter body doesn’t bother me, but I added an IDSworks thumb grip which improved ergonomics a lot for me
- sensor performance feels dated - more similar to my Nikon D700 than the Zf. But works for me outside of very low light (up to ISO 1600)
- live view is pretty bad, can be a bit annoying when trying to achieve critical focus in landscape shooting
- battery life is great, but currently you can’t get replacement batteries. I hope Leica fixes this soon..
Sounds like a lot of negative points but I still like the camera a lot
I do think that I‘d prefer an M10-P overall, but I was not willing to spend the extra 2k
p.2 #6 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
If you can spare the additional cash, go for the M10. The price difference shouldn't be more than 700 EUR, even less if you go for an M10 that is functional but has some scars
I prefer the M10 due to its slimmer body, faster operation, and better sensor, even though both clipped highlights by a lot. The M10 just has better shadow recovery.
But... it's not like the M240 is a bad camera, actually, it gave me great images, and if you are not looking into recovering shadows like crazy, it's sufficiently good. Well exposed images can give clean results at around ISO 3200. Just try to get a couple of batteries cause they are hard to get.
Some images with the m240, (nothing would have changed if it was the m10 or even m11):
p.2 #7 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
rscheffler wrote:
For me not just after every trip. Dust will suddenly appear within a hundred or two shots, which could easily be within a few hours. Because I mostly use the camera with the OVF and the rear display doesn't really reveal much when working in bright sunlight, I'll miss new dust spots as they appear during use and inevitably only notice them later when reviewing images on the computer. Too often it'll be some small hair that is positioned in the worst spot. The last time I seriously used the camera I shot some silhouette scenes and later when going through the images there was a ton of dust I hadn't noticed while shooting. And I even cleaned the sensor before going out that day specifically to avoid this. But I change lenses A LOT, which certainly doesn't help.
I wish dry cleaning alone would do it. Usually it does, but I need to go over the sensor probably a few 'sweeps' with a sensor pen and/or the little gel sticks to pluck stubborn pieces off the glass. Or I have to do a wet swabbing. I've also twice had bad luck with the M240's sensor attracting a piece of dirt that 'welded' itself to the sensor glass. Both times practically dead center.
I asked Leica to check the first time it happened when the shutter died (the welded-on dirt was already there for some time and was unrelated to the shutter failure) and they said they had to replace the sensor. And replacing the sensor was prerequisite for having the shutter repaired (because of that piece of welded-on dirt). So I paid for the sensor ($960) but they comped the shutter replacement.
Then a couple years later another piece of dirt welded onto the sensor glass in virtually the same spot... I've lived with it since and hope whenever the camera next has to go to Leica that they don't force another sensor replacement just to get the camera 'back to specs.'
I don't know what Canon is doing with their mirrorless cameras that minimizes dust to the extent that I have only rarely had to blow dust off the sensors. I haven't even had to touch a Canon mirrorless sensor yet for cleaning. Sensor vibration to unseat dust likely helps. And as mentioned, I'm guessing the sensor stack thickness is another factor. When there is dust, even stopped down to around f/8, it's still soft-edged, whereas with my Leicas it will be very sharply defined. This suggests that the top layer of glass on Canon's sensors is quite far from the actual sensor's surface.
This affinity for attracting dust and the lack of IBIS are two major reasons I've kind of shelved my M system in favor of mirrorless. I love using the M, but I hate retouching dust in hundreds of images. ...Show more →
Fortunately I never encountered welded dirt onto my sensor of any digital camera I used so far - maybe I was lucky! To clean my M 240-based cameras, I refer to my "best proven" cleaning method with an older version of the Arctic Butterfly pen. I use it 3-4 times hovering carefully with the statically charged brush over the sensor plane - sometimes just a bit touching the glass, dust particles are sucked into the brush by static energy. After each cleaning, I rotate the brush away from the camera to get rid of the collected dirt in the brush hairs. I get about 90% of the M 240 sensor dust well removed this way. The camera has the sensor dust test feature which shows you dust after taking a non-focused image of a bright area at f/11 or f/16 which from my experience is fairly accurate. I had only my MM 246 sensor wet cleaned once by a kind Leica sales person in Wetzlar/Germany when I visited the Leica store within the facility. I was the only visitor in the store at the time, so he offered to check out and clean my camera while I looked around.
I have only used one other mirrorless camera where the sensor also sits close to the lens mount which is my Sony A7R. I don't need to clean this sensor as often as I have to do it with my M 240 camera sensors. Your assumption regarding sensor stack thickness might be correct that thinner ones allow to see dirt on the glass much easier. From experience I agree here.
I have observed the green shift on my M-E 240 only when severely pushing shadows. You are hitting a green banding issue then. It was a common issue with sensors made at this time due to limited dynamic range.
p.2 #10 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
andrew perkins wrote:
I went from the M-P 240 to M10R and while I would never go back willingly, the files from the M-P were absolutely fine. If my budget was 3k and wanting to stay in the M system, I'd definitely look for another M-P at the 2.5k range.
Another option is to not "downgrade" sensors and instead adapt your M glass to something like an A7CR
This is an interesting idea. Anyone with experience doing this? Does the sensor require modification? Curious if anyone has a pics of the A7CR with M glass on it.
p.2 #11 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
Any stock Sony camera will have sensor stack incompatibility issues with most M lenses 50mm and wider. It really depends on the lens and how critical you are about peripheral sharpness in your images. If you mostly shoot at or near wide open, it will be less of an issue (though it will still somewhat affect bokeh/rendering and field curvature).
Whenever there's a new Voigtlander release and FM member Juha in Tokyo gets one, he will post a bunch of Google Drive galleries at full resolution shot on the a7C v2 (I don't think he has the R), which you can review for sensor stack effects. You just have to go through the various lens threads (or his posting history) and find his posts with links.
Arka wrote:
I wouldn't. I owned an M240 from 2013-2018 - great camera at the time and my first Leica. But even then the sensor tech felt dated and behind the times. I presently shoot an M11 and it, like the M240, is not as modern as contemporaneous SoCaNikon cameras in terms of sensor tech (the other features like AF barely matter since you're not really buying a Leica for automation). However, the technical obsolescence of the M11 not limiting. Response time is much better than an M240, software is reliable with the latest firmware updates, and the sensor is good enough to feel almost timeless. Also, the M11 has some nice touches that make it feel modern, like USB-C based charging, and integrated memory.
If I had to go from an M11 to an M240, I would not be happy. The M240 is fatter, slower, and has much worse battery life. If the M240 felt a little behind the curve 13 years ago, I don't know how it would feel now, especially after using the state-of-the-art-for-Leica M11. I actually consider the M11 to be something of a forever camera for me. ...Show more →
Fred Miranda wrote:
Are you sure about that battery life? I don't have the M240, but on my M-D (which is basically the same camera without the screen) the battery easily lasts for weeks. It really does feel like shooting film because you never have to worry about the battery running out.
ColginPhoto wrote:
Agree on this. I have both an M240 and an M11 and the M240 lasts much longer (not that the M11 is bad and by all accounts is a huge improvement over the M10). I have gotten through almost an entire trip on a single charge. M11 needs to be replenished fairly frequently but not daily. M240 is in a different league. I think this is a function of the battery itself but also the limited demands placed on it in contrast to the M11 - eg, Bluetooth, higher res LCD screen, metering off sensor and the extra shutter lift that requires. ...Show more →
I used to shoot weddings with my M combined with my Canon kit. With the M9 I'd go through 5 batteries in a day (swap them out at 50% otherwise the camera would get 'quirkier'). I had 4 for the M240 and it was generally enough - the camera's auto-off was disabled to avoid the slow wake up time so naturally consumption was constant because it was always on.
This is why in my previous post I noted that the M240 was a responsive camera. As long as it's awake. Because of it's slow wake time, and because of its huge battery capacity, I routinely entirely disabled sleep.
In my extensive use of the M240, battery life was variable based on how the camera was being used. Worst would be with live view/EVF and maybe I'd get a couple hundred shots over a several hour outing. But the same was also true for my DSLRs at the time. I could shoot sports, rarely chimp images and rack up thousands of images on a battery charge. But switch on live view or do some video, and battery life plummeted.
retrofocus wrote:
I have observed the green shift on my M-E 240 only when severely pushing shadows. You are hitting a green banding issue then. It was a common issue with sensors made at this time due to limited dynamic range.
I was going to mention the green shadow shift but thought it would be getting too deep into the weeds. Back at the time someone in the UK released a LR plugin that would generally neutralize the effect but the last time I checked it was no longer available on the internet.
The green shift happens until the transition between ISO 800 and 1000. And it is more noticeable the less you push a file, the closer it is to ISO 800. Basically you'd push an ISO 200 file a few stops to see the same green shadows effect as pushing ISO 800 files a stop. If at 800 it would be better just to switch to ISO 1000. But the tradeoff, at least with the base M240 (not sure about the M-P or M-E) was that transition also roughly halved the effective buffer depth.
I basically ran all my M240 files through the green shadow fix plugin. I haven't yet examined SOOC M240 DNG files processed through AI NR, such as Adobe's Denoise, to determine if that has any affect or cancellation of the green shadow shift...
EDIT:
I pulled a few recent M240 files from the last time I used it to have a closer look. All were ISO 200 files. In LRC 14.5.1 I pushed them at least 4-5 stops (way beyond what was necessary) and/or also pushed shadows to 100 and did not see any green shadow shift. Running Denoise on the files cleaned up the grain but the subtle sensor banding that was visible in some areas was not removed.
EDIT 2:
I think I'm wrong about my initial conclusion (now deleted). None of the ISO 200 files I initially tested had truly clipped black values. I found an ISO 400 file that was terribly underexposed and that required +5 exposure compensation, +100 shadow shift, and still was clipped. And it indeed revealed the green shadow shift. Running it through Denoise did nothing to fix the green shift (it instead made the shadows an extremely vibrant green). I ran the file through the green shadow fix plugin and it was much better, but with a slight magenta shift in the clipped blacks, but that could be addressed mostly by adding a slight amount of green with the shadows slider in the calibration panel. I ran it through Denoise and it reintroduced green back into the extremely clipped areas and some uneven/unusual patterning as well, so whatever the plugin does to the original DNG file, it messes up how Denoise processes it. Therefore Denoise on top of the green shadow fix is not a good idea.
In the original version with the green shadow shift, I did a color range mask selection of the green shadows and desaturated it, then pulled back shadows so the image looked normal, and it seemed fine.
So in revisiting this, I think the green shadow shift is really only a problem if the image has clipped shadows and you want to recover those values. In normally exposed images, +/- 1, maybe 2 stops, combined with pushing shadows in post, you're probably not going to see the effect very often. IMO it's just another one of those M system 'quirks' you need to know about for this specific camera and work around to the best of your ability.
I don’t like the fact that the M11 has no base plate and is a bit laggy.
I ultimately bought a M10-R. I am a happy camper.
Yes, the M10-R has a true ISO 100 base, and so far it's my favorite Leica M. I still shoot with the M-D and M10-P Safari, enjoying them despite their quirks.
p.2 #14 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
CampK wrote:
This is an interesting idea. Anyone with experience doing this? Does the sensor require modification? Curious if anyone has a pics of the A7CR with M glass on it.
Pushing your optical path through the Sony stack ... I never understand why folks want to spend the money on Leica M lenses and then muck up the optical projection through a Sony sensor stack / microlenses. The engineering of the M lens and the M body microlenses / sensor stack is keen to getting the most from your M lenses.
Sure, a newer sensor has the same image projection area sliced into smaller pieces. But, would you rather have crisp, sharp slightly larger pixels, or fuzzy, smaller ones with the wrong colors.
An old link, but the visual of the microlenses came up from a google search. Huss (et al) makes a salient point in that thread, also.
p.2 #16 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
CampK wrote:
This is an interesting idea. Anyone with experience doing this? Does the sensor require modification? Curious if anyone has a pics of the A7CR with M glass on it.
I have an A7CR that was Kolari modified to Leica thin sensor stack thickness, and all my M-mount lenses perform exactly the same as they do on the Leica M11 (60MP), except for color. Resolution and contrast are identical, which makes it a strong alternative since the Sony also offers 7-stop IBIS and can take an AF adapter.
That said, if what you're really after is the rangefinder experience, the Sony won't give you that. You can get it with an M240 on a more conscious budget, but in the end you'll probably move up to an M10-R or M11.
p.2 #17 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
ColginPhoto wrote:
Agree on this. I have both an M240 and an M11 and the M240 lasts much longer (not that the M11 is bad and by all accounts is a huge improvement over the M10). I have gotten through almost an entire trip on a single charge. M11 needs to be replenished fairly frequently but not daily. M240 is in a different league. I think this is a function of the battery itself but also the limited demands placed on it in contrast to the M11 - eg, Bluetooth, higher res LCD screen, metering off sensor and the extra shutter lift that requires. ...Show more →
Hmmm.. I don't remember the battery life on the M240 being spectacularly good or bad but if you all are reporting great battery performance from M240 cameras you're currently using, I don't have any contemporaneous evidence to claim otherwise - my memory is not as reliable as your reports. I am very pleased with the battery life on my M11.
p.2 #18 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
Arka wrote:
Hmmm.. I don't remember the battery life on the M240 being spectacularly good or bad but if you all are reporting great battery performance from M240 cameras you're currently using, I don't have any contemporaneous evidence to claim otherwise - my memory is not as reliable as your reports. I am very pleased with the battery life on my M11.
Perhaps you were using an older battery. Over a few years, depending on how often it was charged to 100% and fully depleted, a battery can lose its ability to hold a full charge. In my opinion, the M240 battery lasts longer than any other Leica battery, including the M11's, which is also very good....but the M11 consumes more power due to its additional features. Since I use a version without a screen, my battery probably lasts even longer. I'm always amazed at how much it holds.
p.2 #19 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
Fred Miranda wrote:
Perhaps you were using an older battery. Over a few years, depending on how often it was charged to 100% and fully depleted, a battery can lose its ability to hold a full charge. In my opinion, the M240 battery lasts longer than any other Leica battery, including the M11's, which is also very good....but the M11 consumes more power due to its additional features. Since I use a version without a screen, my battery probably lasts even longer. I'm always amazed at how much it holds.
+1. I have three fairly new batteries for my M-E 240 and M 246 cameras. If the camera is not used, the battery drains very slowly, too. During camera usage without LiveView nor VF-2, one fully charged battery lasts easily for two days of usage and several hundred photos taken. I always try to deplete a fully charged battery as much as possible before recharging it to avoid the memory effect. Since I am using my first M 240 based battery in 2019, it works like I received it as new.
p.2 #20 · Thoughts or experience with the Leica M240?
Fred Miranda wrote:
You can get it with an M240 on a more conscious budget, but in the end you'll probably move up to an M10-R or M11.
Both cameras are still much too expensive even used for my taste! The M10-R didn't drop much in used camera pricing. I suspect it was high in demand with all the issues the M11 has faced in the beginning. Plus the M10-R is the last digital M which has the traditional design with base plate.
I've lived with it since and hope whenever the camera next has to go to Leica that they don't force another sensor replacement just to get the camera 'back to specs.'