Greytones may sound boring but when they stretch from white to black, they can create beautiful photographic images.

Practising the Leica M11 monochrome

It was a beautiful sunny day and a 1-to-1 photo workshop session with Leica M11 Monochrome and a 50mm Summilux f1.4 ASPH. 

The M11 Monochrome was used to learn the settings and post-editing. We took a short ride out of town because nature was the preferred style of photography. We have plenty of that around and Denmark showed itself from its kind side with sunshine. 

The Leica M11 Monochrome has a very rich tonality of grey tones, but there also are a few things to be aware of. Shooting in sunshine demands some underexposure to keep the highlights and then adjusting the darks afterwards.

No white balance is needed. The Leica Monochrome (M9, M10 or M11) do not have any colour information at all. It’s all pure black, white, and grey tones. Adding much more light sensitivity and detail. After a couple of hours out we went to a local cafe for lunch and editing.

Post-editing the photos in Lightroom afterwards and shooting in RAW is recommended to get the most from this camera. Post-editing in Lightroom brings the best out of the files from the M11 Monochrome.