Here’s a comparative portrait shooting with the Nikon D3, Sony NEX-7 and Leica M Monochrom. The photos were made in a studio with two soft boxes and black studio background, as you can see in the 1:1 crop’s reflections in the eye.
For a better analysis refer to the 1:1 crop images.
Leica M Monochrom was post-processed with Lightroom and Nik Silver Efex 2.
The performance of the cheep Sony 50mm F1.8 OSS for about $500 compared to the Leica APO-Summicron for about $3,800 (if you are lucky enough to get one) for this job is surprisingly good. I printed perfect A2 sized portraits.
Judge for yourself!
So what’s your favorite?
The Leica M Monochrom is manual focus. To get the eye 100% in focus is not that easy. The autofocus of the Sony NEX-7 seems to be perfect, see the crop above.
The original M Monochrom image uses Lightroom 4.2 default settings (see screenshot below). I only applied sharpening (41,0,21).
The image at first looks very flat and gray, but as everything is in RAW you can get it all out.
