as an aside
Once again, I find myself poking my nose in where it doesn't belong. In spite of what appears to be a very high degree of sharpness and maybe even an extended tonal range, I find the MM files to be lifeless.
That statement reflects my own fascination with and desire for the ability of a camera (or camera/film combination) to reproduce the subtle magical qualities of natural light. Maybe it is simply my own mistaken perception, but I find myself drawn to the extra measure of reality that some photographs allow by hinting at or exactly duplicating a sense of "real" light. When it all comes together, the subtlety of light and shadow can illicit a feeling of something familiar, almost like a memory.
I encounter that "magic" most often in images captured with film. Digital conversions to B&W (in general) and the MM sample images never quite seem to live up to the tonal realism that film allowed.
The alternatives Marc provided are indeed an improvement in terms of a "real black". But to my eye, that benefit comes at a cost. The resulting images have a look and feel that seems artificial, at times reminding me of the darkroom days when I was forced to print a thin negative on a paper grade higher in contrast than I would have liked.
In an era where photographers like John Paul Caponigro are posting pictures taken with an iPhone and run through Hipstamatic on their Facebook pages, maybe the processed effect of the MM files and other B&W conversions are perfectly acceptable. But I can't help thinking that if what you really want is stunning B&W, film is still the king.
there's no doubt i love b/w film -- the look, the tones, the smell, the touch, etc... i don't shoot it because i often find my best images are Hail Mary shots that i never would have taken on film and/or paused long enough to think about it and the moment would be gone.
so i got my hands, briefly, on an MM yesterday.
i did something i have been
dying to do from the moment it was announced: i shot in the dark.
well, as close to the dark as i could find, that is... i put my pre-asph 50 Lux on the camera and begged an lovely lady i'd been working in the service bureau with to crawl under her desk... set at auto-ISO (and -1/3 EV), i focused on her beautiful big eyes with the camera wide open, as close as i could get.
whilst my Lux is not quite as good as the Nocti at finding light in the darkness, it isn't a slouch by any means. her eye was perfectly in focus and you could see each lash at 3200. her face had an other-wordly glow to it, with a fine mist of grain (noise) in the contours. and oh the tonalities!
the reasons i can't share with you is two-fold. one, i honoured the rep's request that i not shoot with my own card; and, two, i honoured her request that it be deleted immediately.
still, after working the M8 and the M9 for years, i've gotten pretty good at judging what i've got on the (pathetic) screen in b/w. 3200, to my eye, was more like well-exposed 800 on the M9... i can see myself regularly using 3200, 5000, maybe even 6400 to keep the shutter speeds up in dark bars.
is this film? no. but what i got was something special unto itself.