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I can still hear the mockery when Leica introduced the first Leica Monochrom. Many of the commenters thought Leica was crazy to introduce a black and white only camera. Well, not crazy enough, because surprisingly many photographers did embrace the camera, to the extent that a second version has been on the market for a while already.
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Unlike conventional digital sensors, the Leica Monochrom does away with the Bayer filter. This way the sensor allows all available light to be captured unaltered and unobstructed and thus focus purely on capturing absolute detail, luminance values and subtle tonal beauty. The result is black and white images with a quality unobtainable with conventional digital sensors.
As crazy as this idea might have seemed to some, Leica obviously had the right idea. For several years the Leica Monochrom was the only camera that offered this extra step to ultimate quality black and white digital photography. This was underlined solidly when Phase One introduced a monochromatic sensor of their own, the IQ3 100MP Achromatic interchangeable back. Just like Leica they took the same approach by eliminating the Bayer filter to obtain strictly black and white images.
![](https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/05/backdetails-800x527.jpg)
As with all of Phase One’s cameras and digital backs, this is a medium format sensor, and while it has a higher resolution than the Leica Monochrom, at €50,000 it is also considerably more expensive. Taking that into consideration, the price of the current Leica Monochrom of $7,550 is almost cheap.
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How does this (the Leica not the Phase One) compare in tonality and sharpness to the good old days of Agfapan 50 wonder?
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