Wex Photographic just sent me an email to say that the new Leica M11 Monochrom has been launched and now I just got one from Red Dot Camera.

£8,300

Now that price is a bit of a Shock, I was expecting about £7600 to £7800,

It does look good and it features the following.

• The 4th generation of the true monochrome Leica M cameras

• Features a triple resolution sensor (60|36|18 MP)

• Uses Leica’s iconic & unobtrusive no logo design

• 256 GB internal memory

I have been making images in black and white now for a while with my regular M11 and I like the results the question for me is this new camera worth it? I am so tempted, but then I see that price and it is rather a lot of money for a dedicated Black and White only camera.

But then that is the point of the camera it is a dedicated B&W instrument to make images with. No distractions of colour ever!

Time will tell whether I weaken and get one, or I might just end up with a film camera instead.

I am also thinking more these days about film, and wondering if I should work more with film again, but then again film kept me poor for a long time I spent 20 years using film prior to the advent of digital photography. However I can see he point of the tactile nature of film. And yet once an image is made it is often digitised and used online so there is no real need to work with film unless you like the fell of the images. Then again I have been looking at https://www.reidreviews.com reviews of the Leica M11 Monochrom and I do like the high ISO performance that is possible with the camera. 3200iso is no problem and that is the limit of what is possible with film photography unless one what film grain the size of golf balls. Now I do like film grain and my favourite film when I was using film was Fuji Superia 800 and Kodak Tri-X also often processed for 800iso, I liked working in low light and still do. So to have a camera that works cleanly at 800 iso and nicely at 6400iso is an amazing thing. I even believe looking at the the results that Sean Reid gets out of the Leica M11 Monochrom at 32,000 iso would be acceptable for my uses, there is no way I would get that sort of result with a film camera.

If I chose to really go back to film then it will be to use black and white film or if I want colour then I would consider Kodak Portra 800 iso film (which is now almost £20 per roll) as I believe the Fuji Superia is long gone now. If I was to use Black and White film Tri-X is now about £16 per roll of film and Ilford Delta 400 is about £9.50 a roll of Film. I do miss the magic of printing in the Darkroom and I have a wonderful enlarger just sitting awaiting the time when I can find somewhere to build a darkroom again. When I started photography back in 1988 I brought a Durst Laboratory 1200 enlarger on lease for £7500 Australian dollars a fortune at the time but a damn good enlarger. I sold it to get a smaller enlarger when I realised that using a 5×4 camera was just not my thing. A few years ago I found one for sale for £80-00 and I snapped it up it came with even more accessories than I had when I brought my first one. I would love to use it again. Which is why I am talking about film photography on here more often again. I do miss the craft that was involved in film photography and I had a lot of experience of film photography. I would regularly spend around £1000 a month at Metro Imaging and I would buy most of my film from Process Supplies.

At some point soon I might make a decision on this in the meantime I am still looking at Leica M11 Monochrom and Leica MA and Leica MP reviews trying to make up my mind which way I will go, and taking out my Nikon FM2 for film photo sessions.