Is there any update on support for newer Leica cameras (e.g SL2, SL2-S, M10 Monochrom).
DxO PhotoLab is my current favorite raw image processor, but the lack of support for these cameras is going to make it hard for me to stick with it, long-term, as i’m likely to switch to one of these cameras very soon.
Thank you for any feedback that can be provided.
Good morning @trippalhealicks and welcome to the forum,
Let me ask @Marie to help with this info.
Regards,
Svetlana G.
Any update? It’s crazy no one look at Leica camera seriously.
I look at, and am very interested in Leica cameras. I’ve got an M3, an M2, a M8.2 and an M10, which I used to use a lot. As Joanna has pointed out that my D780 is preferable in terms of resolution, and white balance, so if I’m seriously interested in capturing a photo of something, I mostly use my Nikon. But I “enjoy” the Leica more than any camera I own, even though it dates back to 2016 or so. I like it more than the newer, and “more powerful” camera, the M11.
I know this is an old thread, but if you’re still reading this, check out the “Leica Forum”. All the updates, problem resolution and anything else can be found there.
In most ways, my Nikon gets me technically better photos. But the Leica is more “enjoyable” to use, and relies completely on ME, not automation. No auto-focus, that’s just like what Leica used on the 1950’s M3. It does have a rear screen, and a “Visoflex” which can allow you to look down, into the camera, and the ability to capture GPS data.
There aren’t enough threads in this forum about Leica, perhaps because DxO didn’t offer support for the older models, and perhaps because most people want something more conventional. Technically, it is a “mirrorless” camera, as it doesn’t use a mirror, but it’s not at all like current mirrorless offerings.
I don’t know much about the other Leica models, and in today’s world, I couldn’t afford a new Leica.
Well, 3 years on and there is still no official way to use these cameras from DxO.
However, you can always use other software to first convert to TIFF.
For example, if you have the open-source darktable installed, you can use its command line tool to perform the conversion:
darktablecli --verbose q2m-image.dng q2m-image.tiff --core --conf plugins/imageio/format/tiff/bpp=16 plugins/imageio/format/tiff/compress=2 plugins/imageio/format/png/compress=2 plugins/Imageio/format/webp/comp_type=1 plugins/imageio/format/tiff/compresslevel=6
This will generate the TIFF (and in this case, also correct for the Q2M’s severe lens distortion).
Once in PhotoLab, I believe that you can perform all edits except for Prime noise reduction or any of the lens corrections. If you need these, set up darktable (or equivalent) so that it applies these the corrections you want by default.
It is possible to automate this, so that you can just run a batch script to convert all images in a directory. On a Mac, it is also possible to use ‘automator’ to automatically perform conversion when files are added to a folder.
The main downside is the extra conversion time and the substantial disk space increase implied by the TIFF files, even with compression enabled.
For Leica monochrom cameras specifically, this is AFAIK the only way to use PhotoLab. Tricks such as changing the EXIF or using Adobe DNG converter will not held because the underlying raw data is inherently grey-scale, and DxO will not allow that to be loaded.
I still do not understand why DxO do not provide a generic conversion such as that provided by darktable-cli. While the image quality will obviously not be as good as implementing their full raw conversion, it would at least make the software usable.
My experience with the Q2M, is that the resulting image quality with darktable-cli plus PhotoLab is no better or worse than using, say, Capture One, which does support the camera natively. But with Capture One, conversions “just work” for all of the cameras I use, without the need to find clunky work-rounds.