Leica M9 (ME) Color Rendition

So much has been written about the color rendition of the old Leica M9 (in my case ME) that I thought it was worth showing some of my favorite images using this camera.  I now have a Leica M10 but must admit that the M9 is still a wonderful workhorse.  Yes it has its oddities, such as a limitation on card size, slow buffer and horrible LCD screen but it still performs flawlessly where it really counts.

I see plenty of people discussing the color rendition of a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) sensor versus a CMOS (Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) that I thought it worth spending a little time on.  There are a few good places on the internet to dig into the engineering behind each, but suffice to say that the CCD transports the signal from each light reading cell to the edge and then converts it to a digital signal.  A CMOS does a series of amplifications at each cell.  Which is better?  I have no idea...just two different ways of solving the problem, however amplification of signal is difficult without an amplification of the "noise" as well....

Regardless, this is not a comparison between the two sensors because that would be awfully boring.  I can tell you that in many side by side images it can be difficult to see a difference.  But there are shots, that for some amazing reason come out absolutely spellbinding on the CCD sensor.  

The image above, of my two sons at an airport waiting on a delayed flight to Cambodia, is almost straight from the camera as all I adjusted was the contrast (RAW files are always a bit flat), cropped it a bit and gave the blacks a bit of a push.  Someone can look at this image and argue the white balance is off, and it is but look beyond that into the brightness of the blues, the subtle transition into the greenish tint in the background yet still holding onto the real skin tones.  

Here is a very basic snapshot.  I wanted to capture all the junk that a small stall was selling in some backroad store.  The colors really hit me when I looked at this image back home.  Nothing bright, just the basic yellow, green and blue rendered so wonderfully.  

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Here a simple image with some amazing red walls in the background.  I shot this image because of the color and the contrast with the white, marble statue.  When I got back I was floored with how well it was captured.  

Here was a sunset off some of the islands in Indonesia.  Again the color and light capture is frankly astonishing.  

This shot is the one that really got me into the color discussion of the Leica M9.  I shot this one and just loved how perfect the color rendition is.  I began wanting to understand why and started seeing the discussion of the CCD sensor versus the CMOS.  

My Leica M10 shoots amazing pictures and the color rendition is very close to what I actually see.  But thus far there is no image that has struck me because of the color.  The detail it captures impresses me as does the feel of the images but the color is fairly...normal.  

So I keep my M9 and occasionally pull it out and use it hoping to get one of those amazing color images.  Maybe there is something to be said for the CCD sensors.....