I have had the Leica Q since it was first on sale in the UK, June 2015. An amazingly long time ago in digital camera years, as it is still my ‘go-to’ camera. But, after a period of procrastination, I decided to go for a Q2. This is a higher resolution, all around upgrade, in essentially the same but now weatherproof body, and with the same excellent Summilux F/1.7 28mm lens. The Q was 24mp, the Q2 is 47mp. The Q2 has built-in cropping at 35mm, 50mm and 75mm equivalent. It also has faster processing, better EVF, video etc.
Thanks to Jono Slack for the table below on crop sizes, and John Kot at dPReview for calculating effective aperture.
- 28mm – 8368 x 5584px – 47mp. Effective aperture f1.7
- 35mm – 6704 x 4472px – 30mp. Effective aperture f2
- 50mm – 4688 x 3128px – 14.6mp. Effective aperture f2.8
- 75mm – 3136 x 2096 – 6.6mp. Effective aperture f4.6
I got the camera on Friday, from Ivor at the excellent Red Dot Cameras. In the image above, the Q2 is ‘clothed’ in an Angelo Pelle Italian leather half case (my favourite for the Leicas) with an Artisan & Artist Japanese silk strap.
Whilst it is hard to properly show resolution performance on a blog, I have tried a ‘real world’ examination, taken on a local bridle path in deep shadow. The image colours are exactly as shot, with just minor adjustment for dynamic range. No extra sharpening or fiddling. All images have been resized to 2400 for this blog – click on each one to see it bigger.
The photograph was taken in regular (non-macro) mode, at 1/80th sec, F/4.0, manual focus. First, I will show the original, and then various size crops. Cropping was all done out of camera on the DNG original. When you crop in camera, the Q2 simply adds a frame which is imported into Lightroom on top of the (still full size) DNG file.
8368 x 5584px. 47MP. 28mm full frame.
6704 x 4472px. 30MP. 35mm focal length equivalent.
4687 x 3128px. 14.6MP. 50mm focal length equivalent.
3600 x 2400px. 8.6MP (usual size for my website). Roughly 57mm focal length equivalent.
3136 x 2096px. 6.6MP. 75mm focal length equivalent.
2400 x 1600px. 3.8MP. Roughly 130mm focal length equivalent.
You can see the spider-web detail in this last crop, despite its relatively tiny file size.
I am not posting this as some kind of scientific test – go to DxO Mark if you want that. Neither am I saying that resolution is the be-all and end-all of photography. But the artistic possibilities opened up when Q2 images are cropped are inspiring. It is of course not just the sensor or camera software at work here – it is also that quite extraordinary Summilux F/1.7 lens.
Header image: iPhone 8Plus