Photography News issue 26

Camera test 42

Photography News Issue 26 absolutephoto.com

Leica Q Premium compacts are proving popular among keen photographers and at £2900, the Leica Q is certainly has a premium price tag but is it any good? We find out

Specs

Street price

£2900

Sensor Full-frame CMOS 24 megapixels, 6000x4000 pixels with Maestro II processor File formats DNG Raw, JPEG Storage 1x SD/SDHC/SDXC card Lens Summilux 28mm f/1.7 Autofocus Single, continuous, touch, face detection, live view Manual focus Yes Minimumfocusing 30cm, 17cm in macro ISO range 100-50,000, auto Continuous drive 10fps Monitor 3in touchscreen, 1040k dots Viewfinder EVF, 3680k dots Shutter speed range 30secs to 1/16,000sec Flash sync 1/500sec or slower Exposuremodes PASM, sport, portrait, landscape, night portrait, snow/beach Scenemodes Candlelight, sunset, digiscoping, miniature, panorama, time lapse Meteringmodes Multizone, spot, centre-weighted Exposure compensation +/-3EV in 0.3EV steps Bracketing +/-3EV in 0.3EV steps Video features 1920x1080 resolution, MPEG-4 format, stereo Connectivity

Review by Will Cheung

People don’t buy compact cameras like they used too, preferring their mobile phones instead, but if there is any bright spot it is in the top-end, large-sensor sector of the market where we have premium products offering excellent image quality. Several major brands, including Fujifilm and Sony, are slugging it out for business and now Leica has thrown its hat into the ring. The Q, a 24-megapixel compact with a fixed Summilux 28mm f/1.7 lens, has a guide price of £2900, so significantly more expensive than most of its compatriots, but then the offering is different. While most top- end compacts use one-inch, APS-C or Micro Four Thirds sensors, the Q joins the Sony Cyber-Shot RX1, RX1R and the new RX1R II as fixed lens compacts with a full-frame sensor. As a long-time Leica M user, I expected the Q to have exquisite build quality and to feel good. I wasn’t disappointed. The body has an admirable heft and solidity, and you cannot but help admire the quality of the finish. Its robustness is a reassuring pleasure and makes you believe it’s worth close to three grand. The beautifully finished body is also nice on the eye, with few controls and the rounded body ends typical of the Leica M. But on the downside, its shape is not great for a secure hold. The right-side of the body, even with a scoop out of the rear side for the thumb, doesn’t allow for a secure one-handed grip. Someone more cynical than me might suggest this was done to encourage the purchase of the optional £90 Leica Q Typ 116 handgrip. Certainly, if youshoot street images with a Q in hand ready to go, this handgrip is essential or at least,

you’ll want the supplied neck strap tightly wrapped around your hand/ wrist. Nevertheless, the camera’s basic grip design could easily have been better. The same applies to the leather neck strap. It’s thin with no cushioning so there is no concession tocomfort.Neitherwas I convincedby the split strap arrangement to secure the strap to the body. Personally I’d suggest to any Q buyer that before leaving the shop they add both a more comfortable strap and a Typ 116 handgrip to their basket. The top-plate has a minimalist feel: a large shutter/exposure mode dial and an on/off switch, neither with a lock, an input dial, and amovie record button. The Q offers full HD video capability, and as I suspect the majority of users will be still shooters, it is a shame that the movie record button can’t be customised to be more useful. In fact, greater customisation would be a good idea. No locks on the exposure dial and on/off switch is something to watch, too. I managed to turn the camera on when putting it in the bag. The click- stop between the S and C settings is very smooth and easy to slide into so I found myself in C mode too often. Shooting in C gives a shooting rate of up to ten frames-per-second so if you don’t spot that you are in C and just want to squeeze off a single shot, you get an unwanted series of frames. The camera has a live-view, touch- sensitive monitor, which provides a quality viewing image. Ranged down its left side are five buttons. The FN button can be assigned to seven different options. During composition pushing the button at the centre of the four-way I expected the Q to have exquisite build quality and to feel good. I wasn’t disappointed

USB2.0, HDMI, wireless Dimensions (wxhxd) 130x80x93mm Weight 640g Contact uk.leica-camera.com

thumb pad scrolls through three viewing options. There’s full-frame without any camera setting info, then there is 16:9 format ideal for video, and finally, there’s a full-frame overlay that includes key camera data. Put the camera up to your eye and the camera switches to the EVF. The detail visible with the high-resolution EVF is impressive, but the image does seem to lack brightness and sparkle. Generally, though, it is good to work with and fine detail is well rendered. Camera set-up is straightforward, helped in large part by the lack of controls and the clear legends. The menu, however, is a disappointment. It is just one long list of items – 34 in total, eight per page. The options are pretty standard, but it seemed strange that while the Q offers shooting JPEGs or JPEGs and DNG Raws simultaneously, it doesn’t offer Raws only, which is a waste of capacity if that’s all what youwant. Tabs or pages like those used by every other camera brand to group menu items relevant to, for example, camera set-up, custom features and playback would be more user friendly and surely not that difficult

to implement. The limited number of controls and function buttons does mean your options to customise the Q are limited, which is a shame. Having so far done nothing but moan about the Q’s design and layout, here are the neat things – and there’s plenty of them, too. The fixed 28mm lens and integral hood, for example. Firstly, it is a highly capable optic capable of excellent results as you can see from the test images here. Whether the 28mm focal length is the right choice byLeica depends onwhat you like to shoot with. In terms of performance, our test camera acquitted itself very well and there were no absolute failures. The meter handled a mix of lighting types verywell so full marks here. AF was pretty capable too and any errors were usually the user’s fault. The autofocusing process was inaudible in practical situations and that was the same with the camera’s shutter noise. The mechanical shutter (up to 1/2000sec) did have a quiet, smooth and assured Leica-esque click, and when the electronic shutter kicked in (over 1/2000sec), there was no noise at all.

Left The Q’s multi-zone exposure system proved itself adept at handling all types of lighting, and auto white-balance performance was sound too.