rangefinder

Leica Q (Type 116) Review and Hands On

June 22, 2016 in Photo, Review

Leica Q (Type 116) Review

The Leica Q has been out for nearly a year now, and there are loads of reviews online that discuss the pros and cons of the lens and the sensor and all the technical specifications of this little full frame, fixed lens digital compact camera. People call it the best full frame compact camera ever made and boast about its solid construction and fast lens, but how is it really to shoot with? Does it improve on elements of the Leica M (type 240) or does it lack that "Leica feel?" The primary reason I bought this camera was to have an incredible little carry around 35mm camera and as a companion to my Leica M with a 50mm 1.4 lens. I hope that both cameras working together at an event will provide me enough choice and variation to have similar but different looks. My standard event cameras right now are 2 Canon's, a 5DS with a 24-70mm F2.8 lens and 1DX with a 70-200mm F2.8 lens. While 2 Leica's are not going to give me anywhere near the flexibility of this setup, they are going to force me out of my comfort zone, make me move more for the right images, and hopefully get me some incredible images. I'm not always in the mood for the work that a Leica requires, and often the work I do just won't allow me the time to work with a manual focus rangefinder, but this is where the Leica Q fills in some gaps and hopefully opens me up for some different looking and possibly more creative work.

Leica Q - Price

First, let's begin with the price of this camera. It's definitely on the high end, much higher than any other camera that even comes close to it. You could buy a Sony RXRII and still have over $1000 left to buy a Ricoh GRII, both very similarly slated little cameras. The category these all seem to fit into is "Street camera" which I guess means that they're carry around, unobtrusive fairly wide lens cameras. Funnily enough they're about the same focal length that Apple decided to use for the iPhone. It's actually changed since the iPhone 4S and is now a little wider and even closer to the field of view of the Leica Q. It's not necessarily everyones favorite field of view, and I'd say for a lot of the work I do it lands kind of in the middle of not quite right. It's not wide enough to push an image and have the stylized look of a 16mm-24mm focal length and its not quite tight enough to be distortion free and really throw out the background like a "normal" 50mm lens. However the reason I like the focal length so much is that it is about as wide as you can go without the image showing too much distortion/perspective/wide-angle-ness. It's hard to explain, but when I shoot with a 24mm lens, everything starts to look like its being forced into the frame, the vanishing point is pushed back and everything starts to play into the perspective of a wide lens. That's certainly a look and style that can be used to your advantage. Photojournalists often heavily rely on the wider lenses to really draw people into an image, they shoot close and wide on their subjects, and it creates a definite look. The 50mm lens is often described as normal and I think thats because it really just describes the subject as plainly and with less distortion as possible. People say its hows the human eye sees, but I've never agreed with that. The pictures a 50mm lens make, certainly depict what the human eye sees as plainly as possible without any distortion from the lens, but it crops the world more than what my eyes see. This is possibly turning into a nonessential or even nonsensical ramble about my opinion of shooting super wide, but it does illustrate how comfortable a 28mm field of view feels to me. It's just right. Wikipedia actually describes it perfectly "In photography and cinematography, a normal lens is a lens that reproduces a field of view that generally looks "natural" to a human observer under normal viewing conditions, as compared with lenses with longer or shorter focal lengths which produce an expanded or contracted field of view that distorts the perspective when viewed from a normal viewing distance"

I should also say (rather opinionatedly) that you should never use the crop function in the Leica Q to crop an image to 35mm or 50mm. Just do that in post processing. Unless you are handing the files over to an editor and you don't want to give them the freedom to crop in photoshop, this feature is all but useless in my opinion. Ok, so back to price which is super high, but once you're in the Leica world and throwing around some serious cash for lenses and bodies with little red dots on them, $4000 becomes a number you're not so scared of. You're buying a premium brand with some of the best optics in the industry. I had a 35mm F2.0 Summicron lens that I haven't been using much at all that helped me purchase this camera. The Leica Q has a fixed 28mm F1.7 summilux lens, arguably a more usable lens than the 35mm Summicron that I barely used, so in my gear addled little mind its a sensible conversion. You also need to spend money on good equipment, its not about being the coolest kid on the block or having the better camera than your friends, it's about owning gear that will help you make work that you like. It's about not missing the moment because of bad or unreliable equipment. It's really about not worrying about the tool. Anyone that owns a Leica should feel super fortunate that they have the ability to spend money on such an expensive tool, but I'd also say that anyone who owns a Leica should also realize that it's not the right tool for everyone.

Leica Q - Autofocus

Now, once you've got over the sticker shock of the price, the next feature that I need to talk about is the auto focus. Nobody would have believed that Leica would make an autofocus camera that was any good a few years ago. They just don't seem to rule in that world. I'd always recommend that if autofocus is your main concern, then Nikon are your go to brand. I've been very happy with the more recent 5D models, and always thought my 1D mark IV and 1DX were pretty snappy, but I never bought a Leica for this feature. It's a constant struggle with the Leica M. The 50mm F1.4 lens is a dream wide open, but nailing the focus is always a bit of a gamble. I'm also lazy (and perhaps a little blind) and I trust that a computer will be more accurate than me most of the time. The Leica Q definitely delivers on autofocus, it's snappy and accurate and feels like it has a higher success rate than I manage on a manual focus lens. The menu setup to change autofocus settings is possibly not the most user friendly and I'm still acclimatizing myself to moving the single focus point around, locking focus with the back button, and then finding the focus part of the menu where I can switch to face detection when I'm truly shooting from the hip with my children.

Leica Q - Hands on and Feel

Are you ready, here comes a lot of opinion, hyperbole and quoting people much smarter than myself. People can justify spending a thousand dollars on a pair of jeans and $25,000 on a handbag, so why not $4250 on a small fixed lens compact camera with a red dot. I once photographed the CEO of Warby Parker, David Gilboa. He talked extensively about the pricing structure of the eyeglasses industry and how his company Warby Parker wanted to drastically disrupt the business model. Most interestingly he said how they originally wanted (and were able) to price their product at $45 but consumers did not feel like the product was good enough quality at that price point. Although I've never read anything about Leica admitting the follow the transaction utility and acquisition utility theory, it's definitely one that is a huge part of the brand. It's interesting to read more about this theory by Richard Thaler who says “consumers get two kinds of utility from a purchase: acquisition utility and transaction utility.” As he describes the two, “Acquisition utility is a measure of the value of the good obtained relative to its price, similar to the economic concept of consumer surplus. Conceptually, acquisition utility is the value the consumer would place on receiving the good as a gift, minus the price paid.” In contrast, “Transaction utility measures the perceived value of the ‘deal'. It is defined as the difference between the amount paid and the ‘reference price' for the good, that is, the regular price that the consumer expects to pay for this product.”

To describe how the Leica Q feels without addressing this theory is really ignoring the elephant in the room. So much about owning a premium brand is affected by the consumers emotion. As photographers we carry around these heavy little black boxes everywhere we go. They become a part of us, who we are and how we see ourselves. We handle them more than we do most other possessions we own. You need to feel both comfortable and emotionally engaged with the little buggers. We use them to describe the world around us, and we look through them to crop out everything else and create little photographic memories. The Leica Q does this seamlessly for me. The interaction with operating the camera and making pictures is fairly smooth.

There are definitely some quirks with the menu layout and the custom button functions. There's only really a few features you can set the back button focus to. The buffer could be quicker as I've found myself fairly often waiting for the files to finish writing before I can continue. The usual Leica stuff, where you feel like the computer part is a secondary thought, but after a while it becomes more natural.

Leica Q - Macro Feature

The Leica Q lens has the ability to shoot in macro mode which is a nice benefit to this camera and will certainly get used a lot for food photography. It has a minimum focus distance of 6.69" which is surprisingly close to the subject and allows for a nice alternative view up close. However the maximum aperture in macro mode is F2.8 which is pretty wide open still, but I was a little disappointed to lose nearly 2 stops of light. Thankfully the image stabilization built into this camera is superb and can handle a little slower shutter speed than you'd normally feel comfortable hand holding. I've managed to get surprisingly sharp and steady images at 1/8th of a second. Obviously because of the width of the lens your often battling the light and keeping your looming shadow from appearing in the frame, but thats going to be the case with any 28mm lens.

Leica Q - Protector Case

I prefer the case over the handgrip for one simple reason, unscrewing that handgrip every time you want to access the battery or SD card becomes a major pain. If you're a 'strap free' photographer, or for some reason need that $200 finger loop then you need the grip. Right now I'm sticking with this leather half case by Leica. The battery and SD access is awesome, with its magnetic closure and small pocket for an additional SD card. It changes the ergonomics of the camera a fair bit, and thats not really ideal but the protection for now is important. I'm sure in a year or more I'll have banged the whole system up enough that removing the extra weight of a case makes sense. The underside of the case does not have a tripod mount, which is not an issue for me but will be for some. Buy the case on Amazon here - Leica Q Protector

Buy the Leica Q Case at B&H here - Leica Q Protector for Q Digital Camera (Leather, Black)

Leica Q Review - Conclusion

There's not a simple answer to any of the questions that are raised by the Leica Q. Should I buy this camera? Is the Leica Q worth it? Is the camera better than a Leica M? Is the 28mm focal length right for me? The only real conclusions come when you get to use the camera and see how it feels for you. The focus is snappy, the camera is simple to use and the quality of the files in low light are competitive with current competition. Sure, the writing of files might buffer out a little quicker than you'd like, you may not be able to customize every button you want and it might be pretty expensive for what it is. None of that takes away from the fact that using this camera is an absolute delight, and it takes me back (in maybe a slightly gentler way than the Leica M did) to those old days when you were smitten with just walking around with a camera and taking pictures. At least it's not $10 a roll of film and you have to wait a day for the developer to scratch up all your negs. If you have some old gear laying around and a few grand in the bank I'd highly recommend scratching it all together and grabbing one of these little beauties.

Buy the Leica Q on Amazon here - Leica Q (Typ 116)

Buy the Leica Q at B&H here - Leica Q (Typ 116)

24.2 MP Full-Frame CMOS Sensor
Leica Maestro II Image Processor
Leica Summilux 28mm f/1.7 ASPH Lens
3.68 MP LCOS Electronic Viewfinder
3.0" 1,040k-Dot Touchscreen LCD Monitor
Contrast-Detect AF System
Full HD 1080p Video at up to 60 fps
ISO 50,000 & 10 fps Continuous Shooting
Aluminum & Magnesium Alloy Body Design
Built-In Wi-Fi Connectivity with NFC

The strap attached is a Tamrac Mirrorless strap. They've discontinued them which is a real shame as they're my favorite strap. I reached out to Tamrac directly to order more and they let me know that they have a new strap coming shortly, which I can only hope is as good as the last. If you want to try an overpriced but similar counterpart, "Incase" now make camera stuff, and their strap is fantastic if not fairly expensive ($100).

Buy the Strap on Amazon here - Incase Capture Collection Neck Strap

Leica M9 vs Leica M240 - A Review of Sorts

April 11, 2014 in Photo, Review

Mamiya 7ii with 65mm F4 Let me begin by discussing how I came to be a Leica owner as I feel it helps to be explained. During my MFA in 2006 I started shooting with a Mamiya 7 I had borrowed from Pratt. It came with a 'regular' 80mm lens that I soon swapped for the 65mm lens feeling like it was comfortably wide without looking to gimmicky. I believed in making work during my masters degree that was focused on the content of the image and less about the process or the details of the camera that made it. By shooting with the equivalent of a 35mm lens I could capture a broader scene without getting too much perspective to distract the viewer. The Mamiya 7ii combination along with Kodak Portra NC film seemed to give me the best negative size to camera weight that I could find. It was discreet enough to carry around but created beautiful images that I was scanning on a Hasselblad Flextight and printing on an Epson 7900. The prints I was getting were really nice and for my final year I bought the Mamiya 7ii with a 65mm F4 lens that I took to India and spent a month making some of my favorite images to date that I showed at my thesis exhibition.

Shot with a Mamiya 7ii, 65mm F4 lens on Kodak Portra NC

Ben Hider - Event Photographer based in New York City and Westchester

Leica M9 with 35mm F2.0 Summicron

After a few hard years working as a freelance event photographer I was incredibly lucky and landed a more permanent position as the photographer at the New York Stock Exchange. I knew within the first few months that I wanted to reconnect with my rangefinder photography, but didn't think I'd ever develop and shoot film again. The only option at the time was the Leica M9, so I spent months reading reviews, acquainting myself with the digital brand and watching my bank account. I'd known of Leica for years since studying The History of Photography (Beaumont Newhall), but never considered spending the money on such a luxury item, and honestly after reading reviews from the usual Leica-heads was totally turned off. Phrases like "that Leica glow" or long essays about the "Bokeh" were not what I wanted to read. Most videos you find discuss the shutter noise, or drool over the packaging. The bloggers are full of pompous comments and grandiose statements about how a real photographer does this and that, with photographs of brick walls to prove lens quality.

Finally my B&H order became available and in late 2010 my Leica M9 came through soon followed by a Leica 35mm f/2.0 Summicron Lens. I was beside myself and shot everything I could, not really thinking about all the flaws of the camera. I finally owned a red dot, and if I'm honest the status symbol was a distraction for the work I wanted to start making. It seemed like the closest setup possible to the Mamiya I loved so much in grad school.

Unfortunately the camera was slow, clunky, and heavy. The cards often failed to read properly and images never looked great above ISO 1600. (Most of my paid photography work is on a dark trading floor) A year into owning the camera and I secretly hated it. I would despise the attention it drew from either people being interested in the "retro" look or camera nerds coveting it just because they see the red dot. I covered over the Leica logo and tried to just enjoy the rangefinder element. I updated the firmware, which made me annoyed that it took me so long as there was a marked increase on SD card performance and general camera function. I hated the Leica strap out of the box with its spiky rubber neck pad, so had quickly attached an Artist & Artisan leather strap. It took me another year to realize that it made my neck sore due to lack of 'bounce' or give in the leather, so I upgraded that to a softer and bouncier reportage strap (by Apolis). This change made a huge difference, I no longer hate carrying the thing around. The trouble with owning a $10,000 camera is that it needs to be used for it to have value, but taking it everywhere feels like a struggle because it's worth so much. Oh, and I should add that the battery sucks.

So there is a page of negatives about the Leica M9, but here are the positives. It is a beautiful camera to interact with, reminding you of all the things a camera needs without any of the gadgets and flashy features. Aperture, shutter speed and focus are all there, and not much more. The full frame sensor is a feat of engineering, and makes pretty great images below ISO 1600. The lenses are all sharp and pretty great wide open (getting any lens on any camera 100% sharp at F1.4 is a struggle no matter the technology) It is pretty successful at auto white balance in tungsten light. My 5D Mark ii's would struggle to understand tungsten but the Leica M9 does a pretty solid job at making skin tone look normal, although there is alway more magenta than I'd like. Not wanting to be a Leica snob who talks about the history and grandeur of the brand, I have to admit that owning a Leica does connect you to a long and illustrious history and separates you from the pack. Being different in a sea of photographers is important and shooting with a digital rangefinder immediately separates you from the Canon/Nikon DSLR crowd. That doesn't mean it takes better photos or will elevate your own brand, you could argue that it hurts your photography especially if you don't use it properly. You can read a million blogs about rangefinders slowing you down and making you think, all of that is true and can help, but I also enjoy shooting to capture quick moments without the thought involved in manually focusing. (I expect a few people to try and explain the benefit of using zone focus)

In recent months I've been re-evaluating my camera collection and my personal shooting needs/desire (and watching my Mamiya 7ii collect dust in my office). Selling my Mamiya 7ii was the hardest camera sale I've done. Knowing that rotating equipment is important especially in this digital age, but losing my last film camera was not easy. I knew the money could be used to upgrade my M9, so the blog reading began again. Was the Leica M240 worth the upgrade? I could find very few posts discussing any problems with the M9, I guess everyone had moved on. But I also couldn't find much comparing the 2 and honestly talking about the reason to upgrade. Was the camera more responsive, were the files really better, did the SD card fail as much. Without really knowing much more than I was still secretly unhappy with my M9 and I had accumulated enough money to afford the Leica M, I went to B&H and took the plunge.

Leica M240 with 50mm F1.4

My immediate impressions when I first held the Leica M at the store was that it felt great and the camera fired much faster. Aesthetically it looks basically the same, a few logo shuffles and a side indentation removal for the microphone, but essentially the same. Once I got home with my own camera, and unboxed (see many nerdy youtube variations) it I reattached my strap, put about 5% on the battery and started shooting. The differences are immediately noticeable. The Leica M responds to the touch immediately, It doesn't even seem to buffer as much when shooting continuously. The frame lines are nicer, clearer and the focusing screen seems brighter (although I have noticed a marked difference when fingerprints are wiped from the 2 viewfinders on the front, and this being brand new had none). The camera menu is completely different and not entirely intuitive at first, but I seem to be getting used to it. The files are much nicer in my opinion. They're bigger and cleaner which makes a huge difference. ISO 2500 is now a real option, and not just a sacrifice under poor conditions. I think the biggest difference is the feel of the shutter release button. It finally feels great, and when you press it the camera responds. Not to say the M9 was unresponsive, but somehow the button and therefore my interaction with the camera never felt right. I've owned the camera for a few weeks now, and it already feels more natural. Leica snobs won't like the live view or video features, but for me they work so well that you'd be an idiot not to embrace the technology. Oh, and I should add that the battery doesn't suck anymore!

I should also think of a few disadvantages... which could take me a while. Really, the biggest issue remains the lameness of the people who obsess over the brand. You will read crap like, "Like any other work of art, a man owns a LEICA because he deserves it." Another issue may be that I'm guessing that the Leica M is a little heavier (3oz) which isn't much but probably does add up over a long day. I haven't yet found the exposure compensation adjustment yet, which is a shame because it was easily adjusted on the M9. Generally the down sides all seem irrelevant if you've upgraded because you can finally enjoy using the camera. Like all cameras or even pieces of technology in general, when a company makes a newer model, it's generally improved!

Should you upgrade?

This question, like pretty much everything I've written so far, is completely subjective. If you mainly shoot outside, you never need to shoot quickly or a number of frames rapidly, then a M9 would be great. It's full frame and provides some sharp beautiful files. However if you're like me and you're lazy but you love shooting with a rangefinder the Leica M240 will have a ton of advantages over the M9. Price is a problem, but we all know that getting into the Leica game. It's always fun to justify your love of the brand by referencing "The Leica Freedom Train," that should shut most people right up!

I can't really justify owning one, I bought it at a time in my life that I felt like I could afford it, thankfully now that I've sold some old equipment it's allowed me the opportunity to upgrade. It's important to note that I'm still embarrassed by the idea of being a "Leica man" because of all of the rubbish you read. Statements like "LEICA shooters know how to shoot, so even ISO 3,200 is unnecessary," are silly. Do Leica owners glow? However now that I own the camera I could not be happier with its ability to reconnect me with photography, and that's something that most working photographers I know long for. I've found that even in the short time that I've owned the new camera I have enjoyed carrying and using it more than I ever did the M9.

For actually a good read on the Leica M240 read Kristian Dowling's blog post here, he has a nice perspective on the whole subject and is a fellow event photographer living in Oz. If you just want to peep show rangefinders (primarily film) head over to my friend John Sypal's blog Tokyo Camera Style, his work is amazing and should be enjoyed

Here are a few examples of images I like from my Leica M and Zeiss 21mm 2.8 (uncropped, untouched, resized DNG to Jpeg)

Buy the Leica M24 from Amazon here - Leica 10770 M 24MP RangeFinder Camera with 3-Inch TFT LCD Screen - Body Only (Black)

See more reviews on my "Carry Camera" review blog

Ben Hider - Event Photographer based in New York City and Westchester