Leica Q

If I imagine that I had the opportunity to walk through the iconic vault at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, slowly edging my way through those stacks of powerful relics and mystical charms, I can tell you what I’d find in that wooden crate. It would be a small, unobtrusive camera that ditches the unnecessary buttons and menus, focusing entirely on the user experience. A camera that is “invisible” but easily capable of producing knock-out images. A camera with a fast, wide, sharp lens with snappy autofocus, and smooth bokeh.

If only it existed.

Hang on, what’s that over there?

In camera terms, the Leica is getting pretty old. When I consider my confirmed medical addiction for trying out the shiniest cameras and installing the latest firmware, the Q is approaching historic status as far as digital cameras go, having been launched back in June 2015. Well-loved in street photography circles for coming up on six years, is it worth investing what is undoubtedly a considerable amount of money in this jumped-up point and shoot?

The camera market is never prone to settling down and having a nice nap, but recent years have seen a surge of incredible levels in what the products can do. It wasn’t long ago that 800 ISO would be a bit risky, but the current range can produce useable images at six-figure ISO ranges, (although it may be better to save these settings for hard news over corporate portraits). Eye-detection autofocus has got to the point now where you hardly even need to bother with using your own eyes when composing an image. With all these exciting developments, I’ve found that while I love these features for my daily work, I yearn for something so stripped down that some seedy guy might try to stuff a dollar bill into the strap. The Leica Q scratches that itch perfectly.

I’ve always been a massive fan of the 28mm focal range, which is a marvellous coincidence as the Leica Q sports a fixed 28mm f1.7 lens. Just to give you an idea of how nice this particular lump of glass is, the closest comparable lens that they sell is the Summilux 28mm f1.4 M, available to you for a shade under £5,500. The fact that a lens of this quality is fixed to the Q, means that even when you were paying full whack when it was launched, you were buying an amazing lens with a camera thrown in for free. I know that it’s very hard to justify any Leica costs, hence this review coming in 2021. A quick search on eBay reveals completed listings of around £1800. Suddenly, a Leica camera and lens is a little more worthy of consideration.

Getting down to the performance of the camera, the full-frame 24mp sensor will give you a chunky 43.1mb raw DNG file, or a jpeg file of around 10mb. The buffer isn’t that great on the Leica Q (something that they addressed in the 2019 Q2), meaning any frantic bursts of DNG + Jpeg will quickly cause the camera to have a little sit down and a cup of Pfefferminztee while it writes to the card. This is something that you quickly discover, ponder and then learn to live with. No-one buys a Leica Q to shoot 100+ raw files in a continuous burst, leaving that to the fancy new kids on the block with their shiny bodies and multi-core processors.

The Leica Q takes the BP-DC12 battery, which conveniently is also sold without the expensive L word printed on it, as the Panasonic BLC12PP. To ditch the botspeak, that’s £20 versus £75. Admittedly that’s 950 mAh against Leica’s 1250 mAh but, for nearly a quarter of the price, buy four and you’ve got 3,800 mAh. Take THAT, the man!

Another nice perk of buying at this point is that all of the third-party manufacturers have had the time to bring out their accessories. If/when you get your own Leica Q, you’ll be needing a thumb rest (£129 of the Leica version or £6 from eBay) and a baseplate grip which adds that extra little curve for a more solid hold, and a touch more depth to aid hand fatigue. Like the thumb rest, these can be bought on eBay/Amazon/Etsy from third party companies for about £30.

In use, the camera produces a lovely “snick” when you press the shutter, virtually inaudible in the sounds of daily life. As mentioned above, the burst mode is available but the Q cries out to be left in single shot, forcing you to catch the moment, rather than shoot through it.

One thing that can catch you out a little is Leica’s insistence on applying noise reduction to your images if it feels that’s the way things are heading with the photo. High ISO settings and long exposures result in a moment of processing after the image is captured, even when only shooting in the raw DNG format. I’m used to it now but I remember that it can be a little frustrating if you haven’t factored it in, meaning you may miss shots if you were hoping to shoot a series of long exposure images in a row. At less extreme settings, the camera handles the darkness really well, keeping the noise-reduction levels to a subtle level that compliments the images without over-smoothing.

In conclusion, the Leica Q has always been a lovely little camera but at the current prices, it’s beginning to fall into the price range of a lot more people. The advantages of a well-built camera result in great images. Any disadvantages due to it’s age result in more thought being put into your images. It’s a win/win. If you are looking for something capable of making striking images, from a brand with a high reputation, that won’t depreciate as soon as you hand over your cash, the Leica Q is the answer.