Why Leica and why carry two?
Let’s start with why Leica?
Leica cameras are renowned for their exquisite design, exceptional build quality, the ‘Leica look’ image quality, the unique shooting experience…… and their price. Boy they are expensive. Think of a Leica as the Rolls-Royce of cameras. Yes a Mercedes S Class with give you more bang for buck, but its not the same as a Rolls-Royce. Same thing goes with cameras.
Most important part of a camera is the lens. The better the glass, the better the photo. But a quality hand made lens takes a lot more time to make and therefore the cost is higher.
Leica make arguably the best camera optics in the world, which is why their cameras and Lenses are expensive. As an example, a good lens made by Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Sony etc will be between £500-£2K but a reasonable Leica lens will set you back at least £5K.
A Leica Noctilux lens costs up to £80K and the most expensive in the range is the Leica APO-Telyt-R. This long distance 1600m lens has a price tag of £ 1.8 million - yes one point eight million pounds - and remember thats just the lens.
A good Leica camera with a few different lenses will set you back the same as a second hand Aston Martin. There are exceptions to the rules and you can get some good quality lenses from other manufacturers, but as a general rule of thumb you will pay more for something with the little red dot.
Leica also make some phenomenal fixed lens cameras which are much cheaper and I’ll discuss them later..
Why does a photo taken on a Leica look different?
Normal cameras keep the cost down by using a regular quality lens and compensating this by sharpening the photos digitally. The digital sharpening process adds tiny white and black dots around the edges of items and lines to enhance the photo and this gives an impression of a sharper image. This works really well, and due to the enhancements, most regular cameras give results that look pretty similar. The images all have a digital sharpness about them.
Leica on the other hand gets is crystal sharp images from the actual lens and therefore the camera does not need to add the extra dots to the image which is why a Leica image is almost instantly recognisable. Colour rendition is natural and rich; photos have a natural sharpness which is hard to find elsewhere, a classic quality that makes every image feel like a moment in time. It’s hard to describe it, but it goes without saying that this is one of the reasons Leica cameras and lenses are so revered in the photography world.
The quality lenses Leica produce are also made with very fast apertures - again a future that is expensive to make. My Q2 (and my old D-Lux 109 & 7) can go down to f1.7, most cameras only go to f2.8. This means the focal distance can be reduced so I can take a photo of a flower on a table and all the other items on the table in front and behind the flower are nicely blurred out. This blurring is known a bokeh.
What do I use and why?
I carry two cameras around in my Leica edition Ona Bowery bag. My review of camera bags can be found here: Camera Bags
Leica Q2. 47.3 mp with a 28mm F1.7 Summilux lens
Leica V-LUX 7. 20.1 mp with a 25-400mm F2.7 Elmarit zoom lens.
I also carry spare batteries, lens cleaners, memory card and reader, business cards, notepad and pen and even a small table top tripod in that bag…and I carry it every time I leave the house. Literally. I carry it even when I’m walking to the corner shop as you never know when you see something that takes your eye and you need to capture it.
When it comes to photography some cameras work better with certain types of genre:
If for instance if you were taking wildlife shots you would want something with a big zoom lens or on the other hand you will need something with a super fast shutter speed for taking sports photos then a Sony, Nikon, Canon would probably be better as there automatic focus is super quick, and the lens costs are more affordable. Maybe you have a dedicated studio and you take fashion and portrait shots? if so a medium format Hasselblad is the king.
95% of my shots are arty bokeh Automotive shots and black and white ‘street photography’ - a genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place.
For that, the best camera in the world is the Leica Q series.
The Q2 I use is a fixed lens camera. This means its 28mm F1.7 Summilux lens is built into the camera and cannot be removed or swapped over. The lens was designed to work with the Q2’s amazing full frame sensor to deliver a massive 47.3mp (8368 x 5584) image at 10 frames per second. The image quality is simply stunning. In fact it’s so high that you can print one of its photos at poster size and still have incredible detail and clarity close up..
The manual experience is pure joy. Looking through the 3.68 million dot electronic view finder the images are clear and natural looking. You don’t realise you are looking at a screen, its just like real life. With manual focus and aperture rings on the lens, shutter speed and ISO dials at your finger tips the whole experience is like going back in time to using film camera - a manual tactile process, not clicking on buttons and going through menu options. Wonderfull.
Most of my shots of motorbikes and cars are shot like this but when it don’t have the time, the Q2 can set to to be fully automatic. Perfect for that quick point-and-shoot photo. Perfect for capturing that moment when you walk along a street and spot something..
When it’s in auto mode you can lift it up, switch on the camera, look in the rear screen and press the shutter button all within a couple of seconds. Its startup time is extremely fast.
There is a reason the Q2 is regarded as the best digital compact camera ever made.
Sometimes however, I need a camera with a longer lens, normally it’s when I’m taking a photo of a building or object in the distance. Something like Brighton’s Pier or the ceiling in Canterbury Cathedral.
The Q2’s resolution is so high that if I need to zoom in a bit on a a shot I can simply crop the photo down in size to the area I want to use. In fact the Q2 has this ability built in and I can crop from the standard lens’s 28mm to 35, 50 and 75mm (equivalent to a 3x zoom on a normal camera). Although this is fine at 35 and 50mm I find the 75mm shots are starting to loose a bit of detail, and on those occasions I really need to use longer lens. This is where my Leica V-LUX comes in.
My first V-LUX was a type 114 and I have recently upgraded it to the latest V-Lux 5. Although the newer model has a touch screen, bluetooth and some minor changes to the button shapes, it still uses the same lens and image sensor. Therefore the quality of the shots you can get from it are exactly the same as the older type 114 version, so instead of paying £1,300 for a new Type 5, you can buy a hardly used, immaculate, non-touch screen V-LUX 114 for just £500 from the Facebook selling pages - A great camera to upgrade to and start your photographic journey with.
Although £500 is still a lot of money for a camera, you are getting a 20.1 mp (5472 x 3648) camera, with a 25-400mm (16 x optical, 21 x digital zoom) Leica lens, that produces ‘Leica’ quality photos, can record 4K video and all for 1/10 of the price of a new Leica Q2. So in a way its a bargain.....
Built in conjunction with Panasonic, the Leica V-LUX and D-LUX ranges (I’ve had two superb D-LUX cameras in the past) use a combination of a Leica lens and image processing algorithms combined with Panasonic circuit boards. The cameras are also assembled in Japan (and not Germany) to keep the cost down.
The V-LUX range is made of tough and light plastic (same as most of the other Japanese cameras) as apposed to the heavy German hand made steel Leicas that feel twice the weight.
But where the light weight V-LUX feels like a normal camera, but heavy Q range gives the impression of something very special in your hands.
The light weight of the V-LUX is a bonus when you are carrying it as a spare camera. Batteries can be picked up for a few pounds from Amazon, which is great compared to the £130 batteries the Q range uses.
Both cameras store their photos on SD cards and can transfer the images directory to your phone using the Leica photos app which is great when your out and about and want to share a photo you have just taken or want to upload it to social media. I’ve updated this website on my iPhone, with photos that I had just taken whist sitting in a coffee shop many times.
I have fast 128gb SD cards in both cameras and also carry a spare one. I don’t know why I carry a spare card as the two cameras already have a capacity to shoot 17,000 photos between them.
Summary:
I use Leica cameras as I think they produce the best images in the world.
I carry the Q2 because it’s the best camera ever made for they type of photos I take, and the V-LUX for that rare occasion when I need to take that long distance shot.
Sample photos taken with the Leica Q2
These were taken with the Leica V-Lux (type 114)
V-Lux 5
I’ve recently updated my V-Lux 114 to a V-Lux 5. The ‘5’ has a higher resolution touch screen at the rear, a higher resolution electronic view finder (EVF), re-designed buttons and dials, a faster auto focus and Bluetooth connectivity over its older 114 brother.
Both share the same lens and 20mp 1” sensor and therefore the outputs looks very similar but due to the faster focus and higher resolution screen the V-Lux 5 feels a better camera to use.
Samples taken with the V-Lux 5
