A brief camera review of the Leica Q2 in the form of images taken in New York, Toronto, and Detroit.
The Leica Q2 is an incredible small camera. Though it has a premium price, it has enabled me to retire two other cameras and limit my gear down to just this one camera and some accessories. In 2019, I and my collaborators in the GRAIN image collective traveled to Toronto, and I traveled alone and with my family to Detroit and New York.
The main takeaways from a few months with the Leica Q2 are that it seems to get far more detail than I have ever pulled out of an image with any previous camera. The lens is a native 28mm, but it still retains the ability to display a very smooth bokeh. Even cropped, the images have sufficient detail to use at a very large scale. The camera is quiet, discreet, and ergonomically very solid.
Improvements could be made by adding a mic-in jack back into the camera for video (the Q had one) and speeding up the startup a bit. The stabilization is positive and works well, I feel comfortable hand-holding at half a second. The autofocus is fine in spot mode and decent in the field modes. Face recognition is hit and miss, as compared with mirrorless workhorses from Nikon and Sony.
The Leica brand and brand culture are definitely not for everyone, but I enjoy them very much. They are unapologetic about offering these premium cameras, which are often behind the pro cameras from the Japanese manufacturers in terms of specs and features, but that is part of the point. If you like to have one premium offering the just works very well for the basic elements of your hobby, Leica might be your brand. If you need to power out thousands of lightning-fast images and have interchangeable lenses and telephoto capability, I would look at the Nikon Z7.
All that said, the inherent quality, feel in-hand, user interface, reliable optical quality, the unique straight-out-of-camera look of high-resolution jpegs, and the overall brand experience of Leica are definitely rewarding.
GRAIN is a creative imaging collaborative in Michigan founded in 2019 by Zachary Branigan, Dave Daniele, and Alex Mixter. Our objective is to tell powerful visual stories to influence and support positive social change while working together to improve our photography and filmmaking.
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Music: Epidemic Sound
All images copyright Zachary Branigan, 2019
