But during a particularly troublesome egress out of a sopping Pirates of the Caribbean boat, during which both the camera and my four-year-old daughter were hanging around my neck, it did swing around on its strap and hit me hard in the kidneys. I didn’t drop mine or scratch it to test. I assume it’s made out of a mix of alloys Leica says magnesium, but I’d also accept adamantium. It’s a dense and solid machine, feeling every bit as robust as the sixty-year-old mechanical Leica’s we film freaks know and love. Aside from the red dot adhered to the front, there’s very little on this camera that shouts “Leica,” or makes any kind of statement. Offered only in anodized black (at the moment – Leica typically releases silver and other special editions later in their cameras’ lifecycles), it’s a stealthy machine. Stylistically cleaner than even the original “Bauhaus” cameras of the film-burning Leica M series, there’s no digital camera as elegant as this. Like its predecessor, the Leica Q, it’s a visually sparse camera. Those who value minimalism in design will adore the Leica Q2. What is possibly most stunning about all of these features is the compact and virtually featureless body into which they are all packed.
#THE ISO ZONE REVIEW MANUAL#
There’s an incredible EVF, ISO range of 50-50,000, a 3” LCD touchscreen, a mechanically activated macro mode, manual controls of aperture and shutter speed plus available shutter-priority, aperture-priority, and full auto mode, a burst mode capable of a blistering 20 frames per second, 4K video (no external jacks), a hot shoe, and a tripod mount. These core specifications are already impressive, and the extra stuff packed into this body elevate the package above nearly any competitor product. Sitting in front of this shutter is the camera’s 28mm F/1.7 Aspherical Leica Summilux wide-angle lens equipped with automatic optical image stabilization. The previously-mentioned 47.3 megapixel sensor is fronted by an incredibly versatile hybrid shutter capable of a top mechanical speed of 1/2000th of a second and an electronic shutter capable of a mind-blowing top speed of 1/40,000th of a second. It’s got everything a modern digital camera should have, and plenty that many don’t. Like the earlier camera, the Leica Q2 is a fixed-lens, full-frame digital camera. Improvements noted, many core features carry over from the Q. This increases shots-per-charge by 30% over the original Q, and though I didn’t count my shots, I know that a single charge repeatedly carried me through two full days at Disney World. The electronic viewfinder (EVF) is a much-improved 3.68 megapixel OLED unit boasting improved processing for as-lose-to-lag-free operation as we can get, and the battery pack has been upgraded to the one found in the pro-spec Leica SL (BP-SCL4). New weather sealing protects the juicy innards from dust and splashing water. Its brand new full frame CMOS sensor nearly doubles the original Q’s resolution, packing (a ridiculous) 47.3 megapixels into every frame. Now four years after the original’s debut Leica’s released the improved Q2.
Leica even released an aesthetically minimized version in the Leica Q-P earlier this year. Listed at about half the price of the interchangeable lens digital M rangefinder, it was and remains an incredibly popular camera. Leica’s original Q released in 2015 and showed the world what Leica could do in the compact, fixed-lens digital camera segment. It’s a camera that can do it all with virtually no exceptions and just a few drawbacks (though one of them is significant). The quick takeaway – the Leica Q2 is a compact camera with an excellent full-frame sensor, an impressive lens, and intuitive classic controls. I took it (and my kids) to the zoo and shot portraits of the animals (by which I mean my kids). I spent a week with it shooting nothing but street photography. I used it on a beach for snapshots, for low-light shooting and long exposures at night, and as a macro camera chasing bees and fireflies. I used the camera during a week-long vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida.
Just listen to their advertising material, which describes the camera as “a perfect symbiosis of the essentials and innovation.” I’m not sure what that means, but after two months shooting the Q2 in all sorts of conditions, I’m sure of this – there’s no other digital camera that I’d rather own. The Leica Q2, Leica’s newest serious digital camera, is supposed to be a world-class photographic tool.
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