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 p.6 #15 · p.6 #15 · Official: Leica Q3 Unveiled, Now Open for Pre-Orders | |
Fred Miranda wrote:
The majority of Q shooters are generally not overly concerned about these technical details, and considering the camera's success, it appears to have been a smart decision by Leica. There are both advantages and disadvantages depending on the specific application.
For portrait photography, particularly environmental portraits with a wide angle lens, it is common practice to maintain a reasonable distance from the subject to minimize face/body distortion. In this case, the slight difference of 2mm in focal length would not pose a significant issue.
However, when it comes to shooting landscapes, that extra 2mm could be quite beneficial. It would provide a wider field of view, allowing for a broader perspective and capturing more of the scenic surroundings. In certain situations, I would even consider using the uncorrected 24mm FL DNG file, perhaps with only the removal of hard vignetting, specifically for landscapes. In specific scenes that lack a prominent horizon line, where the extreme barrel distortion is not a significant concern, using the "real" 24mm file could be a viable option.
I have not personally tested this, but considering that the stated 28mm focal length is not accurate, it is possible that the aperture is also not precisely f/1.7. For instance, It could potentially be closer to f/1.8, although marketing it as a "Lux" lens would be too much of a stretch.
I speculate that we are unlikely to come across such information from any YouTubers who have received a Q3 pre-production for review. Most of the videos tend to resemble advertisements for Leica rather than objective evaluations. It seems that the content creators may be more inclined to highlight the positive aspects of the camera rather than thoroughly exploring its potential drawbacks. (And let's admit, it can sometimes feel like watching an extended Leica commercial!)
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When I was shooting the Q for landscape, I would often remove the crop to recover more of the original image. However, you likely will want to leave the distortion correction intact. The only time I would turn off the distortion correction was for close up and macro shooting, where the distortion can greatly increase the 3-dimensionality of a central subject. As a bonus for closeup work, the hard corners are often not there at all.
Something else interesting is removing the Q crop reveals much more image area on the horizontal axis than the vertical. This might also have something to do with Leica coming up with the 28mm focal length designation, similar to how an anamorphic lens is much wider than the focal length would suggest. The Q lens is wider than 28mm, but mainly on the horizontal axis, and they probably calculate the focal length by diagonal.
Below are images showing the default built-in crop on the Q2M. (Note that the curve of the landscape is not the Q lens distortion – the land angles like that down into the volcanic caldera – even pine trees are not always vertical there). After removing the default crop completely, we have an image that is even wider than the assumed 25/26mm FOV everyone sees by default.
My summary about the Q distortion correction is Leica takes the image shot on a 3:2 sensor and stretches it to wider than 3:2 to correct for the lens distortion, which gives us a slight anamorphic result. If I use the full uncropped image, I end up with more pixels and slightly higher resolution (uncropped is 9026 x 5705 px vs default 8368 x 5584 px). This doesn't mean the sensor is higher resolution than stated, it just means Leica upscales the captured image to correct for the distortion. But since that enlarged image is available, we might as well use it if we can.
Default crop. Notice all the extra space left/right vs top/bottom.
Expanding the original crop shows the available area is wider than 3:2.
Full available image, wider than the default 25/26mm FOV.
My final 16:9 image that takes full advantage of the available image width.
LEICA Q2 MONO SUMMILUX 1:1.7/28 ASPH. lens 28mm f/4.0 1/200s 200 ISO +0.6 EV
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