Leica Q2 Monochrom
Leica is indelibly associated with black & white photography. Its unique position within the market, making low-volume, high-priced cameras, also allows it to deliver concepts that mainstream makers simply couldn’t contemplate. Put the two together, and it’s no surprise that it’s the only company to have produced full-frame cameras dedicated to shooting in black & white. Indeed, its third-generation M10 Monochrom, which arrived earlier this year, is very special indeed.
With the new Q2 Monochrom (which, for the sake of brevity, I’ll call the Q2M from now on), the firm has transposed the idea to a different type of camera. Based on last year’s Q2, it employs a 28mm f/1.7 optically stabilised lens that’s fixed rather than interchangeable. It also uses a new version of the Q2’s 47.3MP full-frame CMOS sensor that’s been stripped of its colour sensitivity, rather than its sibling’s 40.9MP chip. The other big difference lies with the price: at £4,995, the Q2M is slightly less unaffordable than the M10 version, which costs £7,250 without a lens.
Building a monochrome camera might sound like a pointless exercise; after all, you can make really nice black & white prints from colour files. But it offers genuine image-quality advantages, delivering increased detail, greater dynamic range and lower high-ISO noise. In short, if you really want to shoot in black & white, a dedicated sensor will give the best possible image files. The main penalties are that it’s intolerant to overexposure, and that subject-tracking autofocus is unavailable (as this requires colour information to work).
Features
In many respects, the Q2M offers the same specifications as the standard Q2. However,
