Q2, three years
It arrived the day before my second shot, the shot that let you out in the world, sort of. It felt less like a midlife crisis than a rebirth, although let’s face it, given my age & income bracket it is probably my midlife crisis.
It is absurd along almost every axis. The images are massive. Autofocus is as fast as you’ve been told. Low light is supported. And no consumer-focused camera should cost this much, by a margin of like four grand. Price-wise, the only thing remotely in its league is the thing you buy when you’re on the sidelines at the Super Bowl.
But is the Q2 really consumer-focused? The thing meets you where you are. You can do whatever you want with it. The school of thought is that you never need another lens, and instead you shoot wide, billboard-grade images and crop them. Pros bristle at this form of opinion; everyone else salivates.
The images really are that good. The color is perfect. The bokeh is perfect. The device itself is not perfect. There is no USB-C port. Transferring over Bluetooth is essentially unworkable; an SD card reader is needed. You need a thumb grip to keep it from slipping off your hand. Don’t ask how much replacement batteries cost.
But when it works, oh gosh does it ever work. After 35 years of taking images, I can say it is the best camera I’ve ever used, by some margin. Almost everything shot here is taken on it. It feels like the sort of camera that you upgrade every decade, if ever. Why bother improving on this? I’ve already learned it.
There is a new model. I have no desire to upgrade. I got this for highway-robbery prices on eBay. The higher resolution has never intrigued me. I have never wanted or needed a tiltable screen. USB-C would be nice, of course, but not a few grand worth of nice.
One is perceived, after buying one of these, as a Leica Person, and I get it. I don’t want to be a Leica Person. I want to be a person who takes lots of photos, and those photos happen to be excellent. The best way to do that for my workflow is to get a Q2, put gaffers tape over the logos, and run with it. The goal is to give the object a patina. The bottom, front, top, and sides are all worn down after years of handling. One should never be suspicious of a Leica. One should be suspicious of a clean Leica.
You could, I suppose, get whatever X100 they’ve got going right now and be done with it. That is not a wrong answer. But I used an X100 for several years, and this is so much better from an experiential standpoint as to render the thing effectively irrelevant. I carry it everywhere. It is worthy of being carried everywhere. And that has to be enough.