Goldilocks would be thrilled.Īnd she would be thrilled with more than just the design and build, with a 3.68 megapixel viewfinder to peek your eyes through complementing a 3 inch touchscreen that’s fixed in position, but also offers a directional pad controller to the right and three buttons on the left.
Weighing 734 grams with the battery, the Q2 Monochrom is small, but it carries what might be the right amount of weight to make the camera just right. The body is where most of the fun is, with a magnesium design and build that stands out and offers dust and light water resistance (weather resistance, basically), as well as a comfortable heft that makes it easy to carry and you can put your confidence in. That lens is stuck to the body because it’s a fixed lens, and it offers an aperture controller ring like an old fashioned lens, while the shutter speed is handled on the body with an equally old fashioned metal click wheel. Less like the interchangeable lens cameras you might expect out of Leica and more like an advanced point and shoot, this fixed-lens camera is very much out of the Leica stable simply because it includes a lens that aims to be surprisingly versatile, and a camera design focused on people who know what they’re doing.īased on the template set up by the Leica Q2 released before it, the Q2 Monochrom (minus the “e”) is a black-and-white only version of the same camera, featuring a custom 47.3 megapixel monochromatic sensor distinctly different from the 47.3 megapixel colour sensor used in the standard Q2, and matched to a 28mm Leica Summilux F1.7 lens. The Leica Q2 Monochrom reignited my love for everything cameras, and the results were simply stunning.ĭesigned like a camera and built like a camera, the Q2 Monochrom is, to put it simply, a camera. Leica hasn’t stopped producing cameras over the past century, and today, it even makes some of the more unusual and distinctive models out there, focused almost entirely on the art form of creating images.Īnd honestly, after spending a month with one, I don’t think I’ve loved using a digital camera as much as I loved this. With cameras dating back as far as 1914 but more famously becoming known in 1927, Leica is an optics brand that understands cameras, with many of them having housed black and white film. But there are also cameras that do this natively.Īlmost every camera includes a black and white mode to let you capture in a monochromatic style, but few camera companies have as much legacy in black and white film as Leica. Instagram and VSCO are options on mobile, as are Adobe’s Photoshop and Lightroom, and there are also the desktop equivalents. While the days of loading in rolls of black and white film are largely gone beyond the niche still doing just that (as it is with colour film), converting images to the aged look of black and white has become a thing anyone can do. Tone and contrast can tell a story without a boost of vibrant and dynamic colours, and the result can be just compelling, if not more. You might look at black and white images and assume the result is low or wasn’t good enough for colour, but monochromatic images can communicate without the need for all the colour, and sometimes say more. Armed with the right camera, a great photographer can make anything appear, and lead the observer and viewer on a path that tells a story.Ī photographer can use any camera they want to tell the story, and it can be as cheap as chips to as expensive as a high-priced car, but whatever they use, it’s their tool.įor some, their medium is one without colour. Like a great writer, a photographer can tell a story using the scene, light and composition, and their tool - like a writer’s imagination - is the camera. Photography is an art form, and one people still study and hold degrees in. Some have so much legacy in cameras that the focus is on something different altogether: keeping tabs on the art form that is taking photographs. There are improvements to sensors, changes to form-factors, design differences, lenses and upgrades and wireless connectivity and so on and so on, and all of this has to compete with the ongoing improvements to the world of smartphone cameras, which get better and better and better each and every year.īut not every company is evolving simply for technology. Standing out in the world of cameras can’t be easy, especially when phones are getting good. A camera that only captures in black and white? The Leica Q2 Monochrom might sound unorthodox, but it’s a beautiful tribute to cameras of old.