Q2 verses Huawei P30 Pro

[mbphotox]

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The Huawei produces some appealing poppy colours and great sharpness. I'm pretty sure, 99% of my students would prefer that shot over the Leica image. Blessed be instagram and the overabundance of overprocessed pictures from photographers there.

I'm not a huge fan of poppy colours, so I prefer the colour rendition from the Q2 (although, if it was a jpeg, then it's likely off from the real colour of the plant, since dpreview and many others complained about how terrible the colours from that camera were in jpg mode)

 

The striking difference, in my opinion, is the depth of field and the out of focus rendering. The Leica offers beautifully smooth transitions in and out of focus and a smooth background rendering. The flower becomes the center of the image only by popping into your eye through colour and contrast, but because it's the only thing in focus.

The Huawei picture appears to be sharper throughout the frame, simply because the Leica only offers an incredibly thin focal plane at such a close distance.

 

What went forgotten here, is the fact that a smaller sensor camera has a huge advantage when it comes to macro photography. When you do serious macro work on a full frame sensor, you always have to focus stack and work at very small apertures. The phones have such a huge depthof focus, that they don't really need that.
But, they do need computerised bokeh that looks like crap whenever one wants to shoot pretty portraits "like the pros".
 

 

This is a quick snapshot I took with the Q (1) on a hike a week ago (end of season, so most shrooms were already dead and gone). As you can see, most of the mushroom is not sharp, and the focal plane is slightly behind the nearest surface structures. To get this shot well done, I would've needed to bring my tripod with horizontal column and get the Leica close on a sliding rail so I could do some focus stacking. But nobody does that for some quick snaps on a hike.

I'm pretty sure, the Huawei picture would've looked "better" in this case as well. But I don't have a 1'000$ phone to take pictures with. I use a camera. (I also have a portable DAP with wired headphones and no wireless in-ear tampons from Apple, call me old-fashioned)

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This one is from two years ago, near our house, early in the season. Shot on the APS-C Fuji.

The Huawei couldn't have pulled this shot off, because the background is incredibly ugly and the shrooms grew on a rather steep slope underneath a tree (and the 35mm f/2 couldn't quite erase that either, stopped this far down)

 

 

 

Long story short:
To take incredibly macros with a large sensor camera, you need to invest serious time and use additional gear.

 

Also, I believe that 99.999% of the people are well served with and probably 99% of all the pictures a serious hobbyist takes can easily be taken with a smartphone camera or a small P&S like the Sony RX100.

There is simply reason to disagree with this. So many buy 5'000$ cameras to solely take pictures of their kids... That's RIDICULOUS!

 

Once you actually get into the hobby, though: Portraits, Astro, Longexposures, Nightscapes, Macro, Beauty, Architecture, Real estate, low light, event, etc.
Forget the phones.

 

Sure, travel, street, simple landscapes, can still be done by phones, but not the stuff mentioned above.

Show me this from your Huawei, please: (I believe, the yellow little "sun" was Mars)

[Dave in Wales]

My 2p's worth........IMVHO the image produced by either a camera or phone has nothing at all to do with IQ. It's all about inspiration. A camera in my hands inspires me to want to take and create pictures, to the best of my ability, the better the equipment the greater the inspiration. A phone does nothing of the sort, it's just a gadget I hold at arms length to take a 'snap'

Case in point....My son, a competent and creative AP went to India and took with his Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II. The following year his took his top-of-range iPhone to China to save on clutter.

He and I, both had to agree that the pictures taken with the camera were both better in IQ terms and more importantly in creativity. Why, because with the camera he was inspired to take creative images and with the iPhone he was not....his words.

Just my 2p's worth 

 

[Fabrice]

Can you please stop with your BS comparing Chinese smart phones being as good as a Leica Q2? This is a Leica forum for people who who paid $5000 for a single camera. I'm a proud owner of a Leica and I do not compare my phone pictures. If you do, please give your Leica to a deserving "poor" and talented photographer.

Respectfuly,

Fabrice

[sturkel]

On 10/4/2019 at 4:24 AM, jaapv said:

Posted through the web, possibly. With real photographs? A blind horse could do the test.

I agree in prints would make a difference but on the screen it would be an intresting test.   

[jaapv]

10 hours ago, Fabrice said:

Can you please stop with your BS comparing Chinese smart phones being as good as a Leica Q2? This is a Leica forum for people who who paid $5000 for a single camera. I'm a proud owner of a Leica and I do not compare my phone pictures. If you do, please give your Leica to a deserving "poor" and talented photographer.

Respectfuly,

Fabrice

Umm... Huawei has Leica technology as well. 

[algrove]

Got tired of reading every post BUT

 

smart phones use global shutters-- just informing.

[dusuacangmong]

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On 10/7/2019 at 5:25 AM, jaapv said:

Umm... Huawei has Leica technology as well. 

They use leica lens in huawei, right?

[bullmoon]

I think the differences are fairly discernible and I prefer the Q2 photo.  And I am surprised because my experience posting photos here has been disappointing and they always look a bit shredded compared to what I see in the DNG in Lightroom.  So, unless you have cracked that code, I suspect I'm not even seeing all the good in either of those images - and certainly not the Q2 image. 

Beyond that, I often shoot macro flower shots with my Canon 5DIV / 100mm 2.8 Macro and I will shoot many back to back and at various apertures.  I am astonished at the differences between the shots - maybe the wind causes some blur, or the sun changes the light just enough, or the framing, or I don't nail the focus, or any number of things.  Back to back comparisons from the identical setup almost always show a clear winner.  So it would seem very difficult to do this meaningfully with two different cameras - I like the sharpness of the bee's leg in the Q2 photo, but that would have been difficult for you to control without trained bees, so who knows.

That said, I just returned from vacation where I shot mostly with the Q2, but occasionally grabbed a quick shot for posting with my iPhone XS - and a few times I took the same photo on both.  On two occasions, the iPhone photo really looked better.  Sure I couldn't zoom into to the details as far because of the resolution, but trying to get the Q2 photo processed to look as good in Lightroom was some work.  So I do applaud the amazing software processing in the latest phones.  And I often use my iPhone, now the 11 Pro, for social media snapshots and in good light it does a remarkable job.  But I'm not going to kid myself into thinking it would stand up to the Q2 or the 5DIV - not in the most general use scenarios. 

The one below (murderously bludgeoned by the posting size limit) is of a volunteer tulip in my yard shot with a 5DII and the EF100 2.8L back in 2012.  I'm telling you, trained bugs would be handy!

 

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Edited October 16, 2019 by bullmoon

[Leica Guy]

7 hours ago, bullmoon said:

I think the differences are fairly discernible and I prefer the Q2 photo.  And I am surprised because my experience posting photos here has been disappointing and they always look a bit shredded compared to what I see in the DNG in Lightroom.  So, unless you have cracked that code, I suspect I'm not even seeing all the good in either of those images - and certainly not the Q2 image. 

Beyond that, I often shoot macro flower shots with my Canon 5DIV / 100mm 2.8 Macro and I will shoot many back to back and at various apertures.  I am astonished at the differences between the shots - maybe the wind causes some blur, or the sun changes the light just enough, or the framing, or I don't nail the focus, or any number of things.  Back to back comparisons from the identical setup almost always show a clear winner.  So it would seem very difficult to do this meaningfully with two different cameras - I like the sharpness of the bee's leg in the Q2 photo, but that would have been difficult for you to control without trained bees, so who knows.

That said, I just returned from vacation where I shot mostly with the Q2, but occasionally grabbed a quick shot for posting with my iPhone XS - and a few times I took the same photo on both.  On two occasions, the iPhone photo really looked better.  Sure I couldn't zoom into to the details as far because of the resolution, but trying to get the Q2 photo processed to look as good in Lightroom was some work.  So I do applaud the amazing software processing in the latest phones.  And I often use my iPhone, now the 11 Pro, for social media snapshots and in good light it does a remarkable job.  But I'm not going to kid myself into thinking it would stand up to the Q2 or the 5DIV - not in the most general use scenarios. 

The one below (murderously bludgeoned by the posting size limit) is of a volunteer tulip in my yard shot with a 5DII and the EF100 2.8L back in 2012.  I'm telling you, trained bugs would be handy!

 

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Beautiful. I too shoot a lot of macro and in my case with a Canon 5D3, 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and often either a MR-14 EX II ring flash or multiple 600 EX-RT flashes. The experience with this combination is always excellent. I regularly try and repeat the experience with my Q/Q2. It’s satisfying, but more of a push-up. Mostly focusing is a huge challenge because I cannot move the focus point away from the center when manually focusing; the FOTOS App is very cumbersome IMHO and as I’ve said numerous times does not allow manual focus. Lack of a screw thread for a cable on the shutter is a real limitation. I guess I should add that 28mm f/2.8 is also not ideal, but the resolution and sharpness somewhat compensate for that. Still, I love my Q2 and will continue to expand the envelope of what I can do with it. I enjoy your photos very much.