Q2 crop modes - are 50 and 75 really useable?

[jay968]

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Though I've used them, I've never really been a fan of APS-C sensors. To me, there is a noticeable difference between FF and APS-C. I can accept APS-C at times, but for the most part, any time I have owned an APS-C camera, I have been disappointed.  I am very critical.

That said, I owned a Q a couple of years ago. Very occasionally I used the 35mm crop mode. Here too, I was never real satisfied and usually just used the camera as a FF camera. 

I am thinking about purchasing a Q2 and feel that with the new sensor, I most likely will be happier with the 35mm crop mode, but now I wonder about the 50 and 75 crop modes.

So basically what I am asking here is for a real honest assessment of how IQ looks in especially 50mm crop mode and to a lesser extent 75mm crop mode. Can this camera truly be taken seriously at those crops or should I look at it more as a FF, and 35mm crop mode camera only? Can anyone point me to a real good gallery of images showing what the camera is capable of at 50mm and 75mm?

Thanks

[jay968]

So I ask an honest question and get a shot done with an iphone as an answer?

Thanks so much.

BTW, the image quality is pretty bad.

Edited May 3, 2020 by jay968

[T25UFO]

57 minutes ago, jay968 said:

Though I've used them, I've never really been a fan of APS-C sensors. To me, there is a noticeable difference between FF and APS-C. I can accept APS-C at times, but for the most part, any time I have owned an APS-C camera, I have been disappointed.  I am very critical.

That said, I owned a Q a couple of years ago. Very occasionally I used the 35mm crop mode. Here too, I was never real satisfied and usually just used the camera as a FF camera. 

I am thinking about purchasing a Q2 and feel that with the new sensor, I most likely will be happier with the 35mm crop mode, but now I wonder about the 50 and 75 crop modes.

So basically what I am asking here is for a real honest assessment of how IQ looks in especially 50mm crop mode and to a lesser extent 75mm crop mode. Can this camera truly be taken seriously at those crops or should I look at it more as a FF, and 35mm crop mode camera only? Can anyone point me to a real good gallery of images showing what the camera is capable of at 50mm and 75mm?

Thanks

Yes, 50mm and 75mm are definitely useable.  You can crop even further and still achieve reasonable results.  

I've posted this duo before, but it's a good example of what the Q2 is capable of.  First photo full 28mm, second photo extreme crop on the bird.  Not sure what the crop value is, but probably closer to an effective 200mm.  Of course, you wouldn't normally use a Q2 for this type of photo - this was just my experiment!

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[jay968]

Wow! That's actually pretty impressive.Thanks.

Anyone else? I'd like to see more examples shot at 50 and 75 crops.

[PhotoCruiser]

Hotel Schiff - Lake of Constance - Switzerland
This crop below is much greater than 75mm and the conditions where already weak light, but still a very good resolution.
Crop was done in CaptureOne, i never use the in-camera crop function

1/160 @ f/13 100 iso and no additional sharpening or other edit on the crop as i crop on the computer

Chris

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[M11 for me]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb jay968:

there is a noticeable difference between FF and APS-C

That is not correct. The key is understanding equivalence. Using equivalent settings you can not make out a difference between the 2 sizes. The same applies to the Q2: When croping you use only part of the sensor. The restrictions of smaller sensors are elsewhere but not in general image quality. And when croping with the Q2 you have to take into account this equivalence. Indeed you get excellent image quality with the croped Q2. The sensor renders so much detail that you can easily crop much further than 75mm in post. I am absolutely amzed with the Q2 after some difficulties in Lightroom in the beginning.

 

Edited May 3, 2020 by M10 for me

[vedivv]

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The lens is super sharp in the center, and the sensor is really good.  Like these gentlemen above, I crop beyond 75mm on Q2 all the time.  Even if you crop to 75mm, which has lower pixel count than iphone's 12MP camera, the image quality is still much better than iPhone.  But still, extreme cropping should be reserved for emergencies.

That being said, if you need to shoot a lot of images beyond 50mm, it's a probably good idea to get another body.   There was another thread discussing a second portrait body, and the discussion is probably relevant to you.

In terms of shooting convenience, 50mm frame has pretty decent size, but 75mm in the viewfinder is too small me.  I understand the benefit of seeing outside the frame for later cropping in DNG, but I wish Leica offers full view options for the crop modes, kinda like a magnifier on M viewfinder.  

[jay968]

In response to M10 for me...

Yes it is correct.

 I was once asked to go through a series of 16 inch prints and pick out which were shot with a full frame camera and which with an APS-C. These were all shot with various cameras and lenses. It took me no time to pick them out 100% of the time. I own and have owned both FF and APS-C for years, including M bodies, the Q, the CL, plus many Nikons, Canons, Fujis, Hassy, Sony. I've also owned film cameras from 35mm through 4x5.

Differences are not necessarily in what you're assuming. ANY image made from a larger original be it a sensor, or a piece of film will have more apparent depth to the contours of the subject matter (and I am not talking here about depth-of-field). Not everyone sees or is even aware of this and it's very difficult to notice on a computer monitor. Images made with a 35mm film camera using Panatomic-X can appear to have similar resolution to something shot with a 4x5 camera provided the lenses are on the same or similar technical levels, but the depth and contours of the subject matter will look different to someone who knows what to look for. The more an image is enlarged, the more apparent this is.

Also, please don't make the common mistake of judging one camera, lens, etc by looking at samples on a computer screen. That's like comparing recording capabilities of two recordings using a pair of throwaway headphones. It's when you make prints (and large ones at that) that the differences become obvious.

Edited May 3, 2020 by jay968

[jay968]

40 minutes ago, PhotoCruiser said:

Hotel Schiff - Lake of Constance - Switzerland
This crop below is much greater than 75mm and the conditions where already weak light, but still a very good resolution.
Crop was done in CaptureOne, i never use the in-camera crop function

1/160 @ f/13 100 iso and no additional sharpening or other edit on the crop as i crop on the computer

Chris

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Thanks for these, though I must say they really don't look as good as the earlier one above of the bird.

[evikne]

2 hours ago, T25UFO said:

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I am amazed not only of the details in the cropped image, but also because it still seems to have a good portion of background blur, due to the distance from the bird to the background.

[Le Chef]

I am contemplating adding a Q2, though if that were to work out perfectly I might then sell my CL and lenses. For the moment that's all TBD.

When I look at images shot on the Q2 - here and on LFI - you can appreciate what the FF sensor brings to the party. If APSC is like music on CD, then FF is like vinyl. The depth of sound difference - notes feel as if they have space round them and it's easier to determine for instance whether the guitarist was fingerpicking or using a pick. The Q2 seems to create a similar effect, but visually rather than aurally.

 

[jay968]

Well said! That's what I was talking about earlier.

[PhotoCruiser]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb jay968:

Thanks for these, though I must say they really don't look as good as the earlier one above of the bird.

They look less good as the bird for at least 2 reasons:

1° the distance from me to the table with the kids is much, much more distant, than the photo from the bird
2° as i wrote, it was evening at about 8 pm in August and the sun was low, this makes resoluition less than possible while the bird was shot in plain sunlight

trust me, i was shooting Nikon D800 with the Nikon Pro lenses and the Q2 has a much better resolution and sharpness of my D800 rig.

Chris

[nicci78]

50 & 75mm crop results are nice. But framing with tiny framelines is hard. 
And last keep in mind that Q2 ISO over 6400 is very bad. Especially when you crop/magnify the image into 50 and even worst in 75mm.
To get an idea Q2 12K ISO kinda looks worst than CL 50K ISO. 
Actually, I stop using Q2 at 6400 and over. The noise pattern is so ugly. But I am happy to use CL until 25K ISO. It’s noise pattern is still OK (only in DNG) 

Hopefully Q2 has OIS. Although not really effective : just 2-3 stops improvement only. But very handy for video. 
Fast f/1.7 lens saves the Q2 from high ISO misery : I rarely ever need to use 6400 and over. 

 

Edited May 4, 2020 by nicci78

[phib]

I did a test vs a Summicron on a Nikon Z6 in this thread. Its perfectly usable i use it all the time.

 

[T25UFO]

11 hours ago, evikne said:

I am amazed not only of the details in the cropped image, but also because it still seems to have a good portion of background blur, due to the distance from the bird to the background.

I used auto focus in spot focus mode on the bird.  The exposure was 1/5000th at f2.0 (200 ISO).  I'm not sure what the crop factor is but the original DNG file is 87.2mb and the cropped file is 787kb.  Maybe someone could calculate the crop factor from that.

As I said, you would not normally use the Q2 for this type of photo (I just had it in my bag on the day and decided to experiment) but it does show how good the lens is.  The OP asked for a real honest assessment of how IQ looks in especially 50mm crop mode and to a lesser extent 75mm crop mode and can this camera truly be taken seriously at those crops?  I think this answers the question.

Edited May 4, 2020 by T25UFO

[nicci78]

4 hours ago, T25UFO said:

The exposure was 1/5000th at f2.0 (200 ISO).  I'm not sure what the crop factor is but the original DNG file is 87.2mb and the cropped file is 787kb.  Maybe someone could calculate the crop factor from that.

We can’t, because you are asking us to guess it from the original DNG to a cropped jpeg. = 2 transformations. We do not even know the jpeg compression. 

The easier, is just to look at your image information. The pixels size will be stated. Just multiple it and you get the number of MP

[T25UFO]

11 minutes ago, nicci78 said:

We can’t, because you are asking us to guess it from the original DNG to a cropped jpeg. = 2 transformations. We do not even know the jpeg compression. 

The easier, is just to look at your image information. The pixels size will be stated. Just multiple it and you get the number of MP

The pixel dimensions for the cropped image are 1326 x 885 = 1,173,510.  The original image is 8368 x 5584 = 46,726,912. 

The focal length of the original is, of course, 28mm.  Is there any way to calculate the effective focal length of the cropped image from these figures?  I am just curious.

[evikne]

16 minutes ago, T25UFO said:

The pixel dimensions for the cropped image are 1326 x 885 = 1,173,510.  The original image is 8368 x 5584 = 46,726,912. 

The focal length of the original is, of course, 28mm.  Is there any way to calculate the effective focal length of the cropped image from these figures?  I am just curious.

If you divide the original width by the cropped width, you get 6.3. And if you multiply 28mm by 6.3, you get 176mm. 

Maybe this is completely wrong, but it's just my guess. 

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Hallo,

Look here: Leica Q

[T25UFO]

21 minutes ago, evikne said:

If you divide the original width by the cropped width, you get 6.3. And if you multiply 28mm by 6.3, you get 176mm. 

Maybe this is completely wrong, but it's just my guess. 

That makes sense.  As a pure guess I thought something close to 200mm so 176mm seems about right.  Perhaps not what Leica had in mind for the Q2, but still interesting.  It’s a great camera!