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why Q~Q3 are 28mm, not 35 or 24?


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1 hour ago, Patrick NL said:

What would be the point of a 75mm Q? To bring to the zoo and safaris? And portraits without context?

The Q is entrance into the Leica world; is is the most "affordable" camera and you get a "free" lens. In a way a Leica Q3-28 and a Q3-50 would cover 90% of all my needs. A Q3-75 would be too long for most of what I do, but would be a good compliment to a Q28... Good that Leica only has a Q28, so I do not have to think about these first-world problems! 😁

Any combo would be less money than an M11 with two comparable lenses... which tells you the Q is a gem in the Leica landscape!

probably not much. 50MM is mor likely, but if someone wants to push the envelop, the next choice would be 75mm.

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When people asked the one lens for M, the most frequent suggestion is 35mm Summicron. Leica’s  prime P&S were also 35mm summicron equivalent. 
 

With FF, Leica switch to the wider 28mm. I can understand why it is not 24mm because 24mm has never been Leica’s favorite focal length. Leica would simply jump to  21mm. 
 

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The 21 to 28 "jump" Leica makes is one of the most remarkable in the lineup for me. I use my 16mm, so 24mm equivalent, on my Fujifilm X cameras. More precise; It is my most used focal length on these cameras. Other brands also have more 24mm lenses than 28mm. I cannot come up with a reason why Leica would not be able to sell them where other brands have no issue at all.

For me this 26mm Q is close enough to make me very comfortable.

A 35mm would be a great focal length too, but not as widely usable. And it is close enough from the 28mm that I have no problem cropping that. With 50mm that is a more an issue, because there I really start to miss the soft backgrounds you can get with a true 50mm.

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5 hours ago, bobtodrick said:

Why I don’t see it happening.

With the Q2/Q3 if you need 35/50/75 you have it…with less resolution of course.

If your widest lens is (for example) a 50…and you can’t move back far enough to get everything…you’re….!

Let’s do a test. Go to any of the “which 50mm for my M11” topic and suggest to buy a 28mm and crop. Would that work? I suspect not. But thanks to marketing, it’s ok for the Q series. 
I’ll say it again: if the majority of your shots are between 50 and 90mm, buying a 28mm camera is daft. 

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7 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

Correct, we need another camera, a Q with 50mm!

Why????

The current Q series will do everything from 28 to 90 (with cropping of course.

A Q with a 50 WON'T do 28 or 35.

And if you really are using lenses over 100mm frequently you'll be looking at the SL series or Fuji/Sony.

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5 hours ago, bobtodrick said:

Why????

The current Q series will do everything from 28 to 90 (with cropping of course.

A Q with a 50 WON'T do 28 or 35.

And if you really are using lenses over 100mm frequently you'll be looking at the SL series or Fuji/Sony.

One more time. Perhaps I’ll add some drawing next time if it’s still not clear. If shooting most of your photos at 50-90mm, getting a 28mm and cropping is plain dumb.

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47 minutes ago, Simone_DF said:

One more time. Perhaps I’ll add some drawing next time if it’s still not clear. If shooting most of your photos at 50-90mm, getting a 28mm and cropping is plain dumb.

Your the one who doesn’t get it.

The whole premise of the Q series is a camera that is compact, with a fixed lens for someone who wants to travel with minimal gear.

The Q series covers wide angle to slight telephoto…making it useful to the vast majority of photographers.

Even your logic…’shooting MOST photos with a 50 or 90’ means you either carry a second camera for the wideangle shots…or you don’t and just miss those photos.

The fact that the Q3 sells so well that there are still waiting lists seems to show that most agree.

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35 minutes ago, bobtodrick said:

Even your logic…’shooting MOST photos with a 50 or 90’ means you either carry a second camera for the wideangle shots…or you don’t and just miss those photos.

Yup. I’d buy a 28mm Q and a 50mm Q, so that I’m fully covered from 28 to 75, perhaps even 90mm.
That would be the whole point. 

Instead people now need a Q + another camera to cover 50 to 90. 
No, cropping is not an option. Spending 6000€ to get an image the size of a M4/3 camera or less is dumb. 
 

Even smartphones got it right and sport multiple lenses. Does Apple tell you to crop from 48 megapixels? Nope. They have a tele lens for that. 
Currently an iPhone Pro takes longer focal length photos better than the Q3.

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On 12/24/2023 at 11:00 AM, thegobi said:

...
As to why 28 in the first place? There are all the interesting technical arguments, but maybe part of it was simply just 28 and 35 are the most traditionally popular street photography lenses? If it came down to a coin toss, you can crop a 28 to kinda get a 35 but not the other way…

I rarely have been in situations where a 35mm would not be able to get a shot, and it would make for a more alround setup for me. Cropping to 50mm would be very usable, not so with the 28(26,7) setup.

10 hours ago, M11 for me said:

What more do you need than crop? And if you are a purist and you want a separate focal lenght for every perspective then you probably rather need another camera.

But this has been said many times here and elsewhere.

I need play with (narrow) DOF, which is very hard with a 28mm. Cropping does not help at all. The 'fast' 28mm F1.7 shot will have considerable DOF. When I crop this to 50mm it is the same DOF as a 50mm F3.5 i.e the same as my old Elmar 50 F3.5 LTM and far from what the Summilux 50 F1.4 M is capable of.

9 hours ago, Patrick NL said:

...

A 35mm would be a great focal length too, but not as widely usable. And it is close enough from the 28mm that I have no problem cropping that. With 50mm that is a more an issue, because there I really start to miss the soft backgrounds you can get with a true 50mm.

Exactly, cropping any lens will work for 1,4x, resulting in half the amount of pixels and a DOF about one stop more than the lens you try to emulate. Just to be clear, I am just comparing the DOF here. A 28mm F 2.0  shot cropped to 35mm will have the same look as a 35mm F2.8 shot in terms of DOF. (and the same as a 50mm F4 shot) The trend is to go for faster lenses, so F2.8 is barely acceptable today, and F4 for 50mm is not.

2 hours ago, bobtodrick said:

Your the one who doesn’t get it.

The whole premise of the Q series is a camera that is compact, with a fixed lens for someone who wants to travel with minimal gear.

The Q series covers wide angle to slight telephoto…making it useful to the vast majority of photographers.

Even your logic…’shooting MOST photos with a 50 or 90’ means you either carry a second camera for the wideangle shots…or you don’t and just miss those photos.

The fact that the Q3 sells so well that there are still waiting lists seems to show that most agree.

Look at the 35mm Summilux M and the Summicron 40C. I bet that a fixed 40mm F1.4 lens could be made at least as compact as the 27mm F1.7. It would be a very al-round setup. Wide enough for 99% of the situations and with useful crops in the 50-75 range. I see a lot more photos that I would miss because I can not get close enough with a 28mm.

Maybe it is a generation thing. I come from the age that 50mm was considered standard and al-round.

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Except when you run into a situation that needs a wider lens.

This whole discussion is useless. Leica brought out a compact camera that replaces the common 28-70 zoom with a cropping system Which I find a brilliant idea  

Of course one can wish for another focal length variant. But it would be a different concept with a different use case., a 50-150 mm Q.  If Leica sees a market they might consider it. If not, not.
 
In any case it is not worth it to turn this into a heated discussion as there is really nothing to discuss

 

And getting a compact with a zoom lens would be equally dumb as it would be 4.0-5.6. 
We are not talking about interchangeable lens fine art cameras here but about a point-and-shoot for daily use, travel and possibly street   

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3 hours ago, jaapv said:

Except when you run into a situation that needs a wider lens.

This whole discussion is useless. Leica brought out a compact camera that replaces the common 28-70 zoom with a cropping system Which I find a brilliant idea  

Of course one can wish for another focal length variant. But it would be a different concept with a different use case., a 50-150 mm Q.  If Leica sees a market they might consider it. If not, not.
 
In any case it is not worth it to turn this into a heated discussion as there is really nothing to discuss

 

And getting a compact with a zoom lens would be equally dumb as it would be 4.0-5.6. 
We are not talking about interchangeable lens fine art cameras here but about a point-and-shoot for daily use, travel and possibly street   

Completely agree with everything you’ve said.  As a Leica dealer for over 50 years…and selling Q series since its inception I’ve not had one comment from a customer who wants a Q with a longer lens.

I’ll let that and my other reasons speak for themselves and now out of this thread.

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