When researching whether the Leica Q2 was the right camera for me and could replace the Leica M10, my main question was how well the crop mode works.
After many disagreements in forums, I went to the Leica Store and inserted my own SD card in the Q2. For comparison, I had the M10 with 50 mm Summicron with me and was very satisfied with the results and so the Q2 was ordered.
So here is my little review with comparison of the crop mode for everyone who asks himself the same questions.
Camera behavior
For each crop mode a frame is displayed. This is very useful because, as with the M, you can see everything next to the cutout. The histogram is based only of the crop zone and so metering and focus only work within that zone. When photographing in JPG, only the crop image is saved. At RAW you get the complete picture with information about the crop in the metadata (more on this below).
Megapixels
My most used crop, the 50 mm, still has 14.6 megapixels. That is enough for almost every application in the digital field. When printing, it is enough to print an image at 300 DPI in A4. With a little generous crop or minimally less DPI, you can also print A3. 35 mm images have 30 megapixels, 75 mm only 7 megapixels.
Angle of view
I read a lot that the crop angle is different with the Q2 crop than with a “real” focal length lens. That’s not true!
Depth-of-field
The depth of field on the crop always corresponds to that of a 28 mm lens and not that of the crop. So with the 50 mm crop with f1.7 you have a depth of field that corresponds to an image with a 50 mm at f2.8.
Image editing
The crop information is stored in the RAW files. Lightroom is able to read this out and crop when importing. Of course, as usual, the complete image information is retained. Unfortunately, Capture One is unable to do this.
Example images with 50mm crop
First picture Q2, second picture Summicron 50mm Type 5 adapted to Nikon Z6.
