A Week With the Leica X1

The camera world, both consumers and manufacturers, have embraced the concept of large sensor compacts.  This rapidly growing market, started two years ago by Sigma with their DP series, is where all the buzz is.  Panasonic’s G series, Olympus’s Pens, Ricoh's GXR A-12, the Samsung NX and Sony’s as yet unnamed contender have followed.  Surely, the big guns of the camera industry, Canon and Nikon, cannot be far behind.

Leica has entered the fray with their X1.  Like the Sigmas, but unlike the others, Leica fits their large sensor compact with a fixed lens: a 24mm (36mm in 35mm equivalent) f2.8 Elmarit.  With its 12.3MP APS-C sensor, the Leica offers the possibility of creating very high quality images out of a very small package.

The fixed lens can be both a curse and a blessing depending on your preferences.  If your style requires a variety of fixed lenses or a zoom, then both the Leica and the Sigmas will be limiting.  On the other hand, a photographer might find a single fixed lens liberating in that one constantly looks at the world through a fixed focal length that you can become familiar with and use to best advantage in your photographs.

When the X1 loaner arrived from Leica US, it was not the first time I had handled a Leica camera.  Thirty years ago I owned a Leica CL with a 28, 40 and 90 lens.  I carried the camera and lenses everywhere, mainly on backpacking and fishing trips.  Eventually I sold this kit, much to my regret today.  More recently, I bought and still own a Digilux 2, which in my opinion is still one of the best small sensor cameras in existence.  So I was not surprised by the exceptional build quality of the X1 when I pulled it out of its box.  It is pure Leica in looks, and I can tell you in the week I had it it attracted a fair amount of attention.

Basically I like compact cameras.  I have a DSLR--for now.  But it will soon be departing.  Partly it’s because I hate to lug around a lot of camera equipment, and partly I prefer being more discrete when I am photographing people. I find that the importance of the former vs. the latter has increased as I have aged.   After all, a DSLR is large and relatively noisy.  Most compacts are quieter and less visually imposing.  I found on my recent shoot that, because the X1 is quiet and small, most subjects were not aware that I had taken any photos, even though I had asked permission beforehand.

This is a huge benefit.  Most people enjoy being photographed about as much as a visit to the dentist, so making the process as painless as possible is a big plus.  It’s also a benefit in street photography, as a smaller, quieter, camera is less intimidating, and less likely to cause concern to the people being photographed.

The X1 is a handsome camera.  But rather than rehashing its looks, and the locations and uses of all the buttons and dials on the camera, I encourage the reader to turn to the sites that specialize in providing product details.  Good sites include Sean Reid’s reidreviews.com, Steve Huff’s stevehuffphoto.com, Luminous Landscape (@ luminous-landscape.com) and of course dpreview.com.

As a photographer, I noticed the following things about the X1 during my week of use:

-I have only medium sized hands, but still the camera does not have a lot of real estate to put one’s thumb when holding the camera.  The manual focus dial is right where the thumb wants to be in order to grip the camera properly.  The problem is that the X1’s pretty, rounded, shape eliminates much of the area that might otherwise be available for thumb placement.  Consequently, I would recommend that any purchaser of the X1 consider buying the optional grip.  Also, Leica: please drop the press-to-release flash or make it positively latched in some way.  I would be rich if I had been paid a buck for every time I released the flash as I brought the camera out of my camera bag.  One other niggle: the aperture wheel should have stiffer detents.  More often than not it was moved when putting it in or pulling it out of a pocket or my camera bag, or even by my wayward thumb trying to find a place to rest.

-The camera’s autofocus speed was not as big a deal as I thought it would be.  Perhaps that’s a function of my style.  I tend to zone focus if I am working with fast moving subjects on the street, but objectively, the camera is not slow to autofocus in good light.  My impression is that it is as fast or faster than any compact I’ve used bar one. The X1 feels faster than the Panasonic LX3 I own, but not as fast as my Panasonic G1.  It’s fast enough for those subjects that I consider appropriate for using autofocus.  My belief is that each photographer must weigh the importance of autofocus speed in the context of their own requirements. 

-For manual focus, the rear LCD provides a magnified view that does a good job helping focus.  The LCD would be better if the lens aperture opened up to consistently to provide a shallow depth of field.  When it did, focus was achieved with a visual snap.  For zone focusing, the scale on the LCD is fine, except for the fact that it is inaccurate in translating meters into feet, and it provided too little detail for distances beyond 2 meters.  By the way, I used the metric rather than the English scale for zone focusing, and it seemed accurate.  Why Leica could not follow Sigma’s idea of putting the focus scale right on the thumbwheel is unknown, but it would make zone focusing painless, and manual focus easier.

-I used the camera with an external Voigtlander 35mm viewfinder.  I prefer holding a camera to my eye, rather than the arms length stretch required when using the LCD for framing.  The small AF-locked light right of and below the hot shoe was easily visible while using the viewfinder.  This is a sound design decision as it allows the photographer to see when the camera is ready for taking the photograph.  Framing was accurate enough for my use as I quickly got used to relating the VF view to what the camera was seeing.  If framing was really critical, I used the rear LCD.

-The X1’s LCD has come under criticism as being too coarse.  It is, in my opinion, completely acceptable.  There are 230,000 pixel displays and there are 230,000 pixel displays.  The same pixel count display on the Sigma DP2 is difficult to use for focus due to the large margins between each pixel.  When viewing the DP2 screen it feels like you are looking through a black plastic insect screen overlaid on the LCD.  The X1 pixels have almost no margin, so the display appears seamless.  In addition, when using manual focus, the center of the display is magnified, vastly improving the clarity required for manual focusing.  It defies me how someone could see the difference between displays whose pixels are .000015 square inches and .00001 square inches, the average difference in size between the X1’s and the Panasonic GF’s LCD pixels.  The display does get washed out in ambient light outdoors, however, even when set to maximum brightness.

-File write times were never an issue while photographing a variety of subjects, including fast moving conditions where capturing a person’s various expressions during a speech was critical to my success.  I never had to wait for the camera to write a file, and I was using a middling 2GB card I typically keep as a backup if I have a problem with my fast 16GB cards.

File quality is the most important consideration of any camera, and in this regard the X1 gets high marks.  The 24mm Elmarit is a moderate contrast lens, which can make the initial file quality seem soft.  In fact, there is plenty of resolution.  Judicious use of local contrast enhancement in Photoshop creates pop in the X1’s files without the use of general contrast enhancement.  Overall resolution is held back somewhat by what appears to be a fairly strong anti-alias filter.  I prefer cameras with weak or even no AA filter to maximize resolution, taking care of moire in post processing.

A moderate contrast lens is excellent as shadow areas are more likely to have useable detail.  The mid tones will be richer, and will respond well to local contrast enhancement.  Leica’s choice of a moderate contrast lens in the X1 is to be applauded.

Although I mostly develop files as black and white’s, and generally use a black and white workflow, the color photos I developed from the X1 had noticeable chromatic aberration.  It was easy enough to correct, but I felt it was significant enough for me to correct in color before conversion to black and white.  That way I ensured the color aberration didn’t affect the sharpness of the black and white output.

Also, the 24 Elmarit does tend to softness in the corners.  Generally the softening is not noticeable, but it is there.  Finally, the lens is fairly resistant to veiling flare: not the best, but certainly not the worst I have seen.

After a few days of use, I knew that familiarity with the X1 had bred respect.  During two photo shoots at group meetings midway in the week I had already begun to feel like using the camera was second nature.  As I have mentioned before, in the meetings I photographed, the participants were not sure I had been taking photos.  The camera’s small dimensions, operational silence (well, almost silence) and the fact I could take photos quickly and without fumbling meant that the people being photographed were not overly sensitized to being models.  I think this is a significant strength of the X1.  The G series Panasonic’s have a distinct metallic “cluck” when the shutter is released, and in those conditions the participants would have been alerted as shots were taken.  The louder sound of a DSLR would have probably been unacceptable.

Much has been written of the comparison between the X1 and the Panasonic GF1 with the 20mm f1.7 lens.  The trade off between the better ISO capability of the X1 and the faster GF1 lens has been covered by other reviewers.  But I did spend some time trying to get a sense of how the files acted when “stressed”.  So I set up an experiment in which I  took a series of photos with the X1 at 1600 ISO and f5.6, and the same series with a Panasonic G1 at 640 ISO and f5.6.  The series was: 1) correct exposure, 2) underexposed 1 stop, 3) underexposed 2 stops.  Then in Lightroom I corrected the underexposed files to zero the exposure.  If there had been much difference I would have posted the photos, but to be honest there was little difference.  The color noise in the dark areas was almost identical, and in black and white the luminance noise might have favored the X1 slightly.  Resolution and contrast were almost identical.  So the GF1 user gives up nothing to the X1 user if exposure has to be corrected in software and the GF1 user is able to keep the ISO 1.5 stops less than the X1 user.

You might notice I don’t mention image stabilization, or the lack of image stabilization, in the X1.  I did not use Leica’s electronic implementation of image stabilization.  I grew up without IS, and the X1’s high ISO performance was such that I didn’t feel I needed it.  I guess the reader must decide for themselves if IS is important.  For me it is not.  If I’m worried about camera shake, I either take a three shot burst or bring my tripod.

Before concluding, I want to raise some questions for Leica regarding the camera’s design.  

First, why doesn’t the camera have a small fixed lens vs. a retractable one?  My suspicion is that a fixed lens--perhaps even a faster fixed lens--could be kept small enough to allow the camera to fit in a coat pocket.  It would also allow the aperture and focus controls to be mounted on the lens, putting them in the most logical place.

Second, why does the camera sensor have an anti-alias filter?  Leaving it off would improve apparent resolution with little downside.

Third, even without a fixed lens, why isn’t the manual focus implementation better thought out?  A camera with a dedicated viewfinder that allows the photographer to verify focus can get away with a slower autofocus or even just manual focus.  High end cameras that lack such a viewfinder should have fast autofocus.  Kudos to Panasonic for understanding this and putting an effort into making significant improvements in the speed of contrast detect autofocus.  If the camera lacks both the viewfinder and fast autofocus it must have a quick and accurate way to set zone focus.  Sigma realized that with their DP series, and installed a focus wheel that has accurate distance calibrations etched on the wheel.  If the X1’s wheel had similar etchings, the camera’s utility would be improved measurably.

Finally, why isn’t the X1 designed with more thought to where a photographers thumb can sit on the back of the camera.  Even though I eventually got comfortable with the camera's layout, it is not ideal.  There are smaller cameras available, including the Leica D-Lux 4, that are easier to hold.

But, where it counts, image quality, the X1 really has no equals.  No other compact camera has better high ISO image quality.  No other compact has equal simplicity of access to the controls that matter for picture taking.  No other compact is as handsome.  No other large sensor compact has the red dot.  Ultimately, the decision to purchase an X1 vs. another large sensor compact is both a rational and emotional one.  One has to ask if a fixed lens and moderate autofocus speed is acceptable for one’s needs.  If so, the premium one must pay for the Leica vs. other large sensor compacts can probably be understood in the context of the emotional as well as the monetary value of the Leica nameplate.  As time and Ebay have proven, there is a real monetary value to the Leica name.  So if the camera’s constraints would not affect your picture taking, and if you buy into the Leica ethos, it’s a remarkably good camera that is a lot of fun to use.  It was with a great deal of regret that I had to send the camera back to the kind folks at Leica US after my week with the X1.