OK, so I was seduced. My good friend Dan Cook has had a Leica Q for some time. I've always been rather jealous of it. OK so I had an M10 and 3 beautiful lenses, but the Q is something else - a small yet extremely high quality camera with an amazing lens, sensor and autofocus. I secretly lusted after his Q and fondled it whenever possible.

Then the Q-2 was announced. It's got more of everything, so I started working out how I could afford one. But then the special offers came up on the first generation Q, and the Q-P, which is a matt black "special edition" (Leica always do a "P" model at the end of the line to shift stock). Anyhow, long story short, I got a Q-P at about £1200 off list price, which is a bargain. Dan in the meantime got one of the first Q-2's in the UK, lucky guy.

I had my first proper outing with it last weekend. Dan, myself, and a couple of other members of the Monday Night Photo Club (a primarily alcohol focused group of photographers in Guildford, UK, that meet in a pub every Monday) headed to Stratford in east London for a day of urban photography. 

I had a plan for this trip, which was to look for shapes, lines, light and shade. One camera, one lens, no bag of gear. Just one small camera to go everywhere. Stratford is a very interesting place. It's where the London Olympics were held. There's a lot of regeneration going on, as well as areas that are still run down (but now achingly trendy). There's old and new, amazing stadium architecture, canals, locks, grafitti and grime, so it's a real target rich environment for the urban photographer.

My initial focus on light and shade was going quite nicely as early morning sunshine was bright and made for interesting little scenes.

One thing I was really struck by was the amount of regeneration that was going on. The Olympics were sold on the basis that the whole area would be regenerated, and wouldn't be left as a "white elephant" rotting for years (Athens as an example). And this looks to have been amazingly successful if the amount of apartment blocks shooting up is anything to judge by. Key driving forces are closeness to the City of London and Canary Wharf where there are LOTS of jobs, and the massive Westfield Shopping Centre, more of which later.

So I decided to spend some of my time creating some themed photographs on the topic of old stuff full of character and atmosphere being knocked down, and new, largely boring, apartment and office buildings being built.

One thing that was very interesting was the way people are taking advantage of the curious hinterland of abandoned buildings and land. In one area was some wasteland hidden behind some derelict buildings, and there were a few people living there in makeshift shacks, hidden from the outside world. Tricky getting pictures of this for obvious reasons (getting stabbed etc).

The Q-P is a delight to use. Small, easily concealed when wandering around slightly dodgy areas, and with proper dials for the main functions. I'm not convinced that the Q-2 upgrades are worth-it as the original is so good. I did try them side-by-side and I reckon with £1200 off list price I got a pretty good deal. It would be "nice" to crop to 75mm equivalent, but it's not a deal-breaker. It's discrete, small, fast and silent.

Lunch was at the lovely, arty, trendy and tasty Stour Space cafe right on the canal. There were a bunch of tables set up in the exhibition space, and I was told it was a "ZineFest". I've never heard of one of these before, and it turns out that "Zines" are small, usually photocopied, pamphlets or magazines, especially "fanzines". Fascinating. And here I found Hannah O'Neill who had a brand new zine called "Sons of Delinquency" which had literally just been printed. It describes in pictures and words the gangs of El Salvador, photographed from within prisons, by Hannah. Gutsy stuff. Totally excellent. So I bought one, and it was Hannah's first ever zine, and her first ever sale, so I took a picture of her with it after she'd signed it for me.

Walking back through the Olympic park, the aquatic centre is a real draw. It is such an amazing organic design, with sculpted shapes and beautifully structured ribbed roof. However, it's rather hard to get a good shot of it as buildings in the background keep getting in the shot, so I ended up going in relatively close.

After all the art and culture in the rapidly shrinking grungy areas, arrival back to the massive shiny Westfield shopping centre was a bit of a shock. I really didn't like it at all. By this point, the place was rammed with shoppers and people who travelled there just as a destination. I can't really complain about consumerism when wandering around with a £3100 camera, but I found the whole place rather brash and shouty. I only took one photograph in the shopping centre itself, which is a reflection image below that captures the rather warped reality that it felt like I had walked into.

Obviously I have made all these images monochrome, as my main focus was on light, shade and shape. And usually I will have the Leica set to shoot jpegs in mono, plus DNG files. This lets me see the image in mono in the viewfinder, but have the full colour version in the DNG as well. I mainly left the camera in aperture priority i.e. shutter speed and ISO on auto (max shutter speed 1/125th), with the rear dial used for exposure compensation. This worked very well indeed, and minimised the thought process to just having to pick the aperture to choose how much of the scene was in focus and whether I wanted to have a bokehgasm or not.

I was very impressed by the output of the Q-P. The lens is clearly a stunning piece of work. It's a bit like the 24 Summilux-M that I had (but obviously it's a 28mm f/1.7), in that it has really sharp details, rich colours and very good contrast. Very very nice indeed. I've previously owned a Sony RX1, and the Q-line is far superior from a usability perspective.

The Sony is a touch smaller, but just much harder to use with a crappy menu system that just loses you. I know the RX1RII is faster but the Sony just seems to be much more of a compromise than the Q which is feels like much more of a complete and well thought through package.

I did use the 35mm and 50mm crop modes quite a lot. These are very handy in that they let you visualise the scene you want, and you then see it in that crop in Lightroom, but you still have the full frame to use. The way they are implemented is very "M-like", so you don't fill the viewfinder with the frame you are shooting - you see the frame outline superimposed on the full 28mm view so you can easily adjust composition and it's far easier to manage what's on the edges and coming in & out of the frame.

Overall, I really like the Q-P. The matt-black looks a bit special (though the original Q is perfectly gorgeous). The Q line of cameras is really effective. I didn't really feel the need to have a longer zoom in most scenarios, and the fixed lens simply made me try harder to find good compositions. I'm sure I could have taken a good number of these images using my Leica CL and it's 18-56 lens (I should have done a side-by-side comparison - I'll do one of those soon). But I find the Q-P actually nicer to use than the CL due to its visible aperture and shutter speed dials which are more intuitive.

Overall, a fun outing, and the Q-P is simply lovely. There are bargains to be had as people trade in their 1st gen for the new Q-2, and retailers drop the price of 1st gen cameras to shift stock.