Leica X (Typ 113)

A Leica is always an event, but what kind of impact does the new X (Typ 113) seem set to make?

Leica cameras are their own breed and very much in a class of their own. Physically, the camera is every bit as beautiful and classic looking as you’d expect from the German manufacturer. If you like your car or your clothes to attract admiring glances, then this is probably the sort of camera for you. It’s not, however, a camera for blending into the crowd, so if you’re planning on travelling around any of the world’s livelier environs you’d be right to conclude that this is not the camera to accompany you.

Even if you put the famous Leica logo aside, the design of the camera has a look that sets it apart, even from the Compact System Cameras that are in the same approximate aesthetic ballpark.

There’s an all-black and a silver version with brown leather trim available. The latter looks absolutely lovely, but it also looks like it’s more than a little prone to scuffs and scratches that might, potentially, spoil its good looks. The fixed lens offers the equivalent of 35mm, which is a classic street photography, reportage focal length, serving as a wide standard lens.

In the hand, the camera feels solid and dependable, though perhaps a touch lighter than its appearance implies. Of course, weight, bulk and general ergonomics are largely subjective factors but the camera isn’t very well suited to casual, one-handed use. This is in part due to the absence of a grip and in part due to the fact that the lens adds weight to the left side of the camera. So, even though there’s no zooming to be done, you’ll need to support the left side of the camera, including the lens, with your left hand. This is probably no accident; switch the lens out of AF mode and you’re presented with a square in the middle of the LCD screen that’s zoomed in to 100 per cent for critical manual focusing. Leica no doubt considers that its devotees are likely to prefer to shoot this way, rather than in AF mode, which probably accounts for the camera’s layout and ergonomics.

Talking of focusing, rather annoyingly, the 920,000-pixel, three-inch TFT LCD screen doesn’t have touch control, unlike the Leica T. It would be nice to be able to instantly select a focus point via the screen; as it is, you have to first select either 1-Point or Spot AF mode, depress the Delete/Focus button and then use the jog-wheel to move the focus point about. It’s not a hugely significant problem, but again it lends credence to the notion that Leica has the X (Typ 113) aimed at manual focusers.

On the top of the camera, there’s a shutter button built around a switch that changes between off, single shot mode and continuous shooting mode. You’ll probably find yourself switching straight into continuous mode much of the time, without having really meant to, as the switch pushes past single shot mode unless you’re very gentle. Start-up time isn’t instant – there’s around a second before the LCD presents you with what the lens is seeing – but it’s fast enough. There’s also an old-fashioned shutter speed dial and aperture dial, both featuring an automatic setting, a small video-recording button, pop-up flash and hotshoe – but no built-in viewfinder is present, which will no doubt be off-putting to some.

The back of the camera boasts a very clean layout. Near where the right thumb naturally sits, there’s a dial that controls exposure compensation (or exposure bracketing if you’re shooting in manual exposure mode), a jog wheel that accesses the drive mode, flash controls, exposure compensation and enables you to display a three-by-three compositional grid, among other things, via the central Info button. On the opposite side of the camera, there’s a switch to activate the pop-up flash and then a neat column of five buttons for reviewing images, deleting images or setting the focus, the white balance, the ISO and accessing the menu.

As you’d no doubt expect from such a respected and experienced manufacturer, the image quality produced by the Leica X (Typ 113) is very good indeed. Again, it feels clear that Leica has traditional photographers very much in mind, as the images that this camera produces have a look about them that can only really be described as filmic. This is obviously a somewhat imprecise term that means subtly different things to different people, but these photographs just seem to recall that organic look that film is known for. The 16.2-megapixel APS-C CMOS image sensor produces very sharp, crisp-looking images, with exceptionally natural-looking colours.

At higher ISOs, the sensor’s performance is still exceptionally good. Images captured at ISO 6400 are very usable indeed – in fact, even at ISO 12500, noise is handled very well. If there was any slight concern at all during testing then it was with the way in which slightly higher-contrast, backlit scenes were  handled. Basically, a little bit of highlight detail seems to be discarded rather too readily. Some of this is recoverable if you capture DNG files, but not without a loss of colour accuracy. Erring on the side of slight underexposure seems to be a sensible solution, as there seems to be no problem with shadow noise or shadow detail.

This is certainly a lovely camera that will appeal to lovers of traditional, uncomplicated photography, but the price, perhaps somewhat inevitably, may well be a limiting factor when it comes to the potential reach of the camera, when you consider that you can get comparable specifications and functionality from other manufacturers at around a third of the asking price of the Leica.

This is a superb camera in a many of respects, but the number of photographers who will be seriously tempted to buy this is unlikely to be huge, due to its large price tag and especially as it’s not quite perfect. The overall quality is stunning and produces images reminiscent of film captures.