Hands on with a $27,500 camera: The Leica S (Type 007)

Unveiling the latest Leica

The Leica S (Type 007) is the latest incarnation of Leica’s flagship camera, and the big news in this update is the fact that the Leica S now uses CMOS over CCD for its imaging sensor. Mr TS Sim, Business Manager of the Leica Professional System started off the session by bringing us through a slideshow introducing the new Leica S, and as you can see below, the benefits are numerous when the new sensor is paired with the new Maestro II imaging processor.

What’s noteworthy is the 15-stop dynamic range that the new processor is supposed to bring, as that’s a full stop over Medium format competitors like the Phase One IQ3 and the Leaf Credo 50, both of which sport sensors that resolve resolution at 50 megapixels, but only claim 14-stop dynamic range.

The continuous shooting rate of about 3.5 frames per second is also quite a bit faster than the competition, as most medium format cameras still average continuous shooting speeds below 2 frames per second. Add to that a native ISO range of 100-12,500, as well as new video capabilities, and it certainly seems as though Leica is taking full advantage of their new CMOS sensor.

Like most modern DSLRs today, the Leica S also comes with in-built Wi-Fi capabilities, which allows for remote capture from your smartphone via the Leica S app (currently only available for iOS). The app gives you live view, remote capture, and allows you to set the autofocus point by touch, so it certainly seems as though Leica has brought the feature set of the Leica S closer to that of today’s DSLRs.

Following the presentation by Mr Sim was a quick demonstration of shooting tethered with the Leica S by Photographer Sebastian Siah from Shooting Gallery Asia. The camera was setup to send pictures directly to Adobe Lightroom, allowing us to view the shots on the larger screen of a laptop. From what we saw, there didn’t seem to be much lag between each shot, attesting to the fast buffer of the camera, as well as the speed of the Lemo USB 3.0 HiSpeed connection the camera uses.

A quick run-through of the camera

We were given a quick run through with the camera, before given a chance to take a few quick shots with the model of our own. The Leica S supports lenses with leaf shutters while also having a focal plane shutter of its own, so in place of “On” and “Off” as you might generally see, you get a choice of “CS”, “FPS”, and “OFF”. As you can see in the picture, the camera is also now capable of Live View. Navigating the menus is largely through four quick buttons around the LCD, each of which bring up a separate menu.

The top left button brings up ISO settings, and you can see that other than being able to select your ISOs (only full stops are available) there’s also an “Auto ISO” function, which brings a convenience when you are shooting in rapidly changing conditions. The button under that brings up a selection of metering modes, which basically offer you a choice between Spot, Multifield and Center Weighted.

On the other side, we have your focusing modes -AF single, Predictive AF continuous and Manual override from the top right button, and exposure compensation from the bottom right. Getting to the other settings involves a quick press of the tiny four-way joystick located next to the relatively huge viewfinder, which may seem a little unintuitive when you’re searching for a “Menu” button, but is pretty handy once you get used to it.

What is definitely useful though, is the way the top LCD panel is able to give you distance information on your plane of focus when you have the camera set to Manual focus mode. As you can see from the picture, the camera was focused on a point of 0.66m away, with the depth of focus starting from a point 0.62m from us and ending at a point 0.71m away. This means the total depth of field we would get at f/9.5 would be 0.09m, or 9cm - anything placed within that 9cm area would be completely in focus.

The shooting experience

When it came to our turn with the camera, the first thing we felt when picking up the camera was the weight of the set-up. Paired with the 30-90 lens, the entire set-up weighs about 2.5kg, which isn’t that far off from comparable full-frame cameras. A Canon EOS 5DS R with EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM for example, weighs a total of about 1.9kg, so the weight is definitely quite manageable despite the larger size. (For reference, the comparable Phase One setup with Schneider Kreuznach 40-80mm LS f/4.0-5.6 Zoom lens comes up to about 3.3kg)

The sizeable handgrip and familiar shape certainly made for familiar handling, and once you learnt which quick button got you which group of settings, changing settings was certainly simple enough. We haven’t had the opportunity to test the latest Phase One or Leaf digital backs (which incorporate touch screens) yet, but the Leica S’s large buttons and five-way switch certainly made navigating menus a simple task.

Autofocus is fairly fast and accurate, which is important with any high-resolution camera system. Response rate was also fairly fast from the camera, with almost no lag experienced between shots, something you could chalk up to the huge 2GB buffer and faster Maestro II processor.

What was surprising to us was also how soft the shutter sounded – speaking to good damping on the focal plane shutter. The relatively light weight of the camera and lens combination meant we were able to shoot handheld with continuous lighting, which we probably couldn’t do with other Medium Format systems. But it was substantial enough to make us wonder about ache at the end of a long days’ worth of shooting in the studio.

Reviewing our images on screen, we will say that images taken at ISO 1600 and above exhibit a fair bit of noise, but the noise is very fine-grained and so they don’t seem to degrade the quality of the image. They certainly won’t appear in prints, or if you don’t zoom in to pixel-peep, and actually look closer to film grain, so should print well.

Here are some shots we captured with the camera:

The following sample photographs were shot with the Leica S in DNG format, and processed in Adobe Lightroom for presentation. They are copyright to SPH Magazines courtesy of Leica, and are provided for your reference only and we ask that you do not reproduce them elsewhere. Because of the large size of the full-resolution JPEGs, 100% crops have been provided instead of links to the full-resolution images.

The proof in the prints

We were also shown sample prints that compared crops of pictures of a studio scene taken from the Leica S with Summarit-S 70, the Canon EOS 5DS R with EF50mm f/1.4 USM and the Phase One IQ250 with Schneider LS 80mm f/2.8. From what we saw, the Leica S certainly seemed to retain better highlight detail (look at the white face on the Suunto compass) as well as better contrast and fine detail (look at the aperture markings on the bronze lens in the right corner), so that was definitely quite an impressive showcase of the sensor. Leica has generously shared the image file of the charts with us, so you can have a look and draw your own comparisons:

Spread across a wall of the studio, were some large prints from the Leica S, all of which showcase the great detail the camera is able to capture. What we thought was impressive though, was the range of conditions the camera is able to operate under. For example, having to take a traditional Medium format camera to the Arctic Ocean to get an image of a Polar Bear would certainly be a daunting task, but it’s apparent someone has already managed to do just that with the Leica S, which speaks to the slightly greater portability of this system.

Overall though, we have to say that the Leica S (Type 007) is a very enticing offering to people interested in Medium Format photography, and with more compact offerings like the Leica Q and the Leica T already on the market, it’ll be certainly be interesting to see what the luxury brand does next. The Leica S is available for order now for S$27,500 from your nearest Leica dealer. Check the Leica store for more details.

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