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I was at Sebring this last weekend, and took the opportunity to put the x-t5 and the viltrox 75mm f/1.2 (both with current firmware) through its paces. I’m happy to report that the AF system was easily up to the task. The shots I’ve managed to finish processing are here… Sebring 2023 I had also rented a xf150-600 from lensrental.com to see if I would like it. It unfortunately too much lens, and offered few chances for being used. The 75mm focal length was near perfect. I did get to also use my XF 18mm f1.4 r lm wr which is a stellar lens as well.

The speed is partially dependent on the receiving device, but mainly on the raspberry Pi and the usb protocol it supports. When building it, I happened to also have a pi4 handy. The pi4 supports usb3.1 while the pi zero 2 supports usb2. The pi4 is notably faster, but larger and is very power hungry. I can power the raspberry pi zero 2 off of a solar cell! I did a few tests and seem to be getting an I/o speed of 20-40mb/s vs the pi4 of about 60-80mb/s.

Since I’m going to Spain soon, I wanted a light and effective way to back up my SD cards every day during the trip. There were some old and no longer available devices on the market, but all had limited capacity and rather expensive... or bulky. I came across a neat project that uses a Raspberry Pi zero 2 (this is a much faster version of the old Pi zero) and also supports Wi-Fi. I made one, designed a custom case for it that I 3D printed (I have files for anyone that wants to to this project), and can say it works extremely well. The device is extremely simple, plug in a target storage device (in the pictures I have an extremely tiny crucial 4 terabyte ssd drive - the square thing), plug in a card reader (in the picture it’s that very compact usb stick so no cables needed), and it will automatically back up what’s on the SD card. It won’t overwrite files, only add new ones, and recognizes different SD cards so it makes separate folders for each unique SD card. It has a screen that shows transfer status, and while idle shows you the ip address so you can log into it with a phone and web browser. The thing is, with a portable battery, you can do this without even being near an outlet, and entirely in the field or on the go. pics Lens cap for scale here’s some screen shots if you want to log in You can also get thumbnails of images, but that takes way too long to generate, so I leave that function off the project can be found here - https://github.com/outdoorbits/little-backup-box the hardware portion isn’t entirely concise, if if people make this for themselves I can share what I got and from where. The main parts list are: raspberry Pi zero 2 four port usb hat - https://www.adafruit.com/product/3298?gclid=Cj0KCQjwlPWgBhDHARIsAH2xdNdICMYNwWVgb1i4BRLETI_8Mrep_RZf8hiQgtu4lT8W80hEM3GsQvEaAlU1EALw_wcB and the OLED display (make sure if you get it from adafruit to get the pigtail connector) - https://www.adafruit.com/product/938 the best thing is, you can use any low power ssd storage drive, and if you need more space, just get more drives. for the usb card reader, I got this, that’s in the image - SD Card Reader, uni USB SD Card... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087QG75L7?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share for the large storage I am using this - Crucial X6 4TB Portable SSD – Up... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W1KDM9K?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share I hope this helps someone looking for an on the road backup solution, and is a tinkerer like me.

No - there is no switch - firmware update won't be possible - there has been a suggestion that the lack of switch improves weather sealing but I don't know if that is true.

Compared to the separate lenses, the Q2 is certainly a good deal in Leica's world. Without turning this into a Leica forum, I can confirm that the current digital Leica's still have amazing colors. I was a bit disappointed with the M8, but since the Q, the SL and the M10 they've found their consistency back. What's particularly striking is how easy the raw files are in post. As for the Q2 Monochrome, I've never seen such beautiful and high quality B&W images from a consumer camera.

It's quite a difference. As a basis the Leica Q2 already has a very good 47Mp full-frame sensor paired with one of the best lenses ever made (a 28mm Summilux). By leaving out the color array filter on the sensor and optimizing the sensor lenses for monochrome images, you get an incredibly sharp and contrast rich monochrome image. Without the color array filter you also boost the low light performance and expand the dynamic range of the sensor by approx. 2 stops. In the meanwhile, I couldn't resist and purchased a Q2 Monochrome. I'm not disappointed. Though my X-Pro produces very nice Acros files, the Q2 Monochrome is a different league (also in price to be fair). I usually shoot monochrome for my personal work, but to be able to shoot at ISO25000 and have files as clean as an X-Pro at ISO1600 is amazing. At normal ISO levels, the level of detail and the tonality of the Q2 files is stunning. Both for the jpegs out-of-camera and the DNG raw files via Capture One.