Q2 JPEG and Raw file size

I have had a Q2 for a while and love its simplicity, ease of use , evf, lens and colours etc. However I have one complaint and that is file size of the Raws. Unfortunately the jpegs are markedly inferior to the raws. It’s one area where Leica really need to work. Canons, Fuji’s and Olympus manage to produce jpegs which without editing are generally very good, not perfect but good. You resort to raw with them when the dynamic range is very wide or you really need to pull shadows. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get the Raws as good as the jpegs. In the Q2 the Raws are simply beautiful right out of camera, the best Raw files I have used period. However the Jpegs lack contrast and are quite lack lustre in comparison.

Ideally I would like a much improved JPEG, but could we please at least have a compressed Raw on the Q2 like the M11?

I have just been on a 6 week road trip around the USA and after much consideration I eventually took a Fuji setup, the main reason being that I didnt want to deal with 80mb Raw files. Time is limited on the Road and I didnt want to spend my evenings trying to upload, edit and catalogue such huge files on my iPad Pro.

The Fuji an x-s10 with 16-80 apsc performed surprisingly well and was an easy setup to deal with.

So please Leica try to get your jpegs to reflect your raws albeit with less flexibility and/or provide us with a compressed raw output firmware upgrade.

Woodman100 wrote:

I have had a Q2 for a while and love its simplicity, ease of use , evf, lens and colours etc. However I have one complaint and that is file size of the Raws. Unfortunately the jpegs are markedly inferior to the raws. It’s one area where Leica really need to work. Canons, Fuji’s and Olympus manage to produce jpegs which without editing are generally very good, not perfect but good. You resort to raw with them when the dynamic range is very wide or you really need to pull shadows. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get the Raws as good as the jpegs. In the Q2 the Raws are simply beautiful right out of camera, the best Raw files I have used period. However the Jpegs lack contrast and are quite lack lustre in comparison.

Ideally I would like a much improved JPEG, but could we please at least have a compressed Raw on the Q2 like the M11?

I have just been on a 6 week road trip around the USA and after much consideration I eventually took a Fuji setup, the main reason being that I didnt want to deal with 80mb Raw files. Time is limited on the Road and I didnt want to spend my evenings trying to upload, edit and catalogue such huge files on my iPad Pro.

The Fuji an x-s10 with 16-80 apsc performed surprisingly well and was an easy setup to deal with.

So please Leica try to get your jpegs to reflect your raws albeit with less flexibility and/or provide us with a compressed raw output firmware upgrade.

It is unlikely that Leica is monitoring this forum.

JDLaing50 wrote:

SrMi wrote:

Woodman100 wrote:

I have had a Q2 for a while and love its simplicity, ease of use , evf, lens and colours etc. However I have one complaint and that is file size of the Raws. Unfortunately the jpegs are markedly inferior to the raws. It’s one area where Leica really need to work. Canons, Fuji’s and Olympus manage to produce jpegs which without editing are generally very good, not perfect but good. You resort to raw with them when the dynamic range is very wide or you really need to pull shadows. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to get the Raws as good as the jpegs. In the Q2 the Raws are simply beautiful right out of camera, the best Raw files I have used period. However the Jpegs lack contrast and are quite lack lustre in comparison.

Ideally I would like a much improved JPEG, but could we please at least have a compressed Raw on the Q2 like the M11?

I have just been on a 6 week road trip around the USA and after much consideration I eventually took a Fuji setup, the main reason being that I didnt want to deal with 80mb Raw files. Time is limited on the Road and I didnt want to spend my evenings trying to upload, edit and catalogue such huge files on my iPad Pro.

The Fuji an x-s10 with 16-80 apsc performed surprisingly well and was an easy setup to deal with.

So please Leica try to get your jpegs to reflect your raws albeit with less flexibility and/or provide us with a compressed raw output firmware upgrade.

It is unlikely that Leica is monitoring this forum.

You’d be surprised.

Yes, I would be, as they do not seem to be monitoring the specialized l-camera-forum.com. Only after Leica was contacted directly did we see a reaction.

Woodman100 wrote:

[...] In the Q2 the Raws are simply beautiful right out of camera, the best Raw files I have used period. However the Jpegs lack contrast and are quite lack lustre in comparison. [...]

There is no such thing as raw being beautiful out of camera. Raw doesn't have a "look" on its own.

How you see raw is solely based on application you're using. You either are looking at embedded preview (which is identical to OOC JPEG), or there is some magic happening in the image viewer that is doing raw conversion with some default parameters.

So when you say you "like the look of leica raw file", it means you "like the look of leica raw file as it is interpreted by the app you use to view it."

So:

• keep shooting raw
• keep using the same app to view your files
• if the app has export capabilities you may use it on your raw files to get jpegs that should look the way you want.

In order to mitigate raw size problem you can use Adobe DNG Converter and lossless compression (but not LOSSY!!!). That brings down dng file size from ~90MB to ~50MB in some cases, however you do that, first read about some possible drawbacks. (HINT, there are some concerns about compatibility of such converted files with non Adobe software, however I never had any problems and I do compress my dngs since day one I got leica Q2).

tapirek wrote:

Woodman100 wrote:

[...] In the Q2 the Raws are simply beautiful right out of camera, the best Raw files I have used period. However the Jpegs lack contrast and are quite lack lustre in comparison. [...]

There is no such thing as raw being beautiful out of camera. Raw doesn't have a "look" on its own.

How you see raw is solely based on application you're using. You either are looking at embedded preview (which is identical to OOC JPEG), or there is some magic happening in the image viewer that is doing raw conversion with some default parameters.

So when you say you "like the look of leica raw file", it means you "like the look of leica raw file as it is interpreted by the app you use to view it."

So:

• keep shooting raw
• keep using the same app to view your files
• if the app has export capabilities you may use it on your raw files to get jpegs that should look the way you want.

In order to mitigate raw size problem you can use Adobe DNG Converter and lossless compression (but not LOSSY!!!). That brings down dng file size from ~90MB to ~50MB in some cases, however you do that, first read about some possible drawbacks. (HINT, there are some concerns about compatibility of such converted files with non Adobe software, however I never had any problems and I do compress my dngs since day one I got leica Q2).

Agreed. Note that you can compress DNGs in place by running Metadata Update (or similar, ask me if unclear) from within Lightroom Classic.

I can't agree with your comment simply because virtually every camera exports its own file version of RAW, no main stream maker is exporting true RAW data because of the amount processing going on in camera. I agree that the RAW converter you use has an impact on what you see, for example Lightroom never treated Fuji 'RAWS' well.

There are differences baked in before you get to the conversion stage. You can output from several different manufacturers ( I do all of the time) in Raw and the files look different even using the same adapted glass on each camera. That can only ever be down to difference in sensor and in camera preparation of the RAW data. I am not talking about in camera previews.

Woodman100 wrote:

I can't agree with your comment simply because virtually every camera exports its own file version of RAW, no main stream maker is exporting true RAW data because of the amount processing going on in camera. I agree that the RAW converter you use has an impact on what you see, for example Lightroom never treated Fuji 'RAWS' well.

But still, you can not see the raw. Because it does not look, it's just a bunch of data. Something has to make an image from that.

There are differences baked in before you get to the conversion stage. You can output from several different manufacturers ( I do all of the time) in Raw and the files look different even using the same adapted glass on each camera. That can only ever be down to difference in sensor and in camera preparation of the RAW data. I am not talking about in camera previews.

Yes, there are differences in raw, because cameras are different. But that still does not make raw look in any way on its own. If you take the same raw file and open it with two different image viewers you will likely get two images that looks differently.

Consider this: right now your combination of camera and viewer renders images that you consider better looking than your SOOC jpegs. But what if your image viewer gets an update that changes the way raws are rendered and now the raw is dull and boring?

To saying you like your raws look without considering how it was rendered (viewer) is like saying you like the movie just by reading its script.

But that is the whole point, identical scene identical lens but different bodies and the images that are generated by Lightroom or capture one are different between the cameras and that is due to the sensor construction and the in camera preparation of data. There is in camera prep of RAW files in all cameras and even more in the AI age.   The software you use will process files from different cameras differently hence Capture One handles Fuji better. I am agreeing with you that the computer software does this but that ignores the point that the RAW from the Q2 is amazing in either software but the jpeg is not. If all cameras only generated DNG's and went through Adobe then maybe they would all be the same and much easier for everyone, but they are not and even between models the Raw file handling is different. In practical terms its just not true that all RAWS are identical because all RAW files are not the same.