The Leica Leitzphone powered by Xiamo Blog

Decided to get a new to me Leitzphone. I've been looking for ways to freshen up my gig photography as my work has been getting a bit samey. Wanted to shake it up a bit. Had a look at the Leica rangefinder and unfortunately had to move on from there quickly. 😊 But saw the phone and thought that might be the way to go.

There's not much guidance out there for the camera. The link on the Leica page for the Quick Start Guidance only takes you to the safety information. The Xiamo sites appears to be no better. So the intention of this page/blog is to go through my setting up of the camera and my experiences. I also have the Xiaomi 17 Ultra Photography Kit Pro which I'll go through as well. I'll say right here that I'm loving both of them.

Settings

Once in Setting for the phone, there isn't an immediate one for the camera. Type camera in the search box at the top and that will bring it up. Should be the top one. Go into to that to amend the settings. I'm not going to say what you should have. The camera does reset to it's default settings when camera is closed. To sort that, tap on the General Tab, Preserve Settings and choose the options there that you want. They include remembering the last camera mode and Leica filter you used.

When you do go into Settings, you'll see that there an option for the Camera ring. Straight off, there seems to be a lot of people on YouTube saying that ring is quite twitchy and will activate the camera when you don't want it to. Be that while in your pocket or while you are using the phone. Personally, I'm not having any issues with that. You can use the ring to activate the camera and you can choose which mode it opens on with that (Photo, Video, Portrait, Pro, Fastshot, Document or Leica Essential). Select Camera ring features and you can choose what the ring does for each of those camera modes. Options are continuous zoom, switch focal length, EV (Exposure compensation/bracketing) or Filter.

The Camera homescreen

I'll cover the two menus that are circled in the main picture first.

Swiping down on the top one brings up the screen on the left of the main image. Here you can amend the metering mode (Auto exposure settings) and Image area size (Aspect Ratio). In the bottom right is a quick link to the Settings for the camera mentioned above.

Touching the line above the chosen camera mode will bring up the screen shown on the bottom left of the main picture. Tapping the circled pencil/edit button will bring up the menu to the left of that image. That will let you re-arrange the order everything shown on the menu.

The bottom row lets you arrange how the camera modes show on the main camera screen. Tap on the tick on the top right to confirm your changes.

Looking at that main screen, just above the shutter button, you'll see I've got Pro first, followed by Leica Essential.

File sizes and formats

I'm going to cover these by each camera effectively as there are 3 of them as their are restrictions based on your choices.

At the top of the screen you'll see it says 12.5M and JPG. Tap on these to select the options.

For file size that is 12.5Mb, 50Mb and 200Mb.

For file type that is JPG, RAW (dng) and Ultra Raw. Raws produce a JPG at the same time. Will have a look to see if that can be turned off.

About a quarter of the way up from the bottom of the main screen you'll see 0.6 1x 3.2 - 4.3.

These equate to the 3 different camera. JPG works for all three.

For the 0.6 camera, you can only use 12.5 and 50M. Raw only works with 12.5M.

For the 1x camera, you can only use 12.5 and 50M. Both Raws works with 12.5M and 50M.

For the 3.2 - 4.3 camera, you can use 12.5, 50M and 200M. Raw only works with 12.5M. 200M only works with JPG

Camera Modes

This is probably the part most people are interested in. 😁I'll concentrate on the Pro, Leica Essential and 200M ones. Will touch on the Photo one as well. Pro, Leica Essential, Portrait and 200M do not give you burst mode. Only Photo gives you that.

Pro Mode - The Zoom line in the picture. You can swipe upwards on it and it will bring a dial up on screen for you to use. That only works in 12.5M JPG mode. If you have the focus ring set for zoom, that will get round that for the other options.

The image on the right is the Pro camera screen. The Leica Auth on the the top right doesn't do anything. When you look at one of your pictures taken in this mode in the Gallery, that will show under details. It won't show what actual Leica filter you have used.

The circled Red C1 (in this instance) gets you to the Presets in the first image below. Tap on the circled 4 squares and this brings up all the presets.

Tap on one to bring up the details about it. You can only rename and delete them. You can't amend them. You can create new ones though. Not done that yet so will cover that another time.

Going back to the main Pro screen on the right tap on the circled Leica Std (in this instance) to get to the actual Leica Filters in the third image below. you can select the various filters here. Tap on the "i" by the filter name to see a description of the filter and a sample image showing you what it does. Once you have the filter you want, tap on the screen to select it.

More coming. Oh so much more....... 😊