Shooting S2O Festival Taipei with the Leica Q (Typ 116)

This past weekend I shot the S2O Festival in Taipei for Dtrue, a Taiwanese-American rap artist. His set was in the evening, but the rain had been pouring all day—nonstop. I brought my Leica Q (Typ 116)with me. I wanted to test how the Q would handle in this kind of environment—low light, fast movement, unpredictable stage lighting, and bad weather. Not exactly an easy setup, especially for a 10-year-old camera.

Since the Q isn’t weather-sealed, I kept it in a ziplock bag the whole time. A bit of water still got on the camera just from pulling it in and out, but even after hours in the rain, it kept working fine. Pretty impressive for a camera its age.

The stage lighting was wild—constantly changing colors, strobes, fog machines—and I was genuinely surprised by how well the autofocus handled it. I shot in continuous mode, and while it’s not as fast as a Sony, it was still good enough to nail the shots I needed. No major frustrations.

The 28mm Summilux lens at f/1.7–2.8 was a big help in the low light. The fast aperture made it possible to keep my shutter speeds decent without pushing the ISO too high. I also used the digital crop mode for tighter frames, and for social media use, the image quality holds up great.

All things considered, the Leica Q performed way better than expected. Despite the rain, stage chaos, and the camera’s age, it proved it can still deliver.