LEICA Q3 CAMERA REVIEW

LEICA Q3 CAMERA REVIEW

Introduction

Over the past 12 months or so I’ve been fortunate enough to try out a variety of ‘compact’ camera options; each of these cameras have been private purchases and with a view to figuring out my ideal non-professional ‘every-day’ camera set-up for enjoying photography in my personal life and into retirement. In an ideal world, I’m looking for the highest possible IQ from a small but good-handling camera body and a lens or lens combination that allows me flexibility to shoot some landscapes and narrow streets while being able to take the odd flattering portrait.

This ‘journey’ has seen me shooting the Ricoh GR III in Rome, the Sony A7 CR in Lisbon and the Nikon ZF in Australia.  I’m going to post similar non-technical reviews for those cameras and lens combinations shortly but, today, I’ll focus on a few weeks of owning with the Leica Q3 (28mm version to be clear!).  This review will be concise, non-technical and will be limited to my thoughts and pros and cons on each camera.  I’m completely agnostic when it comes to camera brands and these honest opinions are purely my own and influenced only by my experiences and preferences.  When researching each of my camera and lens purchases, I was grateful of personal blog reviews that included images and some unbiased thoughts without the need for headline grabbing statements/titles that often seem to accompany YouTube video reviews.

Before I start on my observations, I will just say that I’m coming at this from the perspective of a full-time professional photographer of 12 years or so using full-frame SLR and then mirrorless cameras with initially Canon ‘L’ and more recently (7 years) Sony G-Master lenses.  My work cameras of the past 3 years have been the Sony A1.  This does of course mean that I’ve been spoilt and therefore likely to be more critical of these compact cameras than someone who is perhaps upgrading from an older camera, phone or APS-C body etc. So, here we go, my thoughts on the Leica Q3 camera beginning with the ‘Pros’.

Pros

• Build quality – handling a Leica is like nothing else.  Once you’ve used a Leica, almost all other brands feel ‘cheap’ in the hand.  The Leica Q3 is no exception and feels built to last a lifetime.  Everything about it feels premium in the hand from the buttons to the shutter sound.
• Image Quality – as you’d expect, image quality is exceptional.  In terms of quality for the size of the camera, I don’t think there are many comparable cameras (perhaps Sony A7 CR aside which I’ll talk about in a separate blog post). Contrast and sharpness are incredible and I saw very little/no chromatic aberration.  The Leica Q3, for me, was on a par with the Sony A1 and the latest GM lenses (which is I guess how it should be as they would cost similar).
• ‘Crop-ability‘ – having a 60MP full-frame sensor with crop modes makes huge sense when designing a fixed lens camera and the Leica Q3’s four crop options take away some of the anxiety associated with heading out with one lens and wondering whether you have the right tool for the photography opportunities that you’re about to face.
• Colours – I’ve grown a little tired of editing Sony files over the years and, while all modern cameras can produce wonderful colours particularly if you are shooting in RAW and happy to edit to your tastes, the Leica files felt pleasing and easier to edit to my style.
• Handling – this will come up in cons also but I overwhelming prefer cameras to have tilt rather than fully articulating screens.  The Leica Q3 features an excellent tilting rear-screen that I found perfect for my purely photographic needs.  The Leica menus and interface are, in my opinion, the best in any camera system.  I just love that it is so clean and simple in its design and that, for example, a long press on a button brings up immediate customisation options for that button.  I wish all cameras were made this way.
• Macro Mode & Manual Focus (MF) – I’m not a much of a macro-shooter and I tend to prefer to rely on Auto Focus (AF) over MF (probably because I’ve become lazy after years of relying on the incredible Sony AF. That said, the implementation of both these features on the Leica Q3 are superb.  I found myself wanting to experiment with both macro photography and MF purely because both are a joy to use.
• The Leica Fotos App – I’ve become so disillusioned with camera manufacturers attempts at making apps that are supposed to work seamlessly with their cameras over the years that I rarely bother with the apps.  The Leica Fotos App is the one exception – it’s wonderfully reliable, intuitive and quick to use which makes it a joy to use, particularly when travelling and want to share some photos from your camera but don’t want to bother or have time for downloading onto a computer.
• Size – while not as compact as say a Ricoh GR or Fuji X100, the Leica Q3 is a relatively compact camera for the images that it is able to deliver from its 60MP full-frame sensor.  It’s not pocketable but it will fit into a small shoulder bag and doesn’t feel a burden when out walking and shooting all day with it.  One bonus of having such a small but capable fixed-lens camera is evidenced below – you can take it places that ‘professional’ interchangeable lens cameras are not permitted, such as the Royal Albert Hall!
• Looks – while this is subjective and not important to everyone, owning a camera that is good to look at and that you’re proud to own/hold can make you more inclined to pick it up and get out shooting.  I’ve seen it written a lot that some modern cameras can lack a bit of soul and feel more like computers than cameras; this criticism seems to most often be levelled at Sony and I kind of get that. I think that Leica cameras are inspiring to use and the Leica Q3 is definitely a camera that can reignite a passion for photography and make you want to get out and be creative.

Cons

• Price – I may as well get the elephant-in-the-room out of the way at the start.  Leica cameras are luxury purchases and their history, reputation, workmanship, image-quality and brand etc come with a hefty price-tag.  The Leica Q3 is the first Leica camera that I’ve owned and it’s perhaps telling that I only held onto it for 6 months before feeling the financial burden of having so much money invested in a camera that wasn’t being used every day and wasn’t a workhorse bringing in an income. I’ll talk about other camera options in separate blogs but the fact is that there are perhaps more affordable ways of achieving broadly comparable image-quality to the Leica Q3 (or so close that no one else is likely to notice) in a similar-sized body while retaining the flexibility to change lenses.  They may not be quite as compact, well-built or as p’restigious’ but these are luxuries that not everyone can afford or would prioritise.
• When 28mm isn’t 28mm – I’m not going to labour this one as there are many videos and websites that cover this subject but the Leica Q cameras do not deliver a 28mm experience – when tested, they’ve been shown to be much closer to 26mm.  While this may seem like a small merely 2mm difference, at the wider end of focal lengths it becomes quite noticeable.  While this might actually be considered a plus for fans of wider focal lengths, I found this a frustration as I prefer a more ‘normal’ focal length and a true 28mm was already wider than my personally ideal 35mm for a single-lens camera.  This is a very personal thing but a true 28mm is as wide a focal length as I’d want to go with an every-day carry single-lens camera and the actual 26mm experience of the Leica Q3 was not something that I expected or enjoyed.
• Ergonomics – I’ve heard people say that holding a Leica camera is similar to holding a bar of soap and it’s hard to disagree.  The Leica Q3 is a very solid and expensive camera with very little in the way of body grip to aid with all-day use.  The thumb indentation is just about usable but I found that I needed to purchase an L-bracket style grip to make the camera comfortable in prolonged use.  I did also eventually purchase a hot-shoe mounted thumb grip. This does of course then detract from one of the camera’s key selling points, its compactness.  The camera also lacks a joystick – now I know that I would have known this when purchasing it but it took a few months of use to realise that this has become a non-negotiable for me when it comes to cameras.  I’ve become completely dependent on using a joystick for swift AF point adjustment and menu navigation and not having it slowed me down and felt like a chore every time I used the camera.
• Autofocus – I said at the outset that my opinions of this camera must be seen through the prism of what I’ve grown used to with my Sony A1 cameras.  When it comes to AF, this is particularly important as I found the AF on the Leica Q3 to be way below my expectations for an AF-equipped camera being sold in 2024 for well over £5000.  I get that you can focus well manually or zone focus using the wonderful 28mm f/1.7 lens but this is a camera that comes with multiple tracking modes including eye/face/body-detect and I expected much more.  I initially tried to use the tracking and face-detect modes when shooting people but quickly found that even when able to get a focus confirmation that eyes were often not quite in-focus when reviewing them back in Lightroom. I’m well aware that the higher MP will be less forgiving with focussing technique and was careful with shutter speeds etc but my hit count was disappointing. Ultimately I ended up manually selecting AF Spot focus points in AF-S (Single AF as opposed to AF-C Continuous AF) because I found the tracking of moving subjects so unreliable.  These are modes that I used to use with my Canon EOS 5D MKII cameras 15 years ago and far removed from the AF experience you can now enjoy with Sony, Canon or Nikon mirrorless cameras.  I guess one benefit of all this is that it slows you down and you start to shoot in a more considered and deliberate way – I just feel that a camera that offers AF in 2024 should do better.
• Crop Implementation – while I loved the ability to crop in-camera with the Leica Q3, I really didn’t enjoy the way it is implemented.  When selecting a crop mode on the Leica Q3 (35, 50, 75 or 90mm) you’re presented with broken white box within the frame that decreases in size as you select your desired crop. This makes composing within the box next to impossible once you go beyond the 50mm option.  I understand that Leica want to retain the ‘rangefinder’ experience so that you can benefit from observing beyond the area to be captured and pre-empt subjects entering the frame but that only works to a point and I think should be an option rather than the only way to view a selected crop. While you’d lose resolution, having an option to just display what will be captured when you select a crop would provide for much easier composition, particularly in the more telephoto crop modes. Surely a firmware update could provide this – it’s already there on cameras such as the Fuji X100, Ricoh GR and in full-frame to APS-C crop modes on cameras like the Sony A7 CR.
• Stability – I may have been unlucky with my copy but my Leica Q3 would sometimes freeze and would need the battery to be removed before it would start up again.  The Leica Q3 also works on a handy ‘profile’ based set-up where you can customise camera profiles to provide for a rapid way to access settings ready for your varying use-cases.  I found that my camera would often default to the original default profile when it fell asleep or was turned off.  As a result I’d regularly start shooting with the camera incorrectly set for my subject; checking the profile had remained the same then became something I’d have to do each time I started shooting rather than being able to assume that my settings had remained unchanged since the last time the camera had come to my eye. Like the AF, this felt particularly disappointing given the price of the camera.

Summary

To round up, and for the record, I think that the Leica Q3 is a wonderful and unique camera.  It pairs a wonderful sensor and lens in a relatively compact and beautifully built body and looks amazing.  With the limitations I’ve raised above in-mind, it’s a fabulous camera to own and, if money was no object, it would still be sat proudly in my office waiting for my next personal project or trip.  But, as I’ll discuss in later blogs, the shortcomings of this camera balanced against the investment didn’t add up for me.  I’ve shared a few images below to round up this post and included one to demonstrate the remarkable crop that Leica Q3 is capable of.  The images also demonstrate a macro image, some showing a little of the bokeh possible even with this ’28’ mm lens and of course the low-light performance inside the Royal Albert Hall.  I hope this post proves useful to someone and provides an honest and balanced appraisal of a much-desired and hugely capable camera.

Thanks so much for reading and if you have any questions or ‘polite’ comments, feel free to leave them below and I’ll try to get back to you.

Andy