Once upon a time, I worked as a photojournalist—mainly covering politics. The images I consider my best were made almost exclusively on film with a Leica M6 (or an M4P) with a 35mm lens. I took this camera with me almost everywhere I went. In fact, I felt uneasy without it. Without getting too deep into my career journey, somewhere during the first or second act of the digital camera age, taking pictures became a burden. I had a few Canon DSLRs that produced lovely images and stunning color. But schlepping around a kit with even just two prime lenses felt like a chore, especially after the advent of the iPhone.
Apple’s camera was so easy and so portable, it became my main tool for making images. But I was never really happy with the photographs. I don’t frame or see things in the same way looking at a screen and the lo-fi quality, which was once charming, now leaves me with a sense of loss.
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Lately, I’ve been hunting for a new camera—one that will give me the feeling I had shooting years ago. So, I recently tested out the new Leica Q3 digital camera. Leica's traditional digital rangefinder, the M11, is a fine shooter but it retails for just under $9,000 before you get to a lens (a 35mm f1.4 will set you back another $5,400). Since I’m no longer a professional photographer, that’s substantially out of my price range.
Enter the new Leica Q3, a digital rangefinder with an electronic viewfinder and a fixed 28mm f1.7 lens for less than half of what an M11 kit would run. Could this be the camera I’ve been looking for? Spoiler alert: Yes! The Q3 is the best digital camera I’ve ever used.
The Q3 might be the golden mean camera of the moment for me. It’s light, relatively small, and unobtrusive. To boot, the Q3 and its charger pack nicely into my laptop backpack, so there’s no reason to carry a separate camera bag. It turns on and is ready to go in a moment’s notice. Shooting with it is simply a joyful experience.
I took it with me on assignments to Sweden, Italy, and New York City as well as on vacation in Barbados. In the few short weeks Leica was kind enough to loan me one, I made a slew of images that I’m both proud of and deeply thankful I didn’t take with my phone.
Inside the full metal housing (it’s die-cast magnesium) lives a full-frame 35mm, 60-megapixel sensor and a new Maestro IV processor that puts out an average JPEG of about 25mb and more than a 70mg DNG file. That’s big enough to make a 32x21 inch print at 300dpi without requiring any up-resing. For anyone concerned about storage, you can back down the file size from the max 9520x6336 to 7404x4928, or even 5288x3518—but why you would want to is beyond me. That insane amount of data is part of the selling point here.
Nicholas Hegel McClelland
The Q3 gives the shooter an ISO range between 50 to 100,000. So snapping pics in the bright snow or a dark room isn't much of an issue. The built-in 8 gigs of buffer in the processor is plenty for making thoughtful images in quick succession but not quite enough if you haven’t mastered the decisive moment and rely on a motor drive function.
The other hook the Q3 sank into me is its fixed 28mm f1.7 Summilux APSH lens. There are 11 bits of glass in nine segments, and three aspherical lens surfaces. It’s razor sharp through the entirety of that bandwidth. But if you’re shooting up close and wide open, the focal plane is ultra thin. So slim, in fact, that eyebrows could be tack sharp while the pupils might be slightly soft.
The lens is also capable of macro shooting with a minimum focal distance of 17cm, which is much closer than my old Leica M series 35mm, and came in handy a few times during testing.
Nicholas Hegel McClelland
Also, unlike the old film cameras of yore (or even the new M11 digital), the Q3 has both manual and autofocus capabilities. Focusing on my own did take some getting used to since this is an electronic viewfinder and not a traditional optical one. When you start to focus, the viewfinder zooms in (Leica calls this feature "auto magnification") so you can make sure the spot within the image you want is sharp. But you lose the ability to compose at the same time.
By contrast, the autofocus gives the photographer the full view of the lens and the ability to move the focal point around via the touch screen or the thumb toggle.
The hybrid AF system can also use eye, face, and body detection, as well as subject tracking. In testing, it worked most but not all of the time. So, I mainly used the spot autofocus, which had very few hiccups.
I’m not really a videographer or filmmaker, but I did shoot some short clips. The Q3 can record in 8K video, a fairly impressive feat. Plus, it adds Apple ProRes 422HQ support for 1080p video capture. Anyone who wants to create professional level video with sound, however, will need a separate audio solution. The quality from the internal mic is less than amazing and, at the moment, there's no way to connect an external one to the camera. That may change at some point in the future, but for now it is what it is.
Courtesy Image
No camera is without fault, and the Q3 does have some warts. But they are mostly easy to ignore.
For anyone more accustomed to shooting with a 35mm lens, the 28mm can make it challenging to control the edges of your composition. It also forces more intimacy with your subject, which can be uncomfortable. But in some ways, that focal length is easier to use with the digital viewfinder than a 28mm was with an optical one.
There are other quirks. If you leave the camera on as you walk around, any incidental impacts to the touch screen moves the focal point. Also, it feels a bit slippery. To make it feel more like an old M series film camera, I’d probably add a thumb grip accessory, for more stability in the hand.
A couple of times, I ran out of battery power, so I'd probably pony up for an extra battery for longer days of shooting.
The elephant in the camera store is of course the $6,000 price tag. That’s a helluva chunk of change, considering its main rival, the new Fujifilm 100VI costs a scant $1,600. But there truly is no comparison. The Fuji doesn’t have a full frame 35mm sensor, and its 23mm F2.0 lens isn’t anywhere near the quality of glass as the Summilux.
Courtesy Image
Cameras for photographers are like painters and their brushes—just tools. But every artist has a favorite, a go-to that becomes almost part of the way we see, the way we build a picture. The Q3 just became mine.
While my career now focuses on the written word, as a photojournalist my work has appeared in The New York Times, TIME, Newsweek, and US News and World Report. During that arc, I garnered awards from The National Press Photographers Association and Pictures of the Year International. Over the last 25 years, I’ve owned many, many cameras across formats. My first was an ancient Canon AE-1 film camera, and my most recent camera purchase was a Fuji Instax. I’ve spent more hours in darkrooms than I care to admit. I mostly work with digital now, but I miss the smell of fixer.
