What? You Have a Leica?

Well, one day I woke up in Munich very tired, and about to wrap up my trade show assignment and go home, when a brilliant idea occured to me. I should definitely go for a walk one last time before leaving, because finally today was the day that it wasn’t raining. It was raining for all the whole of 5 days that I was staying in this gem of a city.

And while I was walking through the increasingly sunny, and finally summer-looking city, I also thought, I might as well just go and have a look at the Leica Store. I am in the country that makes these, in the end, what harm could it do?

Oh well, they had one last Q3 that was the display model, so it would be 5% discount on that one if I wanted it. And yes, they could do the tax return form for 19% vat return to my card of payment. I guess, I don’t need to tell you what happened next.

First Impressions

Walking around with this camera always feels like you’re wearing crown-jewels, and especially in Europe you just like looking around more for the people who’d want to steal it than trying to compose a picture. Nobody is ever eyeing Ricoh, when I am out and and about.

Anyway, since I was staying next to the Hauptbahnhoff, which is full of questionable street elements, I just took a taxi back to my hotel with my newly aquired box of expensive camera.

Of all the things you might say about Leica, it is nicely built and it is very solid. It is a sort of a metal brick. The black one also does collect quite some dust on its shiny parts, if you are to leave it on the shelf.

So I took a bunch of photos in the train to the airport, and I thought they were really great.

But as you can already see the pattern – this is a color camera, and all these photos are in black and white.

The Good About Leica Q3 28mm.

It is a lovely looking peace of gear (especially with the square hood on), but I just can’t be arsed to be one of those always taking photos of my camera instead of with the camera.

The sensor is huge. So you can crop. I realized I hate this approach. I want to compose and shoot.

F 1.7 aperture is awesome to have. But chromatic aberrations are driving me insane. The colours coming out of it feel like I shot with some cheap canon kit lens. It’s ok in black and white though.

Tilty screen – is kind of the reason why I would want q3 and not q2. I almost never use it.

Some sort of image stabilisation. Still, so many blurry images when used while walking.

Solidly built. And actually does feel like a brick often times.

The autofocus is not too bad.

The old school dials are nice and work well.

I shot some BTS for an art studio with it, and it worked out amazingly. The white balance was on point, the environmental portraits and details fit together so well. But I need to shoot 35 more of gigs like this to justify this purchase.

The wi-fi works amazingly well. Like world away faster than Fujifilm, transfers these huge files in no time and can be connected to even if the camera is powered off.

The Bad About Leica Q3 28mm.

It is a heavy motherf-r. I know that things like this are relative, and it might be just the right size for someone. But I can’t really be casually carrying it around just in case I see something.

Obviously, it is expensive for what it is. There aren’t any other point and shoots out there with F 1.7 min aperture though.

The 28mm is a hard lens to shoot. Because this is not even 28mm, it’s some sort of 24 or 25. Works just fine for landscapes, environmental portraits and maybe a few other things… but I should have definitely bought 43mm one. I just thought, that I already have the Ricoh of 40 mm, and it would be nice to have the other one, and can always crop. I don’t like doing it though.

As much as I love Ricoh and Fuji colours straight out of camera, I just can’t ever edit the Q3 photos to my liking.

I do not know who calibrated those exposure-metering modes, but they just work in a mysterious way. Take Ricoh’s highlight-weighted one, the highlights will always be properly exposed. On Leica Q3 28, it most likely will be over-exposed.

There isn’t a focusing joystick, so you either go back to old-good focus and recompose technique, or pray and leave it for the camera to decide. Frankly, it’s all up to your luck. You can obviously also manually focus. In any case, all of this is pretty impossible to do with one hand. You have to hold it properly with two hands.

Q3 also, like all the Qs, doesn’t have a really good grip. It does have a place for a thumb, but it’s not very grippy. If you were to add the grip, thumb rest, strap… it just gets heavier, and I wouldn’t say any easier to handle.

Also…

Slow as hell. It is slow to start up. It is slow-ish to focus. I took it to shoot some portraits (that do look funny in such a wide-angle), and I asked the lady to walk towards me. Yes, this camera was never made to do burst shooting and what not, but it can to some extent. When I wanted to show her the pictures on the screen, the camera was just saying JPG name blah-blah, cause it could not cope with all the processing. But again, it is not supposed to, I guess.

More of a slow down and wait for something to happen camera, than run and gun. Also, requires two-handed operation.

The raw files on Q3 are only dng, and not real raw files of real cameras so they don’t have the same latitude of editing.

If you are enjoying that wi-fi connectivity with the turned-off camera on the shelf, then the camera will run out of battery by itself just cause that wi-fi is always on and searching.

This particular point is region-specific, but because Q3 is such a metal piece of brick, it does heat up so much in high temperatures. It can be dangerous to leave this in the car where the temperatures could reach above 115 C.

What to shoot with Leica Q3 28?

It’s great for a casual friend/family get together documentation, for high-res photos of landscapes or a hike, if you don’t mind the weight. Some people consider it to be a good street photography camera, but it all depends on how you shoot and which country you’re in.

Honestly, I should have bought the Q3 43, but it would still be heavy, expensive and slow I suppose. This camera is for deliberate photography, so it probably can make you a better photographer.

Would I be selling it or keeping it? I feel that someone else could enjoy it better than me. It was nice to have for this half a year, but honestly, shooting with Ricoh or Fujifilm brings me much more joy.

What would you guys do?