Review: Leica Q3 Camera

The Leica Q3 is the latest version of the company’s fixed-lens, autofocusing rangefinder camera. It’s an incremental upgrade from the Q2 with enough new features to make it a worthy successor, including a new 60-megapixel sensor. But it still retains everything that made the Q2 great.

The Leica Q3 sells for $5,995, which is slightly more than the Q2’s debut. But at these prices, who notices $200 here and there? Interestingly, Leica is still selling the Q2 alongside the Q3. But unless the larger file size of the Q3 is too much for you, I can’t see any reason to get the earlier version. The Q3 is a better camera in almost every way.

Buying a Leica is a significant investment. Leicas are a nearly perfect camera for some photographers and the absolutely wrong camera for others. I loved the M4, which I was able to shoot with for several years in college. At the time, I was mostly interested in reportage photography and, to my mind at least, that is where Leica shines. The M4 had its quirks, but it was small, light, and less intrusive when you put it in someone’s face to take a portrait.

All of those things remain true of Leicas in the digital age. While I didn’t spend enough time with the M11—Leica’s flagship, interchangeable lens camera system—to learn its quirks and do a full review, it very much felt like a Leica. The Q3 is the same way. Whether that makes it the right camera for you depends on both your budget and how you shoot.

But first, the specs. The big upgrade to the Q3 is a new 60-megapixel sensor and a new Maestro IV processor. Curiously, while the sensor size matches last year’s M11, Leica says it’s not the same sensor, which helps explain why the Q3 actually has a wider ISO range (50-100,000) than the M11. The DNG raw files the Q3 produces average about 70 megapixels, and even with the built-in 8 gigs of buffer in the processor, this is not the best camera if you need sports-shooting speeds.

The Q3 also gets a Leica first: 8K video capture at up to 30p (H.265). There’s also Apple ProRes 422HQ support for 1080p video capture. While I would not suggest that the Q3 is a videographers’ best friend—it’s very clearly made for still shooters—it’s at least capable of recording impressive video.

The fixed 28-mm f1.7 Summilux APSH lens is a mixed bag. It’s a unique lens, capable of manual focusing, autofocusing, and macro shooting. And it does all of that pretty well. Just managing to make an autofocus lens easy and smooth to focus manually is a feat almost no other lens maker seems capable of, so kudos to Leica for that. Manual focus is Leica’s signature, though, so that’s expected. The lens resolves, even with the higher-resolution sensor. If you’re worried that it won’t be up for it, I’m here to tell you: It is very capable.

Where the Q3 Summilux sometimes struggles is with autofocus.

A big part of the Leica Q series’ appeal is that it offers autofocus, something the company otherwise does not really offer in rangefinder form (for that, the SL-series is an SLR-style Leica with autofocus). The Q3 touts an improved autofocus system that combines phase and contrast detection with subject tracking. The phase detection is the new element, and from reading Leica’s press materials it sounds an awful lot like the Depth-from-Defocus system used in Panasonic’s Lumix S5 series. That isn’t surprising, since Panasonic and Leica frequently collaborate.

In practice, the Q3’s autofocus hits what I call the 90 percent sweet spot. That is, it works as you want it to at least 90 percent of the time. It was very good at locking onto eyes and faces, as well as animals, especially in the Intelligent Auto Mode. But it struggled with rapid changes in focal distance, like a child running toward you or an object speeding away. Again, in my testing this was far from a deal-breaker. To me, it simply reinforced the obvious. This isn’t the camera you want for shooting sports (if the 28-mm lens wasn’t enough to drive that point home).

Shooting with the Q3 was a true joy, and I say that as someone who has always struggled with the 28-mm focal length. I still struggled with composition, but the camera itself was remarkably good at getting out of the way. The top and front are identical to the Q2, but the back has been redesigned, and I much prefer the new button layout.

The rear LCD now flips out, which is nice. I especially like shooting from the waist, something that is easy to do with the tilting rear screen. But what I like even more is that the tilting rear screen forced Leica to move all the buttons to the right side, both above and below the D-pad. This makes it very easy to operate with one hand. Some of my preference here may be that I’m used to roughly this layout from my Sony A7RII, but either way, you get quick access to everything you need without having to move the camera away from your eye. In my experience, this makes for less fiddling and better focus on the scene.

The EVF is a 5.76M dot OLED screen that’s bright and sharp. I never had any issues with manual focus. Unlike many systems I’ve used that require a button press, just turning the lens zooms in allows for precise focusing.

I was able to shoot with the Q3 for nearly a month, and in that time the only real criticism I could come up with is that I am not a huge fan of the 28-mm lens. That is not precisely fair. I love this lens, I just lack experience composing images at this field of view. I am much more experienced with, and comfortable with, the 35-mm lens found in Fujifilm’s X100V (9/10, WIRED Recommends). That said, the Q3 is so much fun to use that I enjoyed struggling with composition in the wider-than-I’m-used-to frame.

I used to consider fixed focal-length, large-sensor compact cameras to be very niche. There was Ricoh’s GR series, Fujifilm’s X100 series (very much inspired by the early Leica rangefinders), and now the Leica Q series. Then, for reasons that escape me since I don’t use TikTok, everyone decided the Fujifilm X100V was the camera to have. Demand is such that it’s hard to find one new, and the used market is wild. While my cynicism leads me to believe that most of this demand is from people who want to photograph themselves with the camera rather than, you know, going out into the world to use it, the demand is there.

The Leica is clearly the king of that pack. The lens is sharper and better, the sensor larger, and the autofocus better or just as good as on the Fuji. With X100V prices well over the $1,500 selling price, the Leica almost doesn’t seem that expensive anymore—almost. At $6,000, the Q3 is obviously not for everyone. But if you can afford it and are comfortable with the 28-mm focal length, the Q3 is a great camera. You want to bring it with you everywhere, and it produces the kind of images that make you glad you had it on you. That’s about the highest praise you can give any tool.