A hands-on review of the Leica Q3 43

A couple of months ago I had a test drive of the Leica M-11 Monochrom. A beautiful camera that was a delight to use, but I didn’t love that rangefinder experience enough. Not that I’d be comfortable shelling out £12k+ for a camera anyway!

You can hear the opinions of dozens, but the only way to know if a camera system is right for you is to actually give it a go. Leica make this relatively easy with their Test Drive, and it’s a generous deal – it’s free to test any of their cameras for a weekend. Well, free if you pass a credit check and are comfortable putting up 50% of the value as a holding deposit on your credit card!

Once I’d had actual experience of the M system I stopped lusting after it – I knew it wasn’t for me. Still, GAS is real and the Leica Q system is pretty intriguing if you want that Leica M design, build quality and heritage but with modern tech (like, y’know, autofocus). I wanted to try it, to either end up buying one or saying goodbye to Leica GAS forever.

The Leica Q3 comes in 2 flavours – the OG 28mm, and the new 43mm. 28mm isn’t really for me, but 43mm is a really nice focal length. I’m a big 35mm fan, but a slightly closer crop is often beneficial so it’s kinda perfect for the sort of photography I tend to do.

So I booked the Test Drive with the 43. Here are my thoughts after a couple of days of street photography in Edinburgh.

First impressions

Like the M-11, the Q3 is built like a tank. It’s weighty, in a good way. Not too heavy, but heavy enough to give you that feeling of quality. If it were a car, it would be a BMW or a Mercedes. Despite being a fair bit heavier than the X100VI, it actually feels fine hanging around the neck. It’s not front-heavy despite the chunky lens.

And yes, that lens is massive. It’s an APO-Summicron 43mm f/2 ASPH which essentially means incredible quality. But it’s still massive for a “daily carry”. To be clear, you might as well carry a Fujifilm X-T5. The body size is similar but when you put the 27mm f2.8 on the Fujifilm (a 40mm equivalent) the X-T5 is positively tiny.

Here are a couple of images – one with Fuji’s flagship 33mm f1.4 (which has excellent optical quality and an f-stop almost the same as the Leica), and one with the 28mm f2.8. Like I say, chunky.

The Q3 43 is covered in a a grey leatherette. It’s not as as bright as it looks in some of the official photos (see top photo above), but for me the black of the Q3 28 looks way better. They should give you an option here or, frankly, just ditch the grey entirely and ship it in black. Disappointing.

Ergonomics

Much has been written about this, but it’s not the most comfortable camera to hold if you’re comparing with a Fujifilm or a Sony. There’s no grip, just an indent for your thumb on the back. It’s basically the same as the M series, but honestly it’s not that bad. Roman Fox complained that you can’t use it one-handed, but that’s not a use case I have. I like putting the camera up to my eye and shoot two-handed all the time. If it’s hung around your neck and you shoot two-handed, it will be fine. Not a problem at all.

I found the diopter (the thing that corrects the viewfinder focus) really fiddly on the Q3. You have to press a button and a dial pops up, but it’s really close to the viewfinder so adjusting it while holding it up to your eye (which you have to do) is really hard. The dial on the Fujifilm cameras is SO MUCH simpler and easier. Not a massive deal because once it’s set, you’re good for years, but it was a noticeable problem for me.

The menu system is essentially the same as on the M. It’s refreshingly simple and easy to navigate around. I’m a fan.

Using it for real

I only had two days to use it, and I only spent a few hours in total, so this is very much first impressions. Maybe I’d have a different view after six months of solid use? Perhaps, but we’re never going to know. I do think first impressions count for a lot though.

Speed

The first thing I noticed about using the Q3 43 was the speed. It felt… slow. There wasn’t a massive delay when switching it on like there was with the M-11, and navigating the menus was fast, but focusing, taking the shot and viewing the shot all felt laggy to me.

This could be because the 60MP RAW files are massive, and it could also be that I had the camera set to RAW + JPEG, but my X-T5 takes 40MP images and shooting in RAW + JPEG is super-fast. I dunno. It just didn’t feel like I expected it to.

One example is the burst mode. With my X-T5 (or X100VI) I often shoot on burst at 6 fps. When I press the shutter I can see the images being taken and they’re ready to view immediately. With the Q3 43, when I press the shutter on burst, everything goes black! I have to wait until the burst is finished and then view the images. It just didn’t feel right, but I appreciate that I could have been doing something wrong here.

Even when viewing the images, it felt slow. Press the play button to view your images, then you have to wait a second for anything to display. It felt painful to be honest. Considering modern processor power, every modern camera should feel fast. Absolutely no excuse for a £6k ultra-premium camera.

Exposure

Exposure was fine. Leica have a “Highlight Weighted” option which I really liked. This exposes the scene such that the highlights are never clipped. It does mean your images look generally underexposed, but you can lift the shadows in post and it’s great. There’s an enormous amount of dynamic range to play with.

I don’t know why Fujifilm don’t have a highlight weighted option. I think it would be a good addition.

One thing I noticed is that the exposure compensation dial doesn’t have markings on it. This is probably because it can be reprogrammed, but for me – coming from the Fuji – it was a pain. I like to look at the dial and see what I’ve set it to, rather than having to look at the screen or through the EVF at a small read-out that is hard to see with my ageing eyes. Also, I found it wasn’t in a natural position to turn it with my thumb – I had to reach around the side to adjust it properly. The X-T5 and X100VI are much better here.

One other thing to note is that there’s no built-in ND filter. I can understand why – most cameras don’t have this! – but it’s genuinely one of the best things about the Fujifilm X100 series. There’s no doubt the Q3 is an X100 competitor, so why not add it? If I was going all in on the Q3 I would miss this enormously.

Focusing

Autofocus was fine. On-par with my X-T5 I’d say. The person detection feature seemed pretty good, and fast. I’m not sure the eye tracking was as good as the Fuji, but I’d need longer to experiment.

There were several autofocus options – field, spot, zone, tracking, multi-field. I found it a little confusing to be honest. I just used field most of the time, which is a bit like single-point on the Fujifilm. I’d need a lot more time to figure out the others, but I find most modern cameras are similar (other than Sony, the autofocus of which will blow everything away) and good enough in this regard.

One oddity with the field focusing is that I could move the focus point easily with the D-pad but I couldn’t figure out how to reset it in a single click. With the Fuji I just press the joystick to reset, but I couldn’t work out how to do this with the Leica. It must be possible, but it wasn’t intuitive.

One area where the Q3 thrashes it’s competition is with manual focus. The lens looks like the M lenses, with the zone focusing markings on it. You enable manual focus by twisting the focus ring (it’s locked into place for autofocus) and then adjust as you would with an M lens. There’s a very tactile focus tab on the lens which allows you to make adjustments with a single finger, and when you turn it the screen/EVF automatically zooms in so you get a clear view (with focus peaking) of whether you’re in focus or not. It’s really great, and something I think they should add to the M system (I can hear the purists wailing in despair at this). You can definitely use the Q3 as you would an M on the streets – set your aperture and use the zone focus markings to shoot from the hip. Way better than any of the other brands in this regard, no doubt.

Image quality

The Q3 43 has the latest and greatest 60MP sensor. It has a lens that would cost as much as the camera if sold individually for the M series, so the image quality must blow you away, right?

I’m no pixel peeper, but it’s clearly very good quality. Very little noise at ISO 3200. Everything is pin sharp. The bokeh when set at f2 is really lovely, the “Leica look”. The lens at f2 can isolate subjects well, but nowhere near as as well as a 75mm f1.4 on a full frame Sony would.

So the image quality is great, sure, but it doesn’t blow me away. Compare the image to an iPhone (even a 48MP RAW on an iPhone 16 Pro) and it will blow it out of the water, but compare it to a Fujifilm X-T5 with a 33mm f1.4 in good light and you’d be hard pushed to actually tell the difference unless you’re zooming in massively to peep those pixels. Even a Fujifilm X100VI at f2 will come reasonably close. If you love max bokeh, then full frame and f1.4 is definitely the way to go, but the Q3 43 at f2 looks very similar.

Conclusion

The Q3 43 is a really good fixed-lens camera. It’s very well built and takes incredibly sharp images. It has good autofocus and excellent manual focus control. It has a wonderful minimalist design and feels great in the hand. The RAW files are easy to work with. There are some niggles, as with every camera.

That said, you can say this about most modern premium/prosumer cameras. The nearest competitor is the Fujifilm X100VI, which I own. The X100VI is not as well built, it doesn’t have excellent manual focus control, but it does have a lovely minimalist design, feels great in the hand and takes incredibly sharp images. It’s also much smaller, less weighty and £4,500 cheaper. Kinda of a no-brainer in my opinion.

The advantages of the Leica over something like the X100VI are build quality, image quality (for pixel peepers only), and prestige. If money isn’t an issue and you want the best of the best, and if you don’t mind a chunky, weighty camera with a fixed lens, you’ll probably love the Leica Q3 43. I would definitely recommend it to someone in that situation. Go nuts, treat yourself. It’s a object of beauty.

However if shelling out £6k on a camera is a big stretch for you (which is most people) then absolutely don’t go into debt to try an own a Leica Q3. It’s simply not worth it and you’re not really missing out.

You can take amazing photographs with any camera – lighting, subject and composition will always be the secret sauce of photography.