Tobers

I'm using my Q3 for a book called Skye At Night, all about the Isle of Skye in Scotland, at night. The book covers a photographic journey through life, work and landscapes on Skye after sunset. @skyeatnightofficial on Instagram if you'd like a closer look. It's a superb camera for documentary-style photography. Small, portable, simple to use, with stellar image quality. I shoot a lot at f/1.7 as well, and often with remote flash synced with radio triggers. Here are a few examples. #1 Skye Weavers - weaving amazing fabrics in a shed using a pedal-powered loom. #2 Dualchas Architects, who design amazing properties (like this one) on the island and beyond. #3 Michelin starred Loch Bay seafood restaurant owner and chef Michael Smith #4 Ceramic artist Maggie Zerafa #5 Commercial prawn (langoustine) fishermen Martin & DL.

The additional pixel count is the main reason I got the Q3. I had the original QP, and decided to skip the Q2 (attractive though it was). The Q3 is an incredibly flexible camera, and the cropability is key to this. The in-camera implementation with framelines is superb. Basically the Q3 is like having a full frame body and 28-75 zoom, in a far tinier package, or 28-90 at max. It really is an all-in-one camera.

I had a Sony RX100V that did this. It would drain the battery while turned off. Sony refused to do anything about it. Eventually I created an elaborate diagnostic apparatus to measure battery voltage drop while the battery was in the camera to prove it was happening, and sent them the results. Finally they caved and agreed to repair it, and changed the motherboard. The problem didn’t reappear. Thankfully Leica are a lot better to deal with than Sony, so I suggest you speak to them. I’ve found the team who monitor the “Customer Service” emails sent from the Fotos app to be very responsive so I’d give that a try. It just creates an email for you to send, but it includes relevant info and goes straight to the support team.

Yes, it’s excellent as a landscape and nightscape camera. Hugely flexible. You won’t regret getting one.

There appears to be a bug in v1.3. If iAF is selected, the viewfinder and rear screen exposure that is displayed looks normal until the shutter is half pressed at which point it dims by about 2 stops. When the picture is taken it looks like the undimmed exposure. If AFs is selected, there is no dimming of the image in the viewfinder or rear display when the shutter is half pressed. Conclusion: something weird going on with iAF affecting displayed exposure on half press of shutter release. This is repeatable. Anyone else have the same?

Ah yes, that’s exactly it. Well done for capturing the screen. Totally baffling. Glad its not just me. What is it Leica? Do tell us.

Very strange. Last night I was shooting some 60+ second exposures with my Q3. Halfway through one of the exposures, I got a message in (I think) blue text on the screen saying “Please turn the camera off and then on again” message. I may not have the wording exactly right. It was definitely an odd colour unlike the usual red/grey colour scheme. As I was busy trying to get the shot before clouds covered the stars, I turned it off and on again and it was all OK with no recurrence. But I didn’t have time to make a proper not of the specific message or take a pic of it with my phone. Any clues? The camera wasn’t warm or hot.

I know the OP is in the USA but in case of those in the UK, I just received mine in black from Red Dot Cameras today. I have to say I’m really impressed. It fits beautifully and feels really good. It definitely enhances the ergonomics of the camera. I also have a JJC grip for the Q2 on my Q3. The grip fits the shape of the Q3 perfectly, and feels great, but the SD card can’t be removed without removing the grip which is a pain. If you’re using USB for file transfer that’s probably OK, but I’ve found that for some reason Lightroom doesn’t combine (treat as a single image) RAM+JPG images when imported via USB but it does when imported by SD card, so I prefer SD card. I have an IDS grip for the Q3 coming shortly. Overall, the grip and thumb grip make the Q3 a really satisfying thing to hold and use. Pricey accessories but worth it IMHO.

Just installed 1.2 as well. It does seem snappier to start up. Not noticed anything else significant yet. Shame they didn't provide properly detailed release notes.

Hmm that sounds like it is the issue. The exposure calculation isn’t right for very dark scenes with wide apertures. Is there a graph anywhere that shows the shutter speed calculation for a given aperture and ISO? Ho hum….looks like if I want to use my Q3 for this I have no alternative but to do what I want manually, and stay awake all night. Tonight will reveal if my Sony A7III can do what I think is a basic automated exposure like this. I’m running another test overnight right now.

Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried this on my Q3. In Auto ISO settings I set Max ISO to 6400 and shutter speed limit to 1/60th. The camera is in aperture priority (f/1.7 on the lens, A on the shutter speed dial). With the lens cap on, the ISO is 6400 and the shutter speed is 0.5 sec. In the Auto ISO settings, the slowest shutter speed it allows is 0.5 sec. Interestingly, if I set max ISO to 200, the shutter speed goes to 15 sec with the lens cap on. If I set max ISO to 1600 and shutter speed limit to 1/60, the shutter speed goes to 2 sec. If I set ISO manually to 6400, I still get a shutter speed of 0.5 sec. So, what is going on here? I’d expect with the lens cap on, in pitch black, with ISO 6400, the shutter speed would go slower than 0.5 sec. Is it just that the exposure metering calculation is screwy and it thinks 0.5sec is sufficient for ISO 6400 and f/1.7?

Yes, correct, shooting Auto ISO in aperture priority. Unfortunately not, because you can’t set a shutter speed longer than 0.5 sec in the Auto ISO setting, and I want 30 sec. The result is extremely underexposed ISO 6400 images at 0.5 sec instead of correctly exposed ISO 6400 images at 30 sec. If Leica allowed the Auto ISO setting to go up to 30 sec like other cameras, it would be fine.

Yes, using the inbuilt interval timer. The camera calculates the exposure for each shot, rather than setting it from the first shot for all the remaining ones in the sequence. I do want to use the lowest possible ISO for the lighting conditions. But the lighting conditions are varying beyond the shutter speed range available. For example, ISO 100 is too low to get a 15 sec shutter speed at midnight. ISO 6400 is too high for an exposure in sunlight. I want Auto-ISO and auto-shutter speed to handle the variation in the day-to-night lighting, and the restriction imposed by the Leica firmware to not allow auto-shutter speed to go longer than 0.5 sec is stopping this happening. I know what you mean, but in this case the huge variation in lighting means that I need from ISO 100 at 1/4000th all the way to ISO 6400 at 30 secs. I just want the camera to let me do this, which others like the Sony A7III does. So I need both shutter speed and ISO to vary automatically. The best Auto-ISO setting I had allowed me to set the min/max ISO and min/max shutter speed based on focal length of the lens.

Hmm possibly, in which case they are discounting anyone using a tripod which is a bit of a fail by Leica IMHO.

I’m experimenting with a day-night-day timelapse with my Q3. I’m going to blend a selection of images together to create a single image made of vertical strips, one every 15 mins. I’m not doing a typical timelapse movie. I’m using aperture priority and want the ISO and shutter speed to adjust automatically so I can leave the camera to do its thing rather than manually setting it for every shot. I like to get my sleep. I have found that the Leica Q3’s Auto-ISO function allows you to restrict the max shutter speed from 1/2000th to 1/2 sec. It doesn’t let you go longer than 0.5 sec, which is why all my images from last night had such a short shutter speed (it said 0.6 sec so I guess it’s rounding up/down a bit) and were horribly underexposed. I had expected it to ramp up to 20-30 secs with max ISO of 6400. Instead once it got dark I was getting all ISO 6400 with 0.6 sec images which were just hopeless.This is really stupid and annoying. Why on earth would you restrict the slowest shutter speed to 1/2 sec? I’ve checked my Sony A7III and it allows AutoISO to vary the shutter speed from 1/8000th to 30 sec, which is far more sensible. Leica could do exactly the same but for some reason chose not to. I’ve emailed Leica and asked why they’ve implemented it like this, and asked them to change it.