Q3 & M11 – 60 MP twice in one ecosystem?

[lik]

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@Leica:

I still have three beans to count, including two obvious bugs:

• I wished for a status screen with as many icons / fields as the M11, which has 2 more. This makes formatting the SD very quickly accessible.
• Bug #1: I put the perspective correction on FN 2 for the street. That works fine. If I have activated the person recognition, it also works, but only once. Then it can either no longer be deactivated or can no longer be activated after deactivation. The only remaining solution is to activate the corresponding favorite again.
• Bug #2: When scrolling through the users on the status screen, it almost always gets stuck on the first user. If I wanted to select this, it freezes for quite a while and no button can change that. If I want to scroll beyond this to others, it won't let me and gets stuck at the first user. The only option is to reserve one of the rows of the favorites menu for the user-selection, which are already absurdly reduced (yes, I want to have my favorites on a single page) for the users.

The screen is certainly not changeable, but the bugs - please, they bother someone who uses the setting options of their camera extensively.

[lik]

Two more psychological aspects under the question: To what extent does the tool determine the „craftsman“. These aspects also apply to the Q2, but more to the Q3.

(1) The camera drives the user towards very fast pointing and shooting. Measured against the methodology of HCB or André Kertesz, it does not promote lurking observation, but quick hunting. Suddenly I catch myself putting the composition aside – the main thing is that you have caught the interesting person or scene first. Composition by Crop – HCB and Kertesz turn in their graves.

Examples of the Spirit of Glasgow that I haven’t seen so often in any other city:

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[lik]

(2) The hunting tool for quick composition – or none at all: The folding display makes a significant contribution to this. You don't always want to take pictures of people with their heads down staring at a cell phone, but that's not that easy. And now you become one of them, only you don't bow your head down to the phone, but to something much more addictive.

Hip shots from Edinburgh:

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[lik]

Conclusion of my now four-week experience:

I've used it alone in London and together with the M11 in Scotland. It was probably also the attraction of the new tool with a speed previously not possible with Leica (I don't use other cameras anymore for other reasons anyway). In any case, Q3 dominated Glasgow and Edinburgh so much that at some point I left the M in the hotel room.

In a way, fast cameras help to liberate street photography. There's no way resisting it. Some people in the city (not me, it doesn't matter to me) with good observation have their trained methods to immunize themselves a little against it: look quickly in the other direction or put your hand in front of your face. And that, too, is a liberation: everything happens much too quickly for a discussion or even a complaint. In my opinion, the particularly controversial photographing of people in unpleasant situations largely takes care of itself, because nobody likes to see it. Even is borderline. Even if I could afford a pic by famous Bruce Gilden, it wouldn't come into my living room.

But even better is the communication with people who you can photograph, who don’t mind or even like to be photographed spontaneously. A fast camera allows you to communicate briefly without taking up too much of the time of friendly people.

A small camera remains more inconspicuous. That's where resolution comes in. After all, street photos are rarely printed out in huge sizes. And so cameras like the Q3 as well as the M11 shift the competition of success in the street - the thicker zoom devices are hopelessly inferior to them.

Street photography with the Q3 is about the exact opposite of that with the M. But that's what makes the complementary combination for me.

I don't want my detailed descriptions of the focus above to be misunderstood, especially for people recognition: In any dynamic photography, whether wedding, street or children's birthday party, there is a loss of shots due to technical inadequacies. But with this cam you hit so much that you (at least I) wouldn't have hit before. I wish there were some improvements that should result from the above, but the overall result is really great.

Which – M or Q – is (for me) the better street photography camera? None and any. The respective camera shapes the behavior. Even if the Q predominates a bit, I wouldn't want to do without either of them anymore.

[student]

Thank you for this fairly exhaustive write up of your experience. It is immensely helpful for a Q3 user such as myself!

Keep up the good work

[ianforber]

Fascinating, particularly the difference in sharpness. I hadn’t noticed this with my Q2 vs M11: see below. White guy is M11 + CV 35mm Nokton f1.5 wide open. Black guy is Q2 wide open. 
 

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