Q3 impressions from an SL2-S and M10 owner

[beewee]

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Just got the Q3 in today and spent some time getting it configured the way I like and testing out the features. These are very first impressions but since I own a M10 and SL2-S, perhaps others may be interested in hearing how the Q3 compares. For now, I’ll just stick with handling and as I get more time shooting with it, editing files and such, I’ll add more thoughts.

I’ll start with the things that stood out:

• EVF
  • The Q3 EVF is very good, as good the SL2-S which I was very happy to see. I had the two cameras side-by-side and didn’t really notice any difference in resolution, clarity, responsiveness, contrast, and brightness. And that is a great thing.
  • I’ve never had any complaints about the SL2-S EVF except when wearing sunglasses outdoors in bright sunlight while using medium brightness. Boosting the SL2-S EVF brightness to high solved this problem. Setting the EVF brightness on the Q3 to the max brightness as I do on the SL2-S looks about the same so I’d feel fairly confident about shooting in bright outdoor environments
  • It would be nice to have the big rubber eye-cup from the SL2-S on the Q3 but that would totally change the aesthetic so I’m ok without it on the Q3.
  • Overall, I’m impressed that Leica was able to bring the same amazing EVF experience from the SL2-S over to the Q3
  • Compared to the EVF on the M10, it puts the M10 EVF to shame in every single metric or area of comparison. The main reason I use the M10 EVF is more for GPS geotagging.
• Battery
  • Having some spare batteries around for the SL2-S, it’s really nice to be able to swap between the SL2-S and the Q3
• Lens cap
  • It is stiff. Glad I got an Otect Q cap. I took the one that came with the Q3 off the camera, then put it in the box and pretended that it doesn’t exist.
  • I really like the Otect cap. It’s small, secure, and it’ll fit in your pocket when not using it. Leica should just license the design from Otect and call it done.
• Flip screen
  • People have complained about it sticking out but it doesn’t really bother me. Yeah, it would be nice if it was more flush to the body but it doesn’t bother me that it’s sticks out the amount that it does. I wouldn’t want it to stick out any more than it already does but I’m not going to ditch the Q3 because of this.
  • The tilt angles feel quite decent and useable, at least for landscape mode
• Weight
  • It does feel dense. Not very heavy but dense for its size.
  • Compared to the M10 with Leica lenses, it feels like an M10 with a brass 35/1.4 ASPH M (pre-FLE) attached. It’s front heavy and the 28/1.7 feel big compared to my favourite M lens, the 24 Elmar-M. It’s still lighter but I wish the balance is less front heavy.
  • Compared to the SL2-S with a small lens (Sigma 24/3.5 DG DN), the SL2-S doesn’t feel all that much heavier. In fact, it feels more secure in the hand. However, add an SL prime or zoom and it’s easy to notice the weight difference.
• Haptics and controls
  • The Q3 feels like a hybrid between the SL2-S and M10 in terms of physical interface.
  • Having shot mostly with the SL2-S over the past 2 years, I feel fairly comfortable with the button layout of the Q3
  • The Q3 definitely feels less secure in hand when used without the thumb grip or handgrip. I’m still waiting on my Q3 thumb grip so I’ll update once I have some time trying it out. I’ve also ordered the IDS grip so I’m curious to see how the Q3 feels in the hand with various combination of the Leica thumb grip and IDS hand grip.
  • As I’ve never owned a Q or Q2, I’d say that if there was no thumb indent/rest area on the Q3, it would feel very insecure. With the indent, it feels ok but not great. The SL2-S just feels great in the hand, even with a big heavy lens like the 24-90, I never feel like I might drop the camera.
  • I do like the joy stick on the SL2-S but it’s not a deal breaker to use the D-pad on the Q3 but that’s probably because the Q3 is more of a casual camera for those times when I don’t want to haul around a big camera like the SL2-S.
• Autofocus
  • Spot and Face/Body detect both seem to work fine, especially in AFs and iAF but I’ve only been testing with static subjects in good light which the SL2-S also did well with.
  • Human/Body/Face + Animal detect is outright unuseable. Schizophrenic is the best way to describe it right now. I get it’s early days for this new feature so I’m hopeful Leica (and Panasonic?) can improve this. Right now it’s picking up all sorts of inanimate objects and thinking it’s something (I don’t know what but it’s putting a box around it like it’s a human or animal).
• Manual focus
  • I know some folks have complained about the Q2 and Q short MF focus throw. The focus ring feels damped enough and the focus assist seems decent enough that it’s useable. I think I’ll probably stick to AF but I wouldn’t hesitate to use MF if I needed it for some reason.
  • Compared to my M lenses, the focus ring feels stiffer. Compared to the M10, if I wanted to go MF, I’d prefer shooting with a rangefinder. 
• FOTOS app
  • Seems to be working reasonably well so far but I’ve only had limited time with it so the jury is still out on this one.
  • The Q3 shipped with 1.0.0 FW and I used the app to upgrade to v1.1.0 without having to download to an SD card first. With my SL2-S, I normally still prefer going the old-school route of putting the FW image on the SD card, then upgrading the camera from the SD Card. With the Q3, maybe it’s because it’s a smaller, less serious feeling camera, it felt natural to update through the iOS FOTOS app.
  • It took Leica a long, long time, to get the FOTOS app to work reliably with the SL2-S for geotagging. So far, it seems to be working ok on the Q3 but I’ll definitely need to do more testing to see how reliable it actually is.

Edited June 21, 2023 by beewee

[beewee]

I noticed a minor change in how the macro ring behaves compared to the Q and Q2. From what I recall from one of the Red Dot Forum talks, with the Q/Q2, if you twist the macro ring a bit, it will not switch between normal and macro mode until it cross some midpoint in the middle. On the Q3, if you twist the micro ring even slightly, it will pop up a message on the EVF/LCD telling you that the macro ring is not in the right position until you twist all the way to either the normal or macro mode.

Edited June 21, 2023 by beewee

[beewee]

After fiddling with the Q3 a bit more, I just noticed the following:

• Aperture ring
  • I’m not sure if this was there from the original Q as it’s not something I’ve paid attention to but the Q3 has 1/3 stop increments. Coming from the SL2-S, it’s pretty natural but for those used to M lenses with 1/2 stop increments, it may take some minor adjustment.
• Shutter dial
  • I really liked the 1/2 stop increments on the M camera shutter dials. It really pairs nicely with the 1/2 stop aperture increments on M lenses
  • On the Q, the 1 stop increments seems a bit big. You can adjust it with the exposure compensation dial but I really wish there was 1/2 stop increments for the shutter speed dial, even if it meant changing the aperture dial increments from 1/3 stop to 1/2 stop. This was also something I didn’t like on the X Vario.
• Exposure compensation dial
  • The placement feels a bit too far to the right. I definitely prefer the placement of the rear thumb dial on the M10.
  • The dial position makes sense if it’s something you want to avoid accidentally turning but if I’m going to use it to provide finer control over my shutter speed, I’d really prefer to have it in a more prominent location where my thumb would normally rest.
• Thumb indent/rest area
  • The indent is oriented vertically and it forces the thumb to be vertically oriented and aligned with this indent. Ergonomically, it forces the bottom of my wrist to be pressed against the camera body in order to get a secure grip. As a result, this tends to make me bend my wrist more than what I’m used to coming from the SL2-S. Now I’m really curious to see how the thumb grip and hand grip may change the way the camera handles.
  • Without any additional accessories, the SL2-S grip feels much more ergonomic and less fatiguing. I like the Q3 aesthetics and I think it’s fine the way it is as a not-so-serious camera that you bring with you to take photos here and there but I feel like my wrist and hand would get tired if I had to shoot continuously with the body for hours on end as one may do for a wedding. The SL2 on the other hand just feels less fatiguing.
  • Compared to the M10 with its built in thumb wheel and rest, the M10 feels just fine and doesn’t feel like it needs a thumb grip. On the M8, I did have a thumb grip and thought I’d want one on the M10 as well before I handled the M10. But once I shot with the M10, it felt fine without a thumb grip, unlike M8 which certainly benefited from one. And on the Q3, I’ll have to see how big of a difference a thumb grip and/or handgrip helps.
• Right Fn button
  • The right Fn button closest to the thumb indent/rest area is noticeably more flush with the body. I get that it’s so you can know which button you’re pressing without having to look. This is fine when holding the camera without any gloves but if I were wearing gloves in the winter, I’m not sure I’d be able to locate or even press this button at all. I’ll need to test the camera out a bit more while wearing different gloves to see what may or may not work.
  • I really like how both the M10 and SL2-S works fine with gloves and even pretty thick mitts. The Q3 seems less well suited for operating with gloves, at last based on my initial impressions.

Edited June 21, 2023 by beewee

[LocalHero1953]

2 hours ago, beewee said:

• Spot and Face/Body detect both seem to work fine, especially in AFs and iAF but I’ve only been testing with static subjects in good light which the SL2-S also did well with.
• Human/Body/Face + Animal detect is outright unuseable. Schizophrenic is the best way to describe it right now. I get it’s early days for this new feature so I’m hopeful Leica (and Panasonic?) can improve this. Right now it’s picking up all sorts of inanimate objects and thinking it’s something (I don’t know what but it’s putting a box around it like it’s a human or animal).

This is contradictory - is there a typo here? Do you mean Face/Body detect in the first para? 

[beewee]

Second point is the new mode including animal

[BobsFirstLeica]

7 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

9 hours ago, beewee said:

• Spot and Face/Body detect both seem to work fine, especially in AFs and iAF but I’ve only been testing with static subjects in good light which the SL2-S also did well with.
• Human/Body/Face + Animal detect is outright unuseable. Schizophrenic is the best way to describe it right now. I get it’s early days for this new feature so I’m hopeful Leica (and Panasonic?) can improve this. Right now it’s picking up all sorts of inanimate objects and thinking it’s something (I don’t know what but it’s putting a box around it like it’s a human or animal).

This is contradictory - is there a typo here? Do you mean Face/Body detect in the first para?

If the OP means Human/Body/Face detect I can attest that the Q3 is much better than the Q2 FW5.0.  You almost had to be on top of the person to get eye detect but the person/people can be a little further away comfortably and get accurate AF.  But, I have not yet been in a room/area with many people.  Again, it works well with my wife and nephews.

As far as stability in the hand, I agree with the BeeWee.... the "Q" doesn't feel as secure.  However, with the half case it feels more secure.  But with the thumb rest/grip it feels great with no issues.  So, BeeWee, I think you will like the Q much better when you get your grip.

[bjamisonf]

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Thanks for your detailed and useful analysis, beewee. I look forward to reading more of your thoughts. 

[beewee]

A couple more impressions and learnings from using the Q3 in the mountains so far:

• EVF
  • Brightness and colours are great while shooting outdoors, even while wearing sunglasses, just like the SL2-S EVF 
  • Due to the lack of an eye-cup, when the sun is shining from the side and hits the EVF, it does create some ghosting/glare which requires me to shield the EVF with my left hand
• LCD
  • Seems bright enough for framing, no major complaint. I expose using the histogram and I shoot DNGs so I don’t really pay attention to colour accuracy or how ‘correct’ an image looks
  • Flip screen is really handy for taking low angle shots of wild flowers
• AF
  • I’ve been using iAF with Human/Face/Eye detect and it works pretty great
  • I tried Human/Face/Eye + Animal detect and it works fine as long as there are some humans or animals in the scene, a bit less schizophrenic then when I played around indoors without any humans or animals in the scene
  • Animal detect seems to work well on dogs. Haven’t tried it on other animals yet.
  • When there are both human and animals in the scene, Human/Face/Eye + Animal detect will ignore animals so you can’t even select an animal in the scene as there’s no box on the animal. Not so great when you want to take a photo of your bet with other people in the scene.
• Metering
  • Highlight weighting metering seems to be working well outdoors on a bright sunny day but I haven’t tested it with strong backlighting which is where the SL2-S struggled with in the past in that the preview was so dark, I couldn’t frame the image properly and reverted back to whole frame scene metering. I’ll keep trying out highlight weighting metering for now and see how that goes.
  • When using Human/Face/Eye detect with iAF, when I half press the shutter, it continues to track and focus the subject but doesn’t lock the exposure metering which is pretty nice. With this behaviour, I don’t feel the need to use back-button-fucus with AF-lock and reframe with half-press of the shutter to meter the reframed shot.
• Bokeh / Rendering
  • The Q’s 28mm f/1.7 lens renders like an M Summilux lens in my eye. It’s definitely different than the 28 APO SL and also different than the SL zooms.
•  Colours (in Lightroom)
  • Lightroom still does not have Q3 colour profiles which is a bit annoying. Colours straight from LR with camera WB looks a bit cool on a bright sunny day where I’d typically expect WB to be around 5500K and I have to dial in about 8000K with +39 magenta tint to get things looking natural.
  • I’m really hoping LR adds Q3 colour profiles soon since it’s a bit of a pain to get colours to look right
• FOTOS / Geotagging
  • Seems to be working pretty well. As good as my SL2-S so far but I haven’t really stress tested the geotagging capabilities yet where I let the camera go to sleep for a few minutes and then wake up the camera to take a shot, and do this repeatedly for a couple hours.

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Edited June 27, 2023 by beewee

[jplomley]

Would love to see a comparison of the 28 APO SL to the Q3 Summilux lens. Especially corner performance for landscapes and resolution wide open and stopped down to f/8 or so.

[Qwertynm]

Am 27.6.2023 um 04:24 schrieb beewee:

Lightroom still does not have Q3 colour profiles which is a bit annoying. Colours straight from LR with camera WB looks a bit cool on a bright sunny day where I’d typically expect WB to be around 5500K and I have to dial in about 8000K with +39 magenta tint to get things looking natural.

what colour profile are you using? I noticed too that LR sets WB a lot warmer than I would expect for a given scene, which is probably (as you say) due to lack of colour profile tailored to the Q3. I use Adobes colour profile i believe sRGB (1998) but could be a more recent one. The colours look a bit cool and a tad too green as you say but it is easily corrected and I found the Q3 files to leave massive room for adjustments. It's a pleasure to work with those files.

Another bug I've found in LR with the Q3 seems to be when comparing your edited file with the imported file. The unedited/imported file looks all blue/aquamarin and almost no other colour. Not at all how it looked when you start editing it. It seems as if there is no profile applied in this view on the unedited photo what so ever. Can you check if your files also look like that when in this comparing viewmode? In the german version/german keyboard the shortcut is set to "Y" and I believe for english keyboards it's the forward slash "\". Thank you for checking.

[beewee]

18 hours ago, Qwertynm said:

what colour profile are you using?

LR seems to be defaulting to Adobe Standard. Weird thing is that a few days ago, instead of saying Adobe Standard, it said ‘matrix’. Not use what has changed but there was no LR update that I’m aware of.

[beewee]

18 hours ago, Qwertynm said:

Another bug I've found in LR with the Q3 seems to be when comparing your edited file with the imported file. The unedited/imported file looks all blue/aquamarin and almost no other colour. Not at all how it looked when you start editing it. It seems as if there is no profile applied in this view on the unedited photo what so ever. Can you check if your files also look like that when in this comparing viewmode? In the german version/german keyboard the shortcut is set to "Y" and I believe for english keyboards it's the forward slash "\". Thank you for checking.

Which version of LR are you using? LR CC or LR Classic? I have LR CC on Mac and iPadOS.

[Qwertynm]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb beewee:

Which version of LR are you using? LR CC or LR Classic?

I use both versions depending on what device I'm on. Came back from a vacation last weekend and culled images on my iPad in LRCC and then at home synced them to LR Classic. The weird comparison is in LR Classic but not CC. I saw that Matrix Profile too. Don't know what was up with that. I believe it's now back on Adobe Standard.