Q3 43 first experiences and lessons learned

[LocalHero1953]

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We haven't seen much comment from new users on how the Q3 43 performs, and their experience of its strengths and weaknesses. I hope others will add to this thread. 

[LocalHero1953]

I gave my Q3 43 its first serious workout yesterday, for the visit of Prince Edward to the local ADC Theatre, of which he is patron. He spent time in the bar meeting and greeting groups of staff and users, and then saw a couple of scenes of the current student production, 'Sister Act'. 

I used the Q3 43 for most shots, reverting to the SL2-S for some of the stage shots, to give me a comparison of performance. My interest was to see how the Q3 43 performed in low light and stage lighting; I would like to use it in some scenarios as a discreet alternative to the bulky SL2-S. I used A mode, Auto ISO, Auto WB, and a mixture of face/eye AF and Field AF. The most challenging shots were of the group chats in the very dimly lit bar. ISO went up to 25,000 and even then there was too much shade on some faces.

Lessons learned.

1. AF is much better than the Q2 (which I had till recently), though face/eye AF is still too unstable when lots of faces are in the frame.
2. You can take ISO up to 25,000 as long as you use AI noise reduction. If you are not cropping much, then you can get away with little noise reduction, as the noise pattern is not ugly. The more you crop, the more noise reduction you need. This manifests itself in distant faces: even though you have 60mp, don't expect to get clean/sharp faces at a distance when cropped in. This is where a camera with an optical zoom pays off: you have the same number of pixels whatever your zoom setting.
3. Auto ISO led me into a mistake with shutter speed. The slowest shutter speed was set to Auto, which appears to mean 1/50s - fine for a 43mm lens, but not when you crop to 90mm or longer. There were a number of cropped close-up shots with visible subject movement. In future I will set it to 1/200s.
4. Auto WB appeared good, within the limits of a room that included fluorescent lighting, LED lighting and daylight. It might be better than the Q2 and SL2-S.
5. Colours in low light appear comparable to the SL2-S i.e. rich - it's difficult to be definitive without more side by side comparison.
6. The tilt screen is handy for shooting over the heads of people in a group in a circle; it's my first time shooting events like this with a tilt screen - I should have used it more - I kept forgetting it was there.

With the intention of being discreet, I was shooting with a small camera and no flash, dealing with the low light by boosting ISO and by post-processing. There was a pro from the local media, using hotshoe flash. You can see some of his shots here (no paywall, though you have to register). He got more light into people faces; I think I got better colour, but at the expense of a slightly processed look from the noise reduction.

The other photographer in this shot had been photographing rehearsals for 'Sister Act'. Her chair lifts much higher than this - a real benefit for a photographer in a crowd!

[LocalHero1953]

1 hour ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Auto ISO led me into a mistake with shutter speed. The slowest shutter speed was set to Auto, which appears to mean 1/50s - fine for a 43mm lens, but not when you crop to 90mm or longer. There were a number of cropped close-up shots with visible subject movement. In future I will set it to 1/200s.

My comment was incomplete. When using AutoISO, if you set the slowest shutter speed to Auto, then it adjusts the slowest shutter speed to 1/2f, when f is the current crop setting i.e. for a full frame the slowest speed is 1/80s, and for a notional 150mm crop the slowest speed is 1/320s.

However, if you haven't selected a close crop in camera, but crop later in post, then you may find you have shot a notional 150mm lens at 1/80s, which is not good.  

[Qwertynm]

I'd be interested to read some thoughts from user @Mo(w)gli (if you have the time) about it's AF performance in AF-S and/or AF-C shooting kids. I still do love pickung up my Q328 but feel a bit hesitant towards the Q343 as I find the AF performance of the Q3 to not be that accurate in AF-C. Cropping in from 28 this is a bit remedied by having a larger DoF but it's still something I hope Leica will improve upon. I feel like with the Q343 I'd crop less and therefore AF would need to be much more accurate. Hope to read some experiences regarding AF in here. Otherwise I'd think this is a phenomenal camera.

[Robert Ardinger]

57 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

My comment was incomplete. When using AutoISO, if you set the slowest shutter speed to Auto, then it adjusts the slowest shutter speed to 1/2f, when f is the current crop setting i.e. for a full frame the slowest speed is 1/80s, and for a notional 150mm crop the slowest speed is 1/320s.

However, if you haven't selected a close crop in camera, but crop later in post, then you may find you have shot a notional 150mm lens at 1/80s, which is not good.  

Thank you for this bit of information. I did not pick this up when I read through the Q3 43 manual and even now, looking for it I could not find it addressed (in the sections I thought it might be).  

I have noticed a few of my images showed camera movement when cropped to the longer focal length "equivalents" in post precessing.  I had set the auto ISO shutter speed to 1/30 (given the built in image stabilization) and only at times thought to change to a faster speed as I was not using the digital zoom function but knew I would crop in Lightroom.  

I likely will use the digital zoom function more to insure a more appropriate shutter speed when I am planning to crop the image.  Can always change things manually as needed.

[LocalHero1953]

4 minutes ago, Robert Ardinger said:

Thank you for this bit of information. I did not pick this up when I read through the Q3 43 manual and even now, looking for it I could not find it addressed (in the sections I thought it might be).  

It’s not in the manual. The manual is silent on how both AutoISO and Auto Stabilisation work. I found out about AutoISO by trial and error!

I would like to know more about when Auto stabilisation works. It’s more difficult to check by trial. 

Edited November 6, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[Mo(w)gli]

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Unfortunately, I can no longer compare the Q3 and Q343 directly, but at least I had some experience with it because I owned it for about nine months. Maybe, to back up a little, I was very disappointed with the AF performance of the Q3 at the time and because I always felt a bit more comfortable with the Q2, we didn't really "grow together". I use the Q343 very differently depending on the situation and have built appropriate profiles so that I can act quickly. In good light, I almost always use AF-C with face detection with the kids, which works wonderfully if you make sure that the face has been recognized. This is exactly where the catch lies, namely until the camera has even recognized the face and eyes. Once this is done, it focuses quickly and accurately as long as the object is not moving towards you too quickly. In this case it makes more sense to use tracking AF and forego face detection. When the light gets less, I switch to AF-S with face detection and when that no longer works well, I use field AF. So if I select the appropriate profile before the shooting situation and, in the best case, have a short moment for the camera to recognize the subject when using face detection, there is hardly any waste. Overall, I find the AF of the Q343 to be better than that of the Q3 (although I don't know the latest firmware of the Q3 either), but it's not a revelation. If you spend a little time with it, it's completely sufficient. But there is always room for improvement and I'm happy to take whatever comes along via a firmware update.

[Smogg]

Pros:

1. Fast and reliable single point AF-S.

2. Perfect color.

3. Perfect sharpness.

4. Very good bokeh.

5. Fast camera startup (at least twice as fast as M11).

6. Conveniently located on/off switch (SL3 quietly cries in the corner😭).

7. Tillable screen.

8. Weatherproof.

9. AWB is significantly better than M11.

10. OIS.

11. Good manual mode, although less convenient than M11 or X2D (with new lenses).

12. Relative compactness and inconspicuousness.

13. Generous memory buffer and 7 fps.

14. Direct access to shutter speed and aperture.

15. Perfect shutter sound.

 

Cons:

1. Unusable AF-C except for something slowly crawling along the asphalt and better not towards you.

2. Barely usable face detect if there is more than one person in the frame or the face does not take up a significant part of the frame. Many false positive results (round objects, such as lampshades, are often perceived as faces, the camera even tries to find their eyes😂).

3. Unusable tracking (almost always loses the original target even with slow target movement or scene recomposition).

4. Despite the high resolution, the relatively low-quality EVF and external screen (very narrow dynamic range) produce an unnatural image unless the weather is cloudy (cannot even be compared closely to the SL3). No settings or tricks (style, contrast, shadow, DR) help. If the weather is sunny, you can consider that you do not have an external screen, you will not see anything on it due to the non-disabling Exposure preview in A mode.

5. Slow switching between profiles (it would be great to be able to do this by swiping the screens to the side or assigning the "next profile" action to a button).

6. No BBF and old firmware bug with Focus Lock (when shooting street photography, the absence of this significantly complicates and slows down the process).

[Cogito]

55 minutes ago, Smogg said:

Pros:

1. Fast and reliable single point AF-S.

2. Perfect color.

3. Perfect sharpness.

4. Very good bokeh.

5. Fast camera startup (at least twice as fast as M11).

6. Conveniently located on/off switch (SL3 quietly cries in the corner😭).

7. Tillable screen.

8. Weatherproof.

9. AWB is significantly better than M11.

10. OIS.

11. Good manual mode, although less convenient than M11 or X2D (with new lenses).

12. Relative compactness and inconspicuousness.

13. Generous memory buffer and 7 fps.

14. Direct access to shutter speed and aperture.

15. Perfect shutter sound.

 

Cons:

1. Unusable AF-C except for something slowly crawling along the asphalt and better not towards you.

2. Barely usable face detect if there is more than one person in the frame or the face does not take up a significant part of the frame. Many false positive results (round objects, such as lampshades, are often perceived as faces, the camera even tries to find their eyes😂).

3. Unusable tracking (almost always loses the original target even with slow target movement or scene recomposition).

4. Despite the high resolution, the relatively low-quality EVF and external screen (very narrow dynamic range) produce an unnatural image unless the weather is cloudy (cannot even be compared closely to the SL3). No settings or tricks (style, contrast, shadow, DR) help. If the weather is sunny, you can consider that you do not have an external screen, you will not see anything on it due to the non-disabling Exposure preview in A mode.

5. Slow switching between profiles (it would be great to be able to do this by swiping the screens to the side or assigning the "next profile" action to a button).

6. No BBF and old firmware bug with Focus Lock (when shooting street photography, the absence of this significantly complicates and slows down the process).

I don’t disagree with you, but what good is Pro #13 (Generous memory buffer and 7 fps) when there’s also Con #1 (Unusable AF-C except for something slowly crawling along the asphalt and better not towards you)

 

 

[Smogg]

42 minutes ago, Cogito said:

I don’t disagree with you, but what good is Pro #13 (Generous memory buffer and 7 fps) when there’s also Con #1 (Unusable AF-C except for something slowly crawling along the asphalt and better not towards you)

 

 

I use 7fps in prefocused state to catch the right phase of movement

[Qwertynm]

21 hours ago, Smogg said:

5. Slow switching between profiles (it would be great to be able to do this by swiping the screens to the side or assigning the "next profile" action to a button).

this bothers me to the point I'm unwilling to save multiple profiles - I just don't see the point in having one Fn button set to switch profiles, that does only open the menu in which I can switch profiles manually instead of going from A to B to C. This is the same across different functions, for example AF-Mode. I have one Fn button set to AF-modes. Instead of switching trough the different modes the menu opens up and I then have to select the one I want. Annoying. And so far Leica hasn't done anything about it.

[Smogg]

54 minutes ago, Qwertynm said:

this bothers me to the point I'm unwilling to save multiple profiles - I just don't see the point in having one Fn button set to switch profiles, that does only open the menu in which I can switch profiles manually instead of going from A to B to C. This is the same across different functions, for example AF-Mode. I have one Fn button set to AF-modes. Instead of switching trough the different modes the menu opens up and I then have to select the one I want. Annoying. And so far Leica hasn't done anything about it.

I agree that there may be different solutions, but something faster than what we have now is needed.

[LocalHero1953]

I used the Q3 43 at a play rehearsal last night, and gained a bit more experience. This is a scenario where I would normally use the SL2-S and the 24-90 zoom. I have no prior knowledge of the action, so I have to focus and frame as best I can. The lighting was fluorescent, bright but overhead, so there were quite strong shadows on faces. The photos will be used for early social media publicity for the play (Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale), and the cast had been asked to wear black to avoid distractions from mixed styles of clothing. Sadly, some of my best shots were of the small boy who played Mamilius, which I can't post here! What I learned:

1. I could safely go to ISO 25,000, while recognising that shadows have more noise than the SL2-S. I tried to lift the shadows of the black clothing, to provide a bit of texture, but the scope was limited. I used the same amount of AI noise reduction in Lightroom that I'd use for the SL2-S, and it wasn't enough. I shall have to experiment a bit more.
2. Autofocus performance was mixed. With multiple persons in the frame, all moving, then Leica's face recognition at first sight is like a cat on hot bricks - it will not settle on any one person for a moment. If you force it to pick one person, or just take a snap to force any focus at all, then it stabilises a bit, and it is easier to select the person you want - though it is still not very stable. Using the crop frame limits the scope of face recognition,: I found that selecting the 90, 135 or 150mm frames helped quite a lot. My alternative approach was to select Field and assign AF-L to Fn 2 button: effectively I focused and reframed. AF-L only locks focus for one exposure, but in this scenario I preferred that way of operation to the focus remaining locked until I released it. So AF is not great (though always accurate when it does focus), but I ended up with very few shots lost to bad focus.
3. As an alternative to the SL2-S+24-90, it was excellent: light, discreet, covered the same focus range, and the 60mp allowed cropping where 24mp does not. Since one is always shooting at 43mm, it allows much more effective framing and cropping than a zoom, which, in fast moving scenes, risks chopping off somebody's face or hand.

A bit of action: ISO 20,000, f/8, focal length 70mm equivalent.

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And a scene where I wanted to flick focus between the king (left) and queen (right).  This was where I used AF-L and reframe. The photographer carelessly crept into the first shot!
More or less full frame, ISO 8,000-10,000, f/8. 

[hoolyproductions]

"Using the crop frame limits the scope of face recognition"

I hadn't thought of that. Good idea and thanks for the report!

I haven't had any further opportunity to use my Q3 43 and now that my SL3 arrived my attention is a bit divided 😄 

Edited November 12, 2024 by hoolyproductions

[LocalHero1953]

22 minutes ago, hoolyproductions said:

"Using the crop frame limits the scope of face recognition"

I hadn't thought of that. Good idea and thanks for the report!

It can be confusing. With a small crop frame where a head is outside the frame, the camera may still recognise the body and put a big box around that overlaps into the outside of the frame. It is logical but not always clear what's going on. It's still early days, and I'm sure some things will be come second nature with practice. 

Edited November 12, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[Smogg]

Overall I am very happy with this camera, except for the fact that I now have too many good cameras and before every walk choosing a tool breaks my heart😜

[Guest]

1 hour ago, hoolyproductions said:

"Using the crop frame limits the scope of face recognition"

I hadn't thought of that. Good idea and thanks for the report!

I haven't had any further opportunity to use my Q3 43 and now that my SL3 arrived my attention is a bit divided 😄 

The only issue is that the exposure metering is also restricted to the crop region so that if you're intending to later "un-crop" the raw image in post processing there is a chance that the overall exposure of the image will be off. Even with the high DR of the Q3 there could be a problem with blown highlights.

[SrMi]

34 minutes ago, Corius said:

The only issue is that the exposure metering is also restricted to the crop region so that if you're intending to later "un-crop" the raw image in post processing there is a chance that the overall exposure of the image will be off. Even with the high DR of the Q3 there could be a problem with blown highlights.

Blown highlights are related to exposure/metering, not to DR.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, SrMi said:

Blown highlights are related to exposure/metering, not to DR.

I meant that if the resulting photo is under exposed you can rescue the shadows, but if it is overexposed then blown highlights are lost forever.

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[SrMi]

1 minute ago, Corius said:

I meant that if the resulting photo is under exposed you can rescue the shadows, but if it is overexposed then blown highlights are lost forever.

That makes sense, though highlight recovery in post-processors can do wonders when only one channel is blown. You'll never know if detail or color will be lost.