Leica Q3 Review

The lens is the argument. A twenty-eight millimetre Summilux at f/1.7, corrected well enough to stay sharp into the corners wide open and focusing to seventeen centimetres, permanently married to a sixty megapixel full-frame sensor, which is a pairing no interchangeable system quite replicates because nothing has to be compromised for a mount. The resolution doubles as the zoom: crop modes at thirty-five, fifty, seventy-five and ninety millimetres are just framing lines and a smaller file, and starting from sixty megapixels the fifty millimetre crop still leaves nearly forty.

The third generation added a tilting screen, phase detection autofocus and 8K video, and only the first of those genuinely changed the experience. Autofocus is better than its predecessor and still behind every Japanese camera at a third of the price. Battery life is poor, video heats up, and six thousand dollars is six thousand dollars. What you are buying is a single, deliberate, beautifully made object that shoots one focal length superbly and asks you to stop making decisions. Priced as a want rather than as a tool.