Leica Q3 43

[SRV1981]

17 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Really?

I had the same sensor X100V in the XT3 and the S5ii/Z6ii beats it.

I have the same sensor as the Q3 in my A7RV and that beats both of those.

Nah. Those APSC sensor cameras put out good quality for sure, but few would say comparable even with 24mp full frame when it comes to outright image quality.

60mp A7RV is on another level.

I’ve been through the sensor/image quality improvement process over the last few years and it’s definitely a real thing.

There’s a noticeable difference moving up, but the difference is even more apparent if you go back after any time.

Just my experience anyway…

I’d love to see a side by side supporting this argument. I don’t see much of a difference. Also, where are you displaying your photos? Psychology is pushing people to spend nearly $10k on a photo only camera. What’s the return on investment? What’s one’s annual income. 

[SRV1981]

15 hours ago, John Matthews said:

I've been printing recently. It's so hard to see differences these days between sensor formats. Granted, I don't print much about A4, but I don't have the wall space or budget for much bigger. I think many people buy Leica because they're tired of getting "lost" in GAS- there is something enticing to that concept. Just put all the money you have for gear into ONE camera with a fixed lens. Now, you can ONLY create with that. There's something liberating in that.

Give me all your money for bad decisions and I’ll do a lot to help you liberate 🙂

[MrSMW]

48 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

I’d love to see a side by side supporting this argument

You’ll have to take my word for it. Zero agenda, but I don’t have the time to dig out old hard drives but 100% if I shot any of these side by side, I can see a difference.

50 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

Also, where are you displaying your photos?

Other than my website and social media, nowhere, - it’s a typical 1000-2000 deliverable images for every client.

What they do with them I could not say, but any image could be printed any size.

52 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

Psychology is pushing people to spend nearly $10k on a photo only camera

Not sure about that!

53 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

What’s the return on investment?

Extremely high? Rough calculation, gross, about 60x cost?

55 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

What’s one’s annual income

Ha, too personal, but enough to suit our family needs.

Not as much as a dentist who can afford that 10k camera 😉

[BTM_Pix]

17 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Just put all the money you have for gear into ONE camera with a fixed lens. Now, you can ONLY create with that. There's something liberating in that.

I think there is a lot of merit in that.

Whats interesting with this new Q is that Leica are actually mirroring (or mirroringless) what Sigma did with the DP1m and DP2m cameras and have actually chosen the same focal lengths.

It might suggest that they will go the whole way pretty soon and bring out a third one, this time with a 75mm lens like the Sigma DP3m.

A real bargain at $21K for the Leica set, of course.

For anyone looking to have that choice of no choice on a smaller budget then the DPm cameras are worth looking at.

They take the shooting experience back in time by having basically a choice of ISO100, ISO400 at a real push and ISO1600 in Black&White.

In camera writing time and battery life is so bad that its the equivalent of only having two rolls of 36 exposure film.

To add that final touch of retro, the files are so slow to process in Sigma's software that it more or less mimics sending your slide film back to Kodak for processing.

If you can past those limitations- and of course we should never forget how many incredible images were taken in the past under those restrictions - then the image quality is your reward.

Having said all that....

Never, under any circumstances, go and try a Leica Q3 in a shop as all logic goes out of the window when you pick one up.

[MrSMW]

50 minutes ago, BTM_Pix said:

It might suggest that they will go the whole way pretty soon and bring out a third one, this time with a 75mm lens like the Sigma DP3m.

A few years back, I hoped they might do something like this with the X100 series as 35mm on an APSC sensor was always just a little too tight for my needs.

And when I say 'little', I mean 150mm.

And this is the thing I especially like about my A7RV with the Tamron 28-75 and that is if I treat it like a pair of primes, which is effectively what I do with all my zooms so they are respectively: 20, 40, 28, 75, 70 and 180, I have 6 focal lengths from 3 lenses.

If I set and use in camera APSC crop, discounting the wide end of each of the 3 zooms, I now have 9 focal lengths by adding in; 60, 112.5 and 270.

I actually DON'T use the APSC crop mode on any of them except the 28-75 and treat that lens/camera combo as a; 28/75/112.5 and that covers me for over 90% of my needs.

I could even use it for 100% at a push, but being the consummate professional that I am, will switch out to a wider or longer lens if the situation demands.

It gets even more appealing with a 100mp body like the Fuji or Hasselblads because you can then effectively have 3 focal lengths from a prime.

I love the purity of a single focal length and as I have mentioned before, shot an entire year's worth of work on just a 35mm lens...but then decided I was being a bit of a pretentious prick at such times as say being stuck at the back of a cathedral, so went back to being less of an arse.

But for personal stuff, I have always always always favoured a fixed single prime approach.

I have just 'enhanced' that capability by using the extreme ends of any zoom lens on a single body.

Last year I did it with a 24-90 lens, but I've always found 24 a but too wide for general purpose and prefer 28 and 90 is a bit too long, especially indoors. 

The 28-75 is faster, (f2.8 throughout rather than f2.8-4), smaller, lighter and this year I have 61mp and not 24mp to play with.

The difference has been quite eye-opening. Expected, but still eye-opening.

When the 28mm Q3 came out, I considered it, but I think we're down to something like 10mp (might be less?) at '75mm' and it's still 'just' a 28mm, but this 43 makes things a lot more interesting...except I'd need the 28mm model also.

Now if they brought out a 70/75mm model, I'd skip the 43 and go for the book ends.

But having said that, £€'s...

Even on my vast salary...

[John Matthews]

5 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

It might suggest that they will go the whole way pretty soon and bring out a third one, this time with a 75mm lens like the Sigma DP3m.

Ahh, I looked at those Sigma cameras many times, but never really pulled the trigger. With the Merrill series, many said they had medium format quality, but the usability lagging. However, it became the "poor man's" medium format camera.

When you look at the files, they're amazing. I also find it interesting they reference the D800E sells for LESS in the used market than the Sigma DP2 Merrill. However, you're not getting the lens with the D800E.

For me, I just wanted the ability to make run and gun video; so, I never purchased either of these cameras.

 

[BTM_Pix]

17 hours ago, MrSMW said:

A few years back, I hoped they might do something like this with the X100 series as 35mm on an APSC sensor was always just a little too tight for my needs.

Maybe when they’ve got their act together sufficiently to produce enough of the current focal length version to meet demand they will think about it!

Having said that, their approach with producing dedicated wide and tele adapters for them is an OK halfway house.

I had the wide for my original X100 and it performed well, although the 0.79x and 1.4x respectively of the adapters is a bit conservative but I guess those were the optimum to not degrade performance too much.

12 hours ago, John Matthews said:

Ahh, I looked at those Sigma cameras many times, but never really pulled the trigger. With the Merrill series, many said they had medium format quality, but the usability lagging. However, it became the "poor man's" medium format camera.

At the time that I bought my DP2m, I had a Nikon D800 and a Hasselblad H3DII-39 and couldn’t imagine that it would live with them but it actually did.

I bought it on impulse really as I was at a dealer picking up a lens for my actual job and they had just started a price slash offer on them to clear stock and I thought I’d take a chance as I’d looked at it before but at £900 it seemed way overpriced.

Turns out it wasn’t even at that price and I even ended up using it for work as well for certain roles.

I then kept my eye out for the DP1m and DP3m at used prices (which plummeted because the new price had been cut) and picked them both up as well.

13 hours ago, John Matthews said:

When you look at the files, they're amazing. I also find it interesting they reference the D800E sells for LESS in the used market than the Sigma DP2 Merrill. However, you're not getting the lens with the D800E.

It’s interesting that they completely write the JPEG’s off in that video as for work because of the live editorial fast turnaround time of it I used  JPEG quite a lot!

The ultimate quality is only to be found when using the Sigma software though and, as I said, that really does bring you back to the slower paced days of developing images.

Funny thing about prices is that because I paid smaller prices for mine, looking at the current used markets, they are the only cameras that I have ever owned where I could make a profit !

Which I suppose takes us back to the “value” in cameras as even if I had paid full retail for them then they would still be about 65-70% of the original cost.

My D800 and H3DII-39 on the other hand….

Yeah, let’s not go there.

By the by, it’s interesting to see the iteration of Chris Nichols in that video compared to the current one.

[MrSMW]

I was also interested in those Sigma DP cameras except for one thing, shockingly bad low light capability!

I like ‘left field’ gear.

Partly because I am somewhat willful and partly because I don’t like following the herd.

But at the same time, not if it’s to my detriment. Which it was a bit too much when I only used that OG X100. Or rather to my clients detriment.

I’d go Hassie X2D with a pair of primes if I could. Something around 28mm for indoor and something around 50mm for outdoor and just use cropping.

Maybe in a few years when pricing comes down as my final stills camera for the last few years of what will be a 30 year industry career…

[BTM_Pix]

46 minutes ago, MrSMW said:

I was also interested in those Sigma DP cameras except for one thing, shockingly bad low light capability!

To paraphrase Tony Wilson of Factory Records, Sigma protected themselves from ever having to have the dilemma of trading the camera's low light capability for image quality by having no low light capability whatsoever.

On the upside, there's absolutely no need to carry ND filters around 😉

[eatstoomuchjam]

3 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Maybe when they’ve got their act together sufficiently to produce enough of the current focal length version to meet demand they will think about it!

The latest posts from the Dolomites haver been saying that Fuji is working on a new camera with a sensor size that they never used before.  My guess is, based on the success of the X100VI, they're building a full frame fixed lens camera.  Fixed lens means they don't need to build out an entire ecosystem of lenses like they would if they introduced a new FF MILC line.

[MrSMW]

55 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

The latest posts from the Dolomites haver been saying that Fuji is working on a new camera with a sensor size that they never used before.  My guess is, based on the success of the X100VI, they're building a full frame fixed lens camera.  Fixed lens means they don't need to build out an entire ecosystem of lenses like they would if they introduced a new FF MILC line.

Is his name Andreas or something, because if so, not watched his post but it came up as a suggestion on my YouTube just yesterday.

But yes, this would make most sense.

I'd rather see a MF 100mp version myself (I know, who needs 100mp huh...except read above, Crop City here we come) but if it's a 'new' sensor size, well it probably is FF because I doubt smaller than APSC is an option because the crowd want mp's and k's.

And they have had smaller before and may still do so with certain compacts etc.

[BTM_Pix]

Instead of an actual new FF sensor (which would go against the grain for them of straddling both sides of it), I'm wondering whether they might simply do what Panasonic did with the LX100 when they used an MFT sensor but only used a portion of it.

So in this case FujiFilm could use their existing 50mp GFX sensor (or the 100mp if they fancied it) to make a virtual FF camera without having to go down the route of having a new sensor and processing.

With the fixed lens there would be less restrictions size wise in not having to accommodate that big lens mount so they could make significant reductions in size and have a far more compact version of their GFX-50R.

If they've no intention of getting into FF as a system then a pseudo FF camera like that would be a fast turnaround product that if it wasn't priced insanely would do pretty well.

[eatstoomuchjam]

Sure, it could be that too.  I guess it depends on whether bulk 50MP sensors are available in big quantities and for a price that is competitive with modern FF sensors.

I'd love a 100mp fixed lens medium format camera - and I can say from personal experience that Fuji has a long history of excellent fixed lens MF cameras.  I guess the bigger question is whether people would be willing to drop $5k on one - and which lens they'd pair with it to keep it "small."  I guess they could do the 50/3.5 - as far as I know, that's the smallest native lens for GFX and it's a decent sharp modern lens.

[MrSMW]

So I finally watched a Q3-43 video and I have to say I REALLY like it.

Except for various deal-breakers…

1. Body/form factor. Is it ‘nicer’ than my A7RV? Yes, but not in the same class ergonomically.

2. Does it have the insurance of 2 card slots for paying work? Nope.

3. Does it have a tilt screen good for portrait orientation shots? Nope.

4. Does it have a bigger or better sensor than my A7RV? Nope, it’s the same.

5. Does it have better AF? Err nope, nowhere near as good.

6. Does it have a more desirable badge? Ding ding ding! Without question.

7. Is that badge worth the €4500 it would cost me to downgrade my current workhorse to the Q3-43? Not even close as much as I like the thing (the 43) as an object of desire, that is all it is.

[MrSMW]

And the pic above is to demonstrate the fact that you cannot pocket either of the things unless you have pockets like Matt Granger.

[MrSMW]

I should add that this is not some pointless pontificating but something I am seriously considering doing which is going back to a ‘fixed lens point & shoot’ for my stills work.

Except I am looking at it as having a single prime for indoor work and a single prime for outdoor with a specialist lens for ceremonies & speeches.

Would this be a ‘better’ option than my current 3 zoom set up?

No, not ‘better’ as in it would not be as flexible, but would actually tick boxes in a more purist direction without really sacrificing anything.

I’ve never been a fan aesthetically of anything wider than 28mm so 28 would be my indoor lens as it pretty much is already.

Outdoors, I already was a big fan of the 40mm look but for certain things, prefer anything from 65 to 90mm.

I have shot outdoors with just 65mm and it worked pretty well actually so it’s currently a hypothetical toss up between 40 or 65.

If I went 65, that means the ultra compact super slick Sigma 65mm f2 which is one of my all time favourite lenses.

That could then be paired with it’s 90mm f2.8 sibling, another sublime compact lens.

The only thing with Sigma is they do not have a 28mm in the Contemporary line and I like things to be in a system.

But otherwise it would simply be a case of having as I do now, crop mode on a custom button with stills of almost identical file size.

So: 28/42 + 40/60 or 65/100 + 90/135

Arguably, this is NOT a purist single focal length approach and technically it isn’t but at the same time, it is not constantly swapping lenses, but rather moving through phases after many hours from one focal length to another and then having 2x working focal lengths at any one time.

I’m thinking of it as a ‘Purist Plus’ approach 😉

It’s an option with HUGE appeal for 2025 because I use zooms for more practical reasons, but I lose something in the process by doing so.

[Ninpo33]

Whenever I go back to fixed primes I am always surprised how just a couple of steps forward of back end up solving the problem almost as efficiently.

“Let your feet be the zoom”

Of course there are plenty of times when  the zoom solves problems and is a real lifesaver but the ability to crop in on a massive sensor makes the zoom in post almost as easy. 

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, Ninpo33 said:

Of course there are plenty of times when  the zoom solves problems and is a real lifesaver but the ability to crop in on a massive sensor makes the zoom in post almost as easy

Which is why I am also considering 100mp sensor cameras as then 3 primes could become 2…

But that would be a serious investment and if I did it, have to see out my career.