This video is sponsored by Squarespace the place
to go to if you want to set up your own slick looking website or online store. I feel bad for
anybody who's just bought a Leica Q2 because this Q3 is a much better camera in almost every respect.
I say almost because in the looks department not too much has changed. Lok: it's the same um...huge it's
really huge. A lot of time I thought this is a compact camera then it is really huge. Kai: that's a
fast lens it's a Summilux - it's not that big for a Summilux. Lok: you can't change the lens it's just.
Kai: the body is smaller than the M and the Q is a popular body, it's great for people who don't
really want to faff about with the manual focusing of the M - you know, you have to use a rangefinder,
old world-style focusing - this is just your point and shoot; full frame point and shoot. Lok: but okay it
sounds better when you say it's a smaller M. Kai: Yeah that's not quite what I said, the Q is a posh
fixed fast lens full frame point and shoe which looks pretty gorgeous not something they really
needs to change too much. It's funny when they first showed a leaked photo on Leica rumors and people
were going like "oh the grip texture is different" "the bottom plate is slightly thinner" When they
put the Q2 and the Q3 right next to each other it's like what is the actual difference? But what
they didn't show is the back of the camera because this is all new. Before you ask no it doesn't
flip vlogging style - how dare you even think that? So it just does that for low down shooting and
that for kind of top down. It's a three inch screen slightly higher resolution than before. And one thing
before it's got a nice clean round shape here, you know just look at this side for example. Lok: Yeah, nice.
Kai: it's nice, Leica-like. It's like the M but it's kind of...well the screen doesn't fit
flush with the camera, you can see it. You look on the bottom, yeah, it sticks out a bit. I mean if
you look at this that's a nice touch isn't it. That's your diopter adjustment. Lok: oh so it pops
out? Kai: Yeah then you adjust the diopter. It's kind of surprising that they didn't make a screen flush
isn't it? Even though most people are going to hold it like this, you know just in case you want to do
the whole tourist hold, if you do hold it on this side these hard edges are not as comfortable as before. Kind of that corner kind of digs into your palm,
most likely won't be a problem for most people besides the positives far outweighs the negative.
I mean it introduces a new way of shooting because this is not just for your serious Street
photographers. Street photographers are going to gravitate towards the M. This is for people who like
taking lifestyle photos so that is handy to have the tilt screen. It does have a nice solid
clunk to it when you tilt it, it just kind of snaps into place nicely. German engineered tilt
screens. Literally like minutes of fun doing that. And if you're a bit partial to photography on the
street, the waist level view is a neat alternative to taking photos and you still have the evf to
turn to, which has also been tweaked with the Q3. Anyway they have also put all of the buttons
that were on the left hand side before onto the right hand side so you can have just have
a one-handed operation which kind of makes sense with this kind of camera. And there's not
many buttons on the side I mean they've actually got rid of a button on this side. Before they
had an FN button, Play and Menu as well as this Directional Pad but now they've
just got Play and Menu so essentially one of the buttons has just gone up there. Those
two are customisable buttons and then they've got a customisable button in the middle of the
d-pad here and then customisable button here They make it nice and easy to customise the button
rather than go through the menu system you just press and hold the button. Lok: that makes so much sense. Kai: and then you just choose whatever it is you like - that's the great thing about the Leica design
is that it looks pretty simple, there's not many buttons, it looks like oh it's such a basic camera
but it's the thoughtfulness of making it work with those few buttons so that you don't really have
to faff about with all these different buttons and dials, thinking about which which one should I press - I
just want to take photos! Less boring stuff is put in the way of you and the picture taking process
and there's no camera more conducive to getting that shot than the one right here. I think as
I'm getting older I find myself liking this more before it was all about yeah I want to use the
M it's the purer camera with a manual focus and stuff like that. You can manually focus
on this it's got a tab here let's press that and then you rotate it to manual
focus because otherwise it's locked it doesn't move. Lok: but yeah I mean it's not another button it's just the tab itself Kai: a nice smooth move. Smooth certainly and the
focusing tab makes for nice manual focusing if a little stiff when new. But arguably you buy
a camera like this to let it focus for you because they've improved autofocus on this it's got
phase detection autofocus, hybrid so it's got contrast detection to make it snappier,
quicker. Why hybrid? Well because contrast detection is still good especially in lower light if
you want it to be a bit more reliable so it combines the reliability of contrast detection in
certain lights with the speed of phase detection sometimes contrast detection is good when your
scene is contrasty and just picks up on that and do make it focus but then phase detection you can't
beat the speed of that so this is actually faster than Q2 to focusing kind of goes without saying
the Q3 does a great job of focusing on subjects coming towards you - way to go Joe! So yeah not only
does it have phase detection they've got face, eye, animal etc etc and it uses a depth from defocus DFD
it sounds a bit like Panasonic and actually if you look at the screen it looks
very much like a Panasonic you know all those boxes. Lok: isn't it look exactly like
the one I'm holding right now. Kai: it's uncanny isn't it they didn't specifically
say it's from Panasonic but who knows Lok: pretty sure it's from Panasonic. Kai: but it works nice and quick it
detects all the bodies in from the back it's a bit like Panasonic isn't it and you can you
can use the directional pad to choose between the subjects. Look it doesn't matter when the AF system
comes from all right what matters is that the Q3 auto focus is better than before in terms of speed
and is smarter with this subject detection let's stop mentioning Panasonic okay. It's not
like Panasonic has just slapped the innards of one of their cameras into this, it is different
it's a newer processor than the Q2 processor it's got faster focusing it's got a faster burst
rate it's got 15 FPS burst weight but also 60 megapixels. I don't think there's a Panasonic
camera that does 60 megapixels that's high resolution power right there lots of detail and
that's good because this is a 28 millimeter lens if you want a different focal length well
you can't but you can crop it. You can crop it inside the camera and it's got cool frame
lines so when you press the digital zoom you can still see what it's like at 28.
just like the Leica M yeah and then this is 50 now when I say 60 megapixels you can choose
between large medium or small DNGs: 60, 36 or 18 megapixels so you don't have to have the full
60 megapixel DNGs, which is nice is that there's a benefit to using each it's not just a matter
of small medium large. The large for maximum details, medium actually has a little bit more
dynamic range and even a smaller 18 megapixels gives good enough resolution for a reduced raw
file size. DNG is quite handy, you just chuck it straight into Adobe, don't have to wait for Aperture to update. I can't emphasise enough how cool DNG raw files
are, I shot raw here just put it straight into current Adobe software and boom here we are. You
also have to remember that when you go from 28 millimeters through the different digital zoom,
digital crops, that it does lower the resolution. um let's put a table here because
at 75 millimeters you get eight megapixel image down to three
and then for 90 millimeters is six megapixels maximum. The increased resolution has allowed the
addition of the 90 millimeter crop. There is plenty of megapixels to play with up until 50 millimeter
with 18 megapixels. 75 and 90 are mostly fine for viewing on screens but not great for printing
big. The 60.3 megapixel backside illuminated CMOS sensor, most likely the same one as the one from
the M11, along with the newer than M11 processor is a great combo. I'm pleasantly surprised that with
low light shots you can still get usable results up to ISO 25000 after that chroma noise really
creeps in to poop on the party. And then you've got features like perspective control from the
M11, so really maybe it's not so bad to call it a baby M11 after al,l but that won't be doing
the Q3 Justice because the monster performance makes this a camera that you can rely on to get you
the shots you want to and with the addition of the tilt screen it brings in a new dimension
for slick and stealthy street photography it feels like a more complete camera and we're
not even done with the new features another thing is it's got 8K video that's
mad that's a total shock for me 8K video! I know right 8K so it's
not just something inherited from a current Panasonic hybrid camera. That
button toggles between photo video It crops in quite a lot. If
you're filming in 8K or 4K DC or not it incurs a 1.2 times crop. The only resolution you won't get
a crop in is 1080. And then it changes the menu system of course. One thing is that if you've
set the shutter speed for video you'll have to remember to change it when you switch to stills. I
forgot and ended up getting a shaky image like this. Log settings okay L-Log
inside. Oh okay you can change sharpness you can put Log profile on it. Before you
take a video if you do a digital zoom it still shows the full 28 millimeter and then your frame
line but when you hit record it just shows the cropped image. Remember that those different focal
lengths are digital crops, though even though that the file sizes show the amount of pixels for
an 8K file, the cropped images have been upscaled back to 8K. But overall the videos look great
the sound however...there's nowhere to put the microphone no 3.5 millimeter input and definitely no
headphones they do talk about adding USB-C adapter to 3.5 millimeter a bit later
with a firmware update but for now no mic well you just got this one built-in mic so you can try to see what it sounds like this
is the built-in mic this is what it sounds like I mean let's see see what it sounds like here and
then we'll go out to the noisy Street in a minute quite a different directivity setting also like
now is towards the front so it's twist B so now I set it to the back this is towards the back
the internal mic actually sounds quite nice for voices it's just that it will pick up a lot
of Ambient sound along with the vocals the USB-C adapter is not 100 ideal but a decent fix for
audio especially as the Q3 puts out some excellent quality video although it has to be said that
the continuous Focus for video while accurate it can sometimes be a little slow to change focus and
you can't adjust the speed also there's noticeable rolling shutter in 8K and 4K and while we're at it as
it's the same lens as before it still has noticeable pin cushion distortion but that can be easily
corrected and those little things aren't enough to spoil this camera for me, this is a Q that can
finally stop me thinking about an M possibly it's quicker with reliable Focus has all the focal
lengths and more that you'd ever use on an M and it does a whole lot more than the M. Is this the
ideal one camera to carry with you everywhere to do it all? For sure I think they're on to a winner
with the Q3. if I could change anything [Music] the grip all the way to the back this is
nice let your thumb go that fits in there it's just still slippery isn't it yeah
it's not light no and of course you've got neck straps so it's gonna be around your
neck but well yeah if you want to do the whole one-handed thing it still feels a bit
precarious that you're gonna drop the camera you should kind of put the grip around the back
but you can get thumbs up grips now they're doing three different colors they've got black they've
got silver and then I think they've got brass on that yeah so I'm not a big fan of thumb
grips it's like they're trying to you know find the whole idea of thumb grip is like it's
a film mine lever your thumb rests on something buy something with such smooth lines like this
and you put a thumb grip on it but you know it's up to you if you want to buy fun grip because
it know comes in three different colors and they've got different accessories with different
color three different colorways as well because also when you put the thumb grip I think your
thumb is kind of here the buttons are here yeah I mean of course you can still access it but
it's just a bit why not make it easier to equip in the first place exactly it's got a new
battery yeah the battery is the battery is cool it doesn't fall out and show a clip of the hasselblads press
it press it in but this is new the funny thing is it does actually fit in the old
Q2 fit I think you can just fit in your Q2 but they're not going to say it's
compatible with the Q2 in a minute but it fits I've also they've got new hand
grip for wireless charging to attach the wireless charging pen grip and you can
just put on any kind of wireless charger [Music] this video is sponsored by Squarespace if you want
to set up your own domain online retail space or website it's super simple to get started and make
your next move with Squarespace with an easy to use in Phase field with loads of templates and
backed up with 24 7 customer service you can try it out with a 14 day free trial and get 10 off
your first order of this link and discount code