I Bought an $8,000 Point-and-Shoot Camera and Don’t Regret It. Here’s Why

In November, I spent £ 6,000 (about $ 8,100) of my own money on a Leica Q3 43. In the past six months, he has been with me during several trips across Europe, and I turned Over 25,000 photos with him, including everything, street photography, travel, landscapes and even Main editorial features. I have some reflections on this kind of premium compacts and I hope that solid purchasing advice for each of you, whether you plan this camera or camera Another compact like the always popular Fuji X100Vi.

Let’s dive.

I bought the Leica Q3 43 with my own money at a complete retail sales value, which was at the time just less than £ 6,000 – finally, just on, Including the second battery that I also ordered. It is a huge sum of money, especially at a time when the handbag strings are tightening and make big purchases – in particular non -essential purchases like this – are difficult to justify.

So why did I want it?

Well, a certain number of reasons, and I hope that all photographers will understand them, Leica fans or not. In recent years, I found myself a little over-penetrated with equipment that I acquired during my 13 years to take photos professionally. Too many bags, trips, objectives, objectives adapters – it doesn’t matter – and I wanted to adopt a more stripped approach to a large part of my photograph.

For years, I used the Sony RX1R As a compact camera, “take anywhere” when I don’t want to take a bag full of kit. It is a superb small compact premium premium which takes beautiful photos with its fixed lens of 35 mm. But he is 12 years old now, and he shows his age, with a slow and unreliable autofocus, a relatively low resolution and Above all, There is no viewfinder, so you have to run using the main screen and you look like a tourist. I spent years hoping that Sony would replace it, but where Sony left a gap, Leica filled it.

Q3 43 is, in some ways, its spiritual successor. It has a magnificent full sensor with an extremely high quality fixed lens. It takes breathtaking images, and I can wear it with me almost all the time, keeping it in suspension around my neck, ready to shoot each time I see an opportunity.

It has a fixed objective of 43 mm, which may not suit everyone, but it is mostly ideal for my work. I am generally flying between the focal lengths 35 mm and 50 mm, so 43 mm is an ideal place between the two that I have never found limiting in the many photos that I captured. I tried the 28 mm version of the camera and I did not manage to see its wide angle view.

I recently wrote on the three types of cameras that photographers must haveWho includes a battle horse, a daily port and a more artistic option, and although the Q3 43 was absolutely for me, it is the second point where I think it had the greatest impact for me. It is not a camera that I had to make allowances to transport it. I don’t need a big backpack bag, just a little scarf or messenger bag. Sometimes I even went out with him by suspending his neck without any bag.

I love having a camera with me always. It is true that the best camera is the one you have with you, but it is doubly the case if the camera which is always with you is In fact The best camera. Very well, it’s not as small as my Sony RX1R, but it’s smaller than my Canon R5, and it was an excellent companion on Photo-bags around StockholmEdinburgh and Barcelona. It is a joy to be able to lift it quickly and to shoot.

This helps it is easy to use. I mainly draw as a priority at the opening, turning the dedicated opening ring on the lens when I want to adjust the depth of field. I mainly keep it at ISO 400, and the camera is always good enough to give me the correct shutter speed for the scene I capture.

At night, I have to force this hard ISO, especially since the camera does not have a stabilized image sensor like my R5. In fact, at the technical level, the Q3 43 is not shaped very well, with its break -up rate and its self -tacky system slower than rivals. His subject detection is also better described as “hit or lack”.

But it is Why I like this camera. I don’t have to dive into the infinite abyss of the Settings menu to determine different automatic focus options. I just keep this camera to the point of focusing on a point, half the shutter to focus on what I want, then recompose to take the photo. Or I will concentrate manually. It is a more basic shooting experience that encourages me to think more about the cliché I take and less on the parameters that I use to obtain it.

Then there are the integrated color profiles that Leica offers, which I absolutely love. I draw almost everything using the chrome look of Leica, which does things in colors and contrast that obsesses me. I mainly associate this with a hot white balance and, more recently, a PolarPro golden mist filter, Which gives my images a warm and filmic atmosphere that I like. This filter almost never leaves my camera and is, for me, a must.

In fact, I now photograph most of my photos in JPEG and I use them without almost no post-treatment. This contrasts strongly with my way of working with the R5 – I never shoot only in RAW on this camera, and all my images go through a certain level of work in Lightroom. Do I want Leica to offer options to adapt these more profiles through the camera? Absolutely.

I treat Q3 43 as a compact point and classic shooting camera. I use basic parameters to shoot quickly and in a creative manner, pressing the camera colors to minimize my mounting time. It gave me a different way of working, and I really enjoyed every moment that I have spent with this camera so far.

To be fair, it’s not just the Leica Q3 43 that could give you this. The Fujifilm X100VI remains a favorite of social media thanks to its compact size and customizable film emulation modes, while Ricoh Griii is greeted by street and travel photographers for its quality and pocket size mixture. I planned to buy the X100VI instead of the Leica, but I will be honest, there is another element of which I may be less proud to admit.

I research A leica.

I do not like to consider myself as a person of status symbol, and even if I have no desire for a rolex, a yacht or a lambo in my disc (ok, maybe a little), I always dreamed of finally having a camera that wears this emblematic red point at the front. I feared that it was a novelty that wears out quickly, but it is not – I always find myself excited to pick it up and take it somewhere. It also helps that the solid metal construction of the Q3 43 makes it infinitely more premium than the light sensation, probably quite plasticky of the X100Vi.

It gives me a creative buzz that I don’t really get my Canon R5. To rely on an analogy that I used before, the R5 is a worker’s van; Practical, he checks the boxes for what they need to do a job. A professional tool to get things done. But it is not the vehicle they fantasize to drive on the coast. Leica is the fantastic car. A classic Ferrari, perhaps. It does most of the same things technically, but it does it in a very different way that makes you feel particularly different when you use it.

It may be a lot of money to spend on a camera, especially the one I don’t speak strictly speaking need. This helped Leica in the United Kingdom offer an interest-free credit, so I really distributed the cost over 12 months, rather than lowering money at once. But it is money that I was – and I am always – happy to spend.

It gave my photograph a boost that I didn’t even know I needed. During the six months that I had it, I feel that I have evolved more as a photographer, and I took images of which I am incredibly proud. I can’t wait to see what the next six months will bring.