Leica Q3 Monochrom review: The ultimate compact camera for street photography

I'll be honest: I wasn't sure what to expect of the Leica Q3 Monochrom. While I admire the base Leica Q3, I'm not really a fan of the 28mm focal length as I find it a little limiting. It's curious, then, that what might be perceived as an even bigger limitation – the total absence of color – is what made this camera truly click for me.

I love street and reportage (though typically at 35mm or 50mm) and shoot the genres almost exclusively in black-and-white. And it's here, in this very specific (and very much Leica) context that my brain understands what this camera is and does.

The Leica Q3 Monochrom might be the best camera for street photography I've ever used. Despite being an incredibly advanced digital camera, it's the closest you can get to the photographic experience of the old masters – the Cartier-Bressons and Capas of the world – without shooting on film.

On paper, the Leica Q3 Monochrom is a cutting-edge 60.3MP / 8K powerhouse. But in the hand, it's the closest a modern camera has come to the purity of shooting on a black-and-white film camera. The specs are entirely secondary, existing only to service that experience.

Pick up this camera and you'll never want to settle for the clumsiness of converting color images ever again.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Price & availability

The Leica Q3 Monochrom is widely available and carries a price tag of $7,790 / £5,800 / AU$12,090.

That marks a significant increase over its predecessor, 2020's Leica Q2 Monochrom, which launched at $5,995 / £4,995 / AU$8,990.

It is, however, significantly cheaper than the interchangeable-lens Leica M11 Monochrom from 2023, which was released with a $9,195 / £8,300 / AU$14,990 asking price.

In terms of its competitors, the interchangeable lens Pentax K-3 Mark III Monochrome from 2023 launched with a $2,197 / £1,949 / AU$3,499 retail price.

And perhaps the closest camera in terms of experience is the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome, launching in February and priced at a dramatically lower $2,196 / £1,599 / AU$2,999.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Specifications

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Build & handling

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Unsurprisingly, the Monochrom is virtually identical in appearance and handling to the base Q3. The big difference is that this camera eschews the Leica red dot logo on the front of the camera, with the Leica branding on the top plate being completely black.

You can check out Gareth's Leica Q3 review for a full rundown of the build and handling, but in short I'll say that this is a wonderful camera to hold and use. Gareth is the kind of photographer who laments the lack of a grip on the front of the body, while I'm the kind who prefers a flat body and doesn't have any issue holding it for long periods – so take that for what it's worth.

Where the Leica Q3 Monochrom does differ is from the Q2 Monochrom, and all the changes are for the better if you're thinking of upgrading from the previous model.

For starters, the rear LCD screen is now a tilting affair – enabling you to shoot waist level or from low angles, which is very welcome for a compact like this (and was one of my biggest bugbears with the Sony RX1R III, a rival 60MP full-frame compact camera).

Leica has also repositioned all the buttons, removing them from the left lapel of the screen where they lived on the Q2. Here the Play and Menu buttons now reside above and below the circular D-pad, while the second function button now sits alongside its sibling just below the shutter speed dial below the top panel.

In addition, the LCD screen and EVF boast improved resolution while the camera now possesses USB-C and mini HDMI ports – the latter both in service of the video capabilities (while there is no mic jack, the USB-C can be used for microphones – including a number of Røde wireless models).

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Performance

It's important to explain a couple of key differences when shooting with this (or, indeed, any) monochrome sensor compared to a standard color sensor.

Crucially, the mono sensor lacks a Bayer filter – which produces color information via a demosaicing and interpolation process, at the expense of clarity and resolution. This has a few consequences.

Firstly, images on the Leica Q3 Monochrom are noticeably (but not profoundly) clearer and crisper than on the standard color Q3. In addition, noise is drastically reduced – meaning that you get much cleaner results out of this camera when shooting at high ISOs (more on that in a sec).

However, there are a couple of compromises to be aware of. The first one is autofocus; the lack of Bayer filter means that phase detect AF points would produce visible artefacts on a mono sensor, which means that the Q3 Monochrom is limited to contrast-detect AF.

The second thing to be conscious of is that mono sensors are much less forgiving when it comes to clipping highlights. The lack of color channels means that luminance data is all you have available to recover your blown highlights, so this is something to be mindful of when shooting.

What does this all mean in practice? Well, let's start with noise. Here's an image shot at the maximum sensitivity of ISO200,000:

Even at the most extreme sensitivity, details are distinguishable and text is legible. And while I'm not advising that anyone should intentionally shoot everything at ISO200,000, I think it's pretty clear that pushing the ISO on this camera isn't something you should be at all afraid of.

Okay, so how about the highlight clipping? Well, this cuts both ways. Certainly, exposing for the highlights / to the right is best practice with the Leica Q3 Monochrom – there is definitely less latitude than you might be used to on a color sensor.

However, I tend to shoot an intentionally high-contrast style when working in black-and-white (think Tri-X) and I don't really find the highlights any more blown-out than I do when using a conventional sensor. So your mileage may vary, depending on how experienced you are with shooting in mono.

As far as the autofocus is concerned, I have absolutely no trouble with this camera. Yes, it's a contrast-based system, but shooting in black-and-white is inherently more contrasty; throw in impressive algorithms for face and even animal detection, and in practical terms the AF is perfectly fast and accurate.

And of course, I dare say many folks investing in this camera will use its sublime manual focus ring anyway. Paired with focus peaking, this is arguably the most satisfying way to shoot with the Leica Q3 Monochrom. Again it can be quite an art, nailing focus at f/1.7 if you're not used to focusing manually or using peaking, but I think it's what this camera was meant for.

Image quality is simply fantastic; the tonality and gradation produced by this sensor is simply gorgeous. As someone who shoots probably 60-70% of my images in black-and-white on a conventional camera, I'm not going to lie and say that you can't get similar results with a standard sensor with a bit of processing – but I don't think that's the point.

The raw material that the Monochrom gives you – the quality of the pixels and the rendering of the tones – is unquestionably clearer, richer and more detailed. When converting a color image into a mono one, you're starting with inferior ingredients and you have to wrangle them to look as good as the files that this camera produces.

Furthermore, if you really want to crush the blacks and push the whites and create a more agonized look, you've got so much more latitude and exactly the image data you need to achieve the results you want in even better quality.

There are a handful of Leica Looks (Natural, Sepia, Selenium and Blue) and the Q3 even enables you to upload custom LUTs in addition to the Natural and Classic profiles on offer. Which brings us to this camera's video features.

Honestly, the Monochrom shoots 8K 30p because it can – not because it should. There may be a stylistic purpose for shooting video in black-and-white RAW, but I don't think this would ever be the camera with which you'd choose to do it. Support is there for USB microphones, but there's no headphone jack and you're obviously stuck with the native 28mm focal length – or digital crops.

Like the standard Q3, the Monochrom can achieve different angles of view by cropping into the sensor, enabling you to shoot at an effective 28mm (60MP), 50mm (36MP) or 75mm (18MP). Bear in mind, though, as with any crop sensor, that your depth of field will never be equivalent to a 50mm or 75mm lens at f/1.7; you will always have the depth of field of a 28mm f/1.7 lens, just with a tighter crop.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Samples

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Lab tests

Dedicated mono-only cameras are few and far between, so the Q3 Monochrom doesn't have many direct rivals for our lab data comparison. The closest Leica alternative that has been through our lab is the M11 Monochrom.

We're also including the Sony RX1R III as an example of a recent, premium full-frame fixed lens camera. The Fujifilm GFX100RF is another luxury 'compact' camera, and though it boasts a larger, higher-resolution medium format sensor, it's considerably less expensive than the Q3 Monochrom.

We test resolution using Imatest charts and software, and dynamic range and signal-to-noise ratio with DxO Analyzer.

Resolution (line widths/picture height):

The Sony and both Leica cameras all use sensors in the region of 60MP, so they're naturally closely-matched in terms of resolving power. The Q3 Monochrom excels at higher sensitivities, though, capturing noticeably more fine detail than the RX1R III. Obviously the 102MP GFX is in a class of its own.

Dynamic range (EV):

Losing color image capture doesn't seem to have helped the Q3 Monochrom's to capture increased dynamic range when compared to the Sony and Fujifilm cameras. That said, the Q3 Monochrom is able to capture considerably more dynamic range than the M11 Monochrom, likely helped by its newer Maestro IV image processor.

Signal to noise ratio (decibels):

This test compares the amount of random noise generated by the camera at different ISO settings as a proportion of the actual image information (the 'signal'). Higher values are better and we expect to see the signal to noise ratio fall as the ISO is increased.

If the mono-only sacrifice does have a measurable image quality benefit, it's reduced noise levels. From as low as ISO200, the Q3 Monochrom is producing cleaner images than our comparison cameras – and the difference is noticeable right through to ISO25,600.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: Verdict

I'm not here to tell you whether the Leica Q3 Monochrom is good value for money. Nor am I here to tell you whether there's logic in buying a camera that only shoots in black-and-white, or that has a fixed focal length.

I can tell you that the Ricoh GR IV Monochrome offers substantially better value, with a somewhat similar shooting experience, and that the M11 Monochrom gives you the option to change your focal length, even though it costs considerably more and has inferior ISO performance.

And I can also tell you that, as someone who shoots the majority of my photographs in black-and-white, all things being equal I would buy and use this camera. The shooting experience is joyous, the image quality is outstanding and the editing latitude is wonderful.

There are bells and whistles that the Q3 Monochrom doesn't need. I'm never going to shoot 4K video with it, let alone 8K, and now that I've finished my review I'll never touch the 15fps burst shooting again either. They're simply not what this camera is for.

The Leica Q3 Monochrom is a contemplative, considered camera. It's a camera for somebody who wants to carefully craft and compose their images, who values texture and tone, who enjoys photography as an expressive art form or as a pure documentary tool – and, to the latter point, this is the first Q camera to support Content Credentials.

If Cartier-Bresson and Capa were alive today, I believe this is the camera they would probably be shooting with. And if I were to buy just one Leica camera, I would be in line right behind them with my credit card.

Check out our full guide to the best cameras for black-and-white photography