The Leica Q3 43 goes to Crete and becomes the noumero ena for travel

I received the Leica Q3 43 when I visited Wetzlar in August. I spent all my time with it until we went to Crete on September 23, by which time I had written my article and selected the pictures for the release date three days later.

Packing list

So, when we went to Crete, I took the SL3 and two lightweight Panasonic zoom lenses with me for a change. I fully intended to use the tiny Lumix 20-60 f/3.5-f/5.6 and the 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 lenses for the holiday. They seemed like a perfect combination for a walking holiday; a full focal length range in two lenses which, together, weigh the same as the Leica 24-90!
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At the last minute, I popped the Leica Q3 43 into the bag for going out in the evenings (as one does!).

At first, I stuck to my plan, but then the Q3 43 started slipping into my daytime bag as well, and after a few days the SL3 was left at the hotel. 

This wasn’t because of the weight or image quality, it was simply that I hadn’t had enough of that lovely 43mm lens on the Q3. Clearly 43mm isn’t perfect for a holiday walking in the mountains and lying on the beach, but it was an interesting challenge to limit myself and try to make the most out of the lens.

Where the White Mountains meet the sea

If you fly to Chania, you can get a bus or cab for the two-hour journey to Chora Sfakion (Sfakia). From there you must either catch a boat (or walk) to Loutro. 
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Between Sfakia and Sougia to the West the mountains rise out of the sea so that there are no proper roads. If you want to travel from one to the other, it is 34km by sea and 126km by tortuously curvy road! 

The E4 coastal path runs all the way. There are difficult sections between Agia Roumeli and Sougia, but many lovely walks between Sfakia and Roumeli, with gorges and beaches scattered along the way.

My wife Emma and I have only twice missed our autumn trip to Crete since we first went in 1998 (or was it 1999?). 
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Coincidentally, it has usually arrived perfectly for testing a camera, indeed, on a couple of occasions Leica have even sent cameras directly to Crete, which has always created some kind of drama (last time was with the M10, where Emma and I had to walk ten miles over the mountains to pick the camera up from a bus driver in Chora Sfakion!).
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We are typically based in room 18, at the Blue House, Loutro. It’s an unassuming room, but has a nice balcony, and you can watch the sun rising over Plakias while drinking tea in the morning!

Loutro has a couple of beaches, but these are covered with umbrellas and sun loungers, so we normally venture further afield if we want to sit in the sun. 

Below the mountains

Loutro is a village nestled in a semicircular bay at the foot of the White Mountains. Since we first visited, there has been a little building (really only a little), but other things have changed out of all recognition. In 2000 you could only get two sorts of wine in the restaurants — either Retsina, or Kritikos, and the food was pretty basic.

These days, Cretan wine has come on by leaps and bounds, and there are many wonderful wines to choose from (we often drink it at home in the UK). There are a number of ancient grape varieties which have been rescued from extinction (Melissaki, Daphni). Vidiana is the most important local variety together with some more familiar names: Malvasia and Assyrtiko (from Santorini). 
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Once very basic, the food in Loutro is now mostly excellent. We enjoy incredible local food at the Blue House, a fine fish restaurant (Ilios), as well as barbecued local goat, pork, and lamb at Stratis, Tapas at Notos. They do great salads at the Porto Loutro on the Hill.

Travelling with Leica Fotos

Until two or three years ago, I was not impressed with Leica Fotos, partly because the connection was unpredictable and slow. Furthermore, you could not really do anything without the images ending up in Apple Photos (and thus pushed around between all my devices). I use Apple Photos for phone pictures, and didn’t need it stuffed with DNG files I was going to process in Lightroom Classic.
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With the latest generation of cameras (M11, SL3 and Q3) the connectivity issues have improved out of all recognition. This is partly because of improved Wi-Fi modules in the cameras, and partly because cable connection now works even faster and more seamlessly.

For the last few months, I have been using Leica Fotos as the front end for my image management. It works like this:

• Connect the camera to the iPad Pro (11″ M4 version with 512GB)
• Go through the full-screen images, marking favourites
• In Select mode, filter on the favourites (or select individuals)
• Choose the Share button and select DNG files
• Wait whilst Fotos copies the images to the clipboard 
• Select Lightroom in the share dialogue
• Open Lightroom mobile and go to Imports
• Select items and add to the chosen Collection 
  (or make a new Collection)

Lightroom mobile will then transmit the DNG files to Adobe Cloud, and then down to my Mac, where I will do the final editing in Lightroom Classic. The files do not remain on the iPad Pro, and are not added to Apple Photos, either.

Cable works too

Of course, you could also import the images directly to Lightroom mobile with a cable connection to the camera. However, LR Mobile doesn’t show full-screen images in the import dialogue, the maximum is four up and the resolution isn’t good enough to gauge critical sharpness.

In case you want to use an image immediately on social media, then Fotos also works well for this. 
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This system was great in Crete — I could sit in a bar at the end of the day with a beer and go through the day’s shoot, marking those I wanted to keep (usually about 25%). Like many people, I used to upload everything and then do the culling later, but it’s a depressing task deleting duds, whereas selecting the good shots is uplifting and positive.

A word of caution however; I thought I had ‘unlimited’ data (there is good 5G in Loutro but the hotel Wi-Fi is not good!). It turned out that O2’s definition of ‘unlimited’ is 25Gb (my cell data provider), after this they were charging £25 for 12Gb. I ended up spending £75.
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These days the Geotagging seems to me to be seamless, certainly on this trip with the Q3 43 the tags all are seemingly present and correct.

From Marmara — Agia Roumeli

Heading westward from Loutro there is a wonderful ten-mile walk along the coast from to Agia Roumeli. The path also goes up and down quite a bit, so it’s about a 2,000ft climb. ‍

These days we tend to get a taxi boat to Marmara and walk the E4 path from there, which is about seven miles, easier on a hot day (it was 30 C when we did it this year). After about four miles you reach Agios Pavlos, where there is a long, empty black sand beach and a lonely taverna playing interesting music and providing an excellent lunch! 

The scent of the pine forests above is incredible. After lunch, the last stretch is hard work along sandy tracks with virtually no shade — when you get to Agia Roumeli you can catch the ferry back to Loutro and be amazed to see how far you walked (note the picture from the ferry on the way home).

The Leica Q3 43 for macro and detail

The difference between the 28mm Q3 and the 43mm Q3 43 doesn’t sound so much, but it makes a big difference in terms of cropablility (the comparative file sizes can be seen in my original article). 
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Certainly, the 90mm crop is fine for all normal purposes, making the camera also good for portrait photography (more later), especially with the reduced depth of field the longer lens provides.
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The ‘macro’ magnification is actually the same as that of the Q3 (and it also limits the maximum aperture to f/2.8 like the Q3), but still, it’s easier to isolate your subject with the Q3 43.

From Loutro to Glykanera

Glyka Nera beach is about 4km along the coast to the East of Loutro. There is a relatively easy coast path, as long as you don’t suffer from vertigo! There are also several boats a day to and from Loutro and Sfakia. We tend to walk in the morning and get the boat home in the evening. There isn’t any road access.
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The beach is named after the drinkable fresh water which bubbles up through the pebbles (in English, it is Sweet Water Beach). This provides water for numerous of the communities to the West (including Loutro).

Sweet Water was a hippy beach back in the 1908s and 1990s and although nowadays, there are ‘no camping’ signs, some people still sleep on the beach — including us on rare occasions… 
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There is a taverna on a rock at one end of the beach where you can get an excellent lunch in a lovely environment.

Portrait diversion with the Leica Q3 43

One of the shortcomings of the 28mm Q is that it’s quite challenging to limit the depth of field for portraits, in addition shooting at a 75mm equivalent results in a small pixel count. Although the 43mm lens on the new camera doesn’t sound so different, it’s APO design and slightly longer focal length makes for some great out of focus bokeh, and cropping to longer focal lengths results in an increased pixel count.

Back in the UK

Sadly, holidays end! The advantage of having used Fotos for culling is that I didn’t arrive home with 3,000 photos that needed assessing and processing, a job which ought to be a pleasure, but often seems like a chore. Instead, I had 400 decent images to process. Some of them illustrate this article. There are lots more in a Lightroom Gallery (see link below)
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Looking at the cut, I have 340 images from the Q3 43 and 60 from the SL3 (mostly wide angle and telephoto).

For me, the surprise is that I didn’t really see myself as a Q shooter. My M11 and SL3 cover all of what I require, and although I’ve always thought the Q was a great camera, it’s never truly been my thing. But I do tend to use 35 and 50mm lenses most of the time on my M11.

Leica Q3 43: Conclusion

The combination of the 60mp sensor and the 43mm lens makes the Q3 43 all I require for a large proportion of my work. The autofocus may not be quite up to Sony or Nikon speed, but it’s really good, and the face and animal tracking works very well for my needs, it even does a good job with our puppy zooming about.

Then there is the lens — it’s incredibly good, with gentle and precise detail in focus and a lovely bokeh out of focus. The results really do seem to be up there with the 35 and 50 APO Summicrons (both M and SL).
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If I bought everything I tested for Leica I would certainly be bankrupt, but there are some real favourites. In this case, I’ve put my money where my mouth is, and I’m really loving my Leica Q3 43.

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More images here

Visit the author’s website

Read Jonathan’s full review of the Leica Q3 43

Full test of the Leica Q3

First impressions of the Q3 from a man who came back to the fold

Jonathan Slack’s articles on Macfilos

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