The Leica Q3 Monochrom: The 28mm Trap You Might Love

The Leica Q3 Monochrom is the kind of camera that forces a decision: commit to black and white at capture, or keep color as an escape hatch. If you care about low-light street work, high-ISO texture, and files that hold together when you push them, this one sits right on the fault line between “tool” and “habit.”

Coming to you from Take Kayo, this opinionated video puts the Leica Q3 Monochrom in context instead of treating it like a trophy. Kayo frames it against a film baseline using a Leica M7 paired with a Leica Summicron-M 28mm f/2 ASPH., then contrasts that with the “do-everything” convenience of the Leica D-Lux 8. You get a blunt breakdown of why the Monochrom version costs more than the standard Q3, and why “paying more for less” is the wrong way to think about a sensor that drops the color filter array. If you have ever converted files to black and white and still felt like you were fighting mushy tones, this explanation lands. The more useful part is how Kayo treats the Q3 Monochrom as a camera you actually carry, not a spec sheet you argue about online.

The most concrete section is how Kayo shoots it when the light is bad and the shutter speed still needs to stay honest. He talks through treating ISO 6,400 as a comfortable everyday setting, then pushing much higher at night, with noise that reads closer to grain than the crawling color mess you get from many color sensors. There’s a catch, though, and it’s not the usual “dynamic range” hand-waving: highlight recovery. Kayo describes tiny point light sources blowing out hard, and the practical response is to underexpose more than you might expect, then pull shadows back later. If you tend to meter like you’re protecting shadows, this will challenge your instincts. You also get file reality, including DNG raw sizes that can be surprisingly large for a fixed-lens compact.

Then the video widens out into the real question: who benefits from a monochrome-only camera that is also locked to 28mm. Kayo is clear that you do not buy the Leica Q3 Monochrom unless 28mm already matches how you see, because there is no swapping to a tighter lens when the scene asks for it, and there is no Leica Q3 43 Monochrom version to bail you out. The alternative path is an interchangeable-lens body like the Leica M11 Monochrom, which keeps the monochrome sensor idea but lets you change focal lengths, at the cost of giving up the Q’s all-in-one simplicity. If you want to test the lifestyle without buying the newest body, Kayo points to the used market and the Leica Q2 Monochrom as a lower-risk entry. He also name-checks the one other mainstream dedicated monochrome option, the PENTAX K-3 Mark III Monochrome, which matters if you want monochrome capture without Leica pricing.

The film comparison is where the video gets more personal and more practical than a typical review. Kayo talks about swapping film stocks like swapping sensors, then contrasts that with digital where you end up chasing “rendering” by buying bodies such as the Leica M9, Leica M (Typ 240), or Leica M10-R. That framing is useful even if you never shoot film, because it forces you to admit what you are really buying: flexibility, consistency, or a specific look. There are also a few forward-looking ideas, including a genuinely interesting thought experiment about modular digital bodies with swappable sensors, plus a quick nod to monochrome video and why someone like Macky would care. Kayo closes with the kind of buyer guidance that can save you from an expensive mismatch, and he uses working examples like Penman and Baton to anchor who actually thrives with a camera this specific. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Kayo.