leica q3 monochrom love

This is not a review.
Yesterday I was lucky enough to be loaned Leica’s new Q3 Monochrom camera for a short walk around Dublin by Bermingham Cameras. I’ve a strong link with them through the RAW Podcast, which I host with fellow wedding photographer Paul Monghan. I was joined by Paul and another good friend and wedding photographer, Ryan Devereux, who was also testing out some Leica gear himself.

The idea of a camera that only shoots black and white had never really been on my radar until this thing was released. Now it very much is. In fact, I know I’ll never be truly happy until I own one. My god, the image quality is insane, and the low-light performance almost feels like a party trick. You’ll come across a shot of Ryan that I took in a narrow laneway off George’s Arcade. Out of sheer curiosity, and probably testing a scenario I’ll never encounter in real shooting terms, I pushed the camera to 200,000 ISO. The result is grainy, absolutely, but also completely usable. That still doesn’t quite compute.

I remember a time when going past ISO 3200 felt like a genuine gamble, when you’d hold your breath importing the files, expecting a mushy mess. Looking at what’s possible now, it’s hard not to feel that we’re hugely spoilt.

The walk itself followed a fairly well-worn Dublin loop. We started at the shop on the quays, headed up towards Music Maker to make ourselves look learned and interesting, stopped at Mani Pizza for a slice, cut through George’s Arcade, over to the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, down Grafton Street, into Trinity to once again look learned and interesting, and then back to Bermingham’s where they eventually pried the camera from my white-knuckled grip.

So why would I want a camera that only shoots in black and white?

For me, black and white has never been about nostalgia or stripping colour away for the sake of it. It’s about attention. When colour is removed, what’s left has to stand on its own. Light, shape, gesture, timing. It asks a bit more of the photograph and, in return, gives something back that feels quieter and more lasting. Working this way forces a commitment from the very first frame, a decision to see differently rather than deciding later at the desk.

That’s where the Leica Q3 Monochrom feels like the perfect tool for the job. It isn’t trying to be versatile or all things to all people. It does one thing, and it does it really, really well. The files have a depth and subtlety that reward time spent looking. The way it handles light, particularly in more challenging conditions, suits the way I like to work. After a short time with it, shooting in black and white stops feeling like a constraint and starts feeling like clarity.

With that in mind, the images that follow feel like the right place to pause and simply look.

All files were shot in RAW, edited in Lightroom with only basic adjustments like exposure and cropping.