The Leica Q3 Monochrom produces unrivaled black and white photo quality, and it

Leica Q3 Monochrom: review in two minutes

Money is no object, I would probably choose the Leica Q3 as my favorite compact camera. This is a fabulous 61 MP full-frame camera with an extremely sharp 28mm f/1.7 fixed wide-angle lens and the ultimate everyday carry.

I also love black and white photography, especially on sunny days when light and shadow are the stars of the show. So it was a pleasure to kick off 2026 by going out on freezing UK mornings, with the low sun illuminating my surroundings and the Leica Q3 Monochrom in my hand – it’s identical to the original Q3 in virtually every way, except that it only shoots in monochrome.

This camera is as niche as it gets, and for many it also begs the question: why would you choose a camera that only takes black and white images when you can just select a black and white color profile in a regular camera, like the original Q3, that also takes color photos whenever you want? Why restrict yourself? This was the focus of my testing over the course of three weeks with the Q3 Monochrom.

For me, the reasons why I would opt for a camera like this are twofold: one technical and one creative. The creative reason is simple: its restricted parameters. I can’t switch to color. I see the image in real time in black and white, and it helps me really appreciate light and shadow, shape and composition.

Shooting in black and white can be a great exercise to help improve the quality of your photography overall, if you introduce color into the equation at other times. You can, however, get this experience with a “normal” camera using a black and white color profile, so that’s not a good enough reason in itself. However, the second technical reason is increased sensitivity to light.

Simply put, all sensors in digital cameras see in black and white. To produce color images, a set of color filters are placed in front of the sensor, the most common being the Bayer pattern with red, green and blue pixels (RGB – with twice as many green pixels).

The downside is that a colored filter array reduces sensitivity to light, leading to increased noise and decreased sharpness. In short, this slightly reduces image quality, which is more clearly visible in difficult lighting conditions.

So – and especially if you mainly like to take black and white photos – a color filter is more of a hindrance than a help. With these image quality drawbacks, it’s like diluting juice when you could otherwise enjoy all the flavor straight from the source.

A monochrome digital camera offers the purest form of black and white photography you’ll get from a digital camera; and in my experience with the Q3 Monochrom, there’s something a little more about the quality of the black and white images it produces. A subtle improvement, grain rather than nice noise and cinematic quality. However, highlight clipping is a major drawback of this type of sensor.

Yes, the monochrome Leica Q3 is as niche as it gets, and it also costs a pretty penny at $7,790 / £5,800 / AU$12,090. But if you like black and white photography, this is the ultimate everyday camera and one of the best compact cameras on the market.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: price and availability

• Announced November 20, 2025 and available now
• Prices from $7,790 / £5,800 / AU$12,090

Leica revealed the Q3 Monochrom in November 2025 and it went on sale immediately, priced at $7,790 / £5,800 / AU$12,090. This represents an increase of around 5% compared to the third quarter, launched in 2023.

The Q3 series models use the same BP-SCL6 battery, while Leica sells a variety of accessories in its online store, including a half leather case, thumb grips and carrying straps.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: specifications

Leica Q3 Monochrom: design

• Same design as the Q3, except for the Monochrom logo
• Divine lens quality and handling
• Clunky tilting touchscreen

The Q3 Monochrom has essentially the same premium, minimalist design as the original Q3, save for its suitably monochrome logo. This means that it works exactly the same as the original model, for better and for worse.

The 28mm lens is the star of the show, not only in terms of the images it produces, but also because of how it handles them; it’s equipped with decent autofocus, but is designed in a way to appeal to fans of manual focus, with autofocus activated via a well-hidden button on the manual focus ring.

It also looks like a manual focus only lens. There are focus distance markings and a macro mode activated by turning a dial that reveals new focus distance markings – a design masterpiece.

Other design features are also the same. We have a decent 5.76 million-dot viewfinder, as well as a 1.84m-dot tilting touchscreen. However, I’m not a fan of the tilt design: it sticks out from the back of the camera. And it is difficult to grab and remove to pull at waist level. For the next Q installment, Leica should take notes from Fujifilm and others.

Every touch demonstrates premium quality, from the knurled control dials with just the right amount of resistance, to the removable battery and the viewfinder’s pop-up diopter adjustment. The design of the memory card door could use some tweaking as it seems to be a weak point, but in terms of quality I can’t fault the Q3 Monochrom otherwise.

For a deeper dive into the design of the Leica Q3 Monochrom, check out my Leica Q3 review.

Leica Q3 Monochrom: features and performance

• 61MP high-resolution sensor with digital crop modes
• Reasonable autofocus performance and precise manual focus
• Average battery life

There are no changes from the original Q3 when it comes to features or performance, with the exception of monochrome-only images, which I’ll double down on in this section.

To summarize the other aspects first, the Q3 Monochrom’s startup time is quick, battery life is average at best, autofocus accuracy and speed are good, while the in-body image stabilization performance is only okay, but certainly welcome in a camera capable of capturing such high-resolution photos.

And with 61MP to play with, there’s huge scope for cropping images to mimic the look of tighter lenses – a feature accessed directly using one of the two buttons above the LCD (the gallery below shows a selection of images digitally cropped using the camera’s maximum crop setting, then the full uncropped version for comparison). The other button above the LCD screen switches from still images to video, with 8K video recording present again.

The lens’ macro setting reduces its close focusing distance, allowing flowers and other small subjects to be captured in exquisite detail – it’s another string to the Q3 series’ bow (see gallery just below).

I also like how the lens’ maximum aperture looks nice and bright at f/1.7. Pair that with image stabilization, and the Q3 cameras feel more versatile overall than the superb Fujifilm GFX100RF, even though that camera has an even sharper lens – check out my real-world Q3 vs GFX100RF test to see how these high-end compacts compare.

The 28mm lens also produces some of the sharpest solar stars I’ve seen (check out the image of the backlit tree two galleries down); again, for more details, check out the third quarter review.

Now let’s move on to the quality of black and white images. First off, there are three main monotone profiles to choose from: natural (which is the profile I’ve used for most of this review), plus a sepia and blue look.

However, I was surprised and disappointed to see how many options Personalization is limited for these profiles. For example, the contrast can be changed for these presets, but you cannot apply a filter effect, as you can do, for example, with the Fujifilm and Ricoh alternatives.

That said, it’s possible to upload LUT profiles to the camera from the Leica app for other creative styles, or of course attach a physical filter to the 28mm lens. I like to use an orange filter to create dramatic skies with an infrared-like look, while a green filter can accentuate skin tones.

I shot with the Q3 Monochrom in a wide range of scenarios, shooting all images in RAW (DNG) and JPEG format. When comparing the two, the natural profile brightens shadows, at the cost of rich contrast.

In all images, details are very sharp, with a nice fine grain, much like an ISO 50 film photography feel.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the original Q3 along with the Q3 Monochrom to make direct comparisons. However, I have previous experience with such comparisons and therefore know that images taken in black and white with a color camera have more pronounced noise and the details are slightly softer.

I’ve since done some research and discovered that YouTuber Florian Froschmayer has posted a very helpful video that shows the ins and outs of each Q3 model, with comparisons that back up my experience.

His video also emphasizes a major warning about using a monochrome-only digital camera: highlight cutoff is unforgiving. If you were to overexpose an image – that is, with highlights thrown out – you wouldn’t be able to recover these details to the same extent as with a color model, like the original Q3.

Already knowing this, I took underexposure into account when shooting with the Q3 Monochrom. To some extent, this approach may offset the image quality benefits of its better light sensitivity, but the fact remains that its images are sharper and sharper than those of the Q3 when viewed up close. If you like black and white photography, with good exposure control, the black and white image quality of the Q3 Monochrom exceeds that of the Q3.

Should I buy the Leica Q3 Monochrom?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

If you don’t like black-and-white photography, the image quality improvements brought by the Q3 Monohcrom are hard to justify when you consider the greater versatility of the Leica Q3, which also shoots color, has a higher ceiling for highlight recovery, and costs less.

Read my Leica Q3 review

How I tested the Leica Q3 Monochrom

• Leica loaned me the Q3 Monochrom for three weeks
• I used it on a daily basis, shooting images in a variety of scenarios.
• I took all images in RAW and JPEG format and used the macro setting and all focus modes

I spent three weeks using the Leica Q3 Monochrom as my primary camera, shooting all photos in RAW and JPEG format. I used the macro setting for close-up photography, tested the digital crop mode, and switched between manual and autofocus modes.

During editing, I looked at shadow and highlight recovery, and took a close look at the quality of detail, especially in low-light photos where this type of sensor excels.

First revision in January 2026

Tim is the Camera Editor at TechRadar. He has spent more than 15 years in the photo and video industry, most of them in the world of technology journalism. During his tenure as Assistant Technical Editor at Amateur Photographer, as a freelancer and subsequently editor at Tech Radar, Tim developed extensive technical knowledge and hands-on experience with cameras, educating others through news, reviews and features. He has also worked in video production for Studio 44 with clients such as Canon, and spends his free time consulting with a diverse non-profit story team based in Nairobi. Tim is curious, a keen, creative and passionate footballer and runner, and a moderate flat white drinker who has lived in Kenya and believes we have much to appreciate and learn from each other.

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