Introduction

I received the Q3 43 when I visited Wetzlar in August, I spent all my time with it until we wen’t to Crete on September 23rd, by which time I had written my article and selected the pictures for the release date on 26th September.
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The Leica Q3 43‍

Before that I had spent several months working on the M11-D testing, and writing for the article published on September 16th.
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The Sheep at Likkos
f2 1/4000 ISO 100

So, when we went to Crete I took the SL3 and 2 lightweight Panasonic zoom lenses with me for a change and I fully intended to use the tiny 20-60 f3.5-f5.6 and the 70-300 f4.5-5.6 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 exactly the same as the Leica 24-90!
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At the last minute I popped the Q3 43 into the bag for going out in the evenings (as one does!).
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Sparkle
f5.6 1/4000th ISO 100

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.
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Where once were Olive Groves
f8 1/640th ISO 100

Where the White Mountains meet the sea

If you fly to Chania, then you can get a bus or cab for the 2 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 up 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 torturously curly road!

The E4 coastal path runs all the way; there are difficult sections between Agia Roumelli and Sougia, but lots of lovely walks between Sfakia and Roumelli, with gorges and beaches scattered along the way.
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Loutro
f9 1/160 ISO 100

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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By coincidence 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 a drama (last time was with the M10, where Emma and I had to walk 10 miles over the mountains to pick the camera up from a bus driver in Chora Sfakion!).
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We are usually 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!
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Sunrise over Plakias
f7.1 1/250th ISO 1000

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..
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Loutro is a village nestled in a semi-circular 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.
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Sardines at Sweetwater
f2.8 1/320th ISO 1000

These days Cretan wine has come on by leaps and bounds, and there is lots of 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, with wonderful local food at the Blue House, a fine fish restaurant (Ilios), barbecued local goat, pork and lamb at Stratis, Tapas at Notos, and they do great salads at the Porto Loutro on the Hill.
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Thyme roots
f2.8 1/320th ISO 100

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 and more because 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, partly because of improved WiFi modules in the cameras and partly because cable connection now works even faster and more seamlessly.
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Red
f4.5/250 ISO 200

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 dialog
Open Lightroom mobile and go to Imports
Select items and add to the chosen Collection
(or make a new Collection)

Yellow and Blue
f4.5 1/320th ISO 1000

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.
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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 dialog, the maximum is 4 up and the resolution isn't good enough to gauge critical sharpness.
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Feed the Pigeons 24
f2 1/4000th ISO 100

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 days 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.
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Night Nurse
f2 /60th ISO 160

A word of caution however; I thought I had 'unlimited' data (there is good 5G in Loutro but the hotel WiFi 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 seem to be present and correct.
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Coloured Stones
f2 1/8000th ISO 100

From Marmara - Agia Roumeli

Heading westward from Loutro there is a wonderful 10 mile walk along the coast from to Agia Roumelli. The path also goes up and down quite a bit, so it's about 2,000 ft climb.
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The Taverna at Marmara Beach
f5/800 ISO 100

These days we tend to get a taxi boat to Marmara and walk the E4 path from there, which is about 7 miles, easier on a hot day (it was 30 C when we did it this year) After about 4 miles you reach Aghios 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 amazing.
After lunch the last stretch is hard work along sandy tracks with virtually no shade - when you get to Agia Roumelli 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)
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From Marmara to Agia Roumelli
LR screenshot with Geotagging from FOTOS
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The menu at Aghios Pavlos
1/2000 f8 ISO 100
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Taverna Poppies
1/1000 f2 ISO 100

Saint Paul
1/400th f2 ISO 100

The 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 croppability (the comparative file sizes can be seen on 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 f2.8 like the Q3), but still it's easier to isolate your subject with the Q3 43.
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Giorgos's garden
1/1000th f2.8 ISO 100

Sea Squill over Loutro
1/8000th f2 ISO 100

From Loutro to Glykanera

Glykanera 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 Sweetwater Beach). This provides water for several of the communities to the West (including Loutro).
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From Loutro to Glykanera
Lightroom Geotagging
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The path from Loutro to Sweetwater
1/800th f5.6 ISO 100
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Olive Roots
1/2000 f2 ISO 100

Serried Sea Squills
1/5000th f2.8 ISO 100
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Sweetwater 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.
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Glykanera
1/500th f5 ISO 100

The Portrait Diversion

One of the shortcomings of the 28mm Q is that it's quite hard 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.
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Emma at the Mermaid Cafe
1/640th f2 ISO 100
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Renata
1/250th f2 ISO 160
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Matt got the sea seat!
1/250th f2 ISO 200

Back in the UK

Sadly holidays end!. The advantage of having used Fotos for culling is that I didn't arrive home with 3000 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).
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The Wine Dark Sea
1/3200th f2 ISO 100
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Early Morning Loutro from room 18
1/400th f6.3 ISO 160

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 need, and although I've always thought the Q was a great camera it's never really been my thing. But I do tend to use 35 and 50mm lenses most of the time on my M11.
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Dazzle
1/8000th f5.6 ISO 200

Conclusion

The combination of the 60mp sensor and the 43mm lens makes the Q3 43 all I need 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.
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Volcanic black shingle (with expanded polystyrene)
1/3200th f2 ISO 100
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Bougainvillea
1/400th f6.3 ISO 160

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 test for Leica I would certainly be bankrupt, but there are some real favourites, and in this case I've put my money where my mouth is, and I'm really loving my Q3 43.
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The Way Forward
1/8000th f5.6 ISO 200
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The Libyan Sea
1/2000 f2 ISO 100

Cheers
1/5000th f2.8 ISO 100
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