Even many people who have purchased the new Leica Q3 may not be aware of a feature this camera has that can greatly expand your creative possibilities when using flash. Inside the Q3’s beautiful magnesium alloy body lies a secret hidden right in front of your eyes.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to start by saying I bought it Leica Q3 on my own terms and my opinion of this camera is entirely my own. This is not a sponsored review.
I fell in love with the Leica Q series after owning one Leica Q2 a time. It quickly became my camera of choice when traveling or leaving the house for a walk. I liked it so much and was so impressed with the quality of the images it produced that I soon started using it for my personal photo projects as well. The image below was taken on a Leica Q2 as part of a personal (and ongoing) project to explore in all six states of New England, the tangible legacy of the region’s industrial past on the landscape. its view.
When the Leica Q3 came out, I knew I wanted to upgrade. There are some aspects of the new model that I think are worth upgrading, but the Q3 also has a 60-megapixel sensor compared to the 47-megapixel sensor in the Q2. When you’re working with wide-angle, fixed focal length lenses, every extra pixel can be really useful if you find yourself needing to crop your image in post-production.
A common feature of all Q series cameras is the leaf shutter. Most modern cameras have a focal plane shutter consisting of a pair of curtains that open and close in a staggered sequence to reveal the light-sensitive sensor or film emulsion behind them. In contrast, a leaf shutter is an annular arrangement of metal blades that are typically integrated into the lens and can open and close rapidly just like your iris. This should not be confused with the lens aperture, which is structurally quite similar, although if you examine the arrangement of the foils in the lens aperture you can get a pretty good idea of how it is constructed. of leaf shutter and how it works. It is functional.
So why is this a big deal?
Leaf shutters are more complicated and expensive to manufacture, but they have several advantages over focal plane shutters. They are usually quieter and produce less camera shake, but their big advantage is that they allow you to sync the flash at much faster shutter speeds.
Most cameras equipped with focal plane shutters have a maximum flash sync speed of about 1/200 second. If you try to use a faster shutter speed with the flash, the focal plane shutter movement will not have time to completely avoid when the flash fires. As a result what you get is a shadow cast on the image by one of the shutters as it passes across the frame. This effect is demonstrated in the photos below taken with a camera with a focal plane shutter. In the photo on the left at a shutter speed of 1/100 second, the flash exposure worked well. In the photo on the right at 1/500 second, you can clearly see the shadow of the shutter in the lower part of the photo.
Unlike a focal plane shutter, a leaf shutter does not have elements that must traverse the entire frame during exposure—instead, it opens and closes radially toward its center in a proportional manner. is mechanically similar to the way your iris opens and closes in response to changes in light levels. This allows you to use much faster shutter speeds with flash without the risk of catching the shadow of the moving shutter in the frame.
For cameras with a focal plane shutter, there is always the option of using a high-speed sync strobe for faster shutter speeds. Instead of a single flash during the exposure, a strobe with high-speed sync creates a series of very short pulses of light throughout the exposure. This avoids the problem of shutter shadows catching in the frame, but—not all cameras and strobes support high-speed sync; The setup is a bit more technical; and the biggest disadvantage is that you often need stronger strobes because the pulsed light output of high-speed sync is significantly less efficient than the light distribution in a flash.
However, thanks to its leaf shutter, the Leica Q3 can do the trick without high-speed sync—working perfectly with conventional strobes even at extremely fast shutter speeds.
This can be extremely useful when you want to use a flash outdoors. If you’re shooting a dynamic scene with fast movement—such as dancing or sports—you may want to use a fast shutter speed to freeze movement, combined with a wide aperture to get separation clearly separates the subject from the background. . Even when there is little or no movement in the frame—such as when shooting portraits—you often need to isolate your subject from a complex background, and this may require using a wide aperture . This is especially true when shooting outdoors, where you have much less control over the background than in a studio.
However, when shooting outdoors, ambient light levels can be so high that it is difficult to use a wide aperture during the day without having to increase the shutter speed faster to avoid overexposure—the shutter speed The shutter often exceeds the camera’s flash sync speed. .
And this is where the Leica Q3’s leaf shutter really shines.
The following series of photos were taken on a beautiful sunny afternoon in sunny Cambridge, Massachusetts. One of the landscape experts from my wife’s gardening company and our youngest son, a football enthusiast, kindly agreed to be the models for this brief test of Leica Q3Ability to synchronize flash at high shutter speeds. For flash, I used one Godox AD200 Flashing is triggered from the camera’s hot shoe by one Godox X2T Activate the flash. Everything was done with the camera and strobe in full manual mode (no TTL), with the camera’s shutter speed set to 1/1000th of a second and the strobe at full power.
For portraits, I decreased the aperture slightly to illustrate how you can separate the subject from the background by reducing the exposure of the background rather than blurring the background with a wide aperture. This also creates the kind of dramatic lighting you see in the two portraits.
I took the football photos a little later in the afternoon when the sun was lower and less intense. Without using an ND filter, I can shoot with the aperture open to f2.8. I was also able to really take advantage of the high resolution of the Leica Q3 sensor by shooting wide-angle to ensure all the action was captured, then cropping the image in post-production. As I said in the introduction, this is one of the features of the Q3 that makes it a very versatile camera, capable of handling a variety of shooting situations despite its fixed focal length lens. .
In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that the Leica Q3 is not the only camera that uses a leaf shutter. If you’re looking for an alternative to the Q3 that also supports fast flash sync, look no further than the new version. Fujifilm X100VI, or indeed any of its X100 predecessors. With the X100 camera you even get a built-in flash which the Q3 doesn’t have, but its output is very small compared to a strobe like the AD200 I used here. If you’re using the Fuji built-in flash outdoors during the day, don’t expect it to perform any better than a close-up compensation flash for reducing shadows. You may still want to use a stronger external strobe if you find yourself taking photos in bright lighting conditions.
