**First Impressions with the Leica SL3**

I have had the pleasure of spending some quality time with the Leica SL3, and I must say, it's an incredibly impressive camera. The first thing that struck me was its robust build quality and weather-sealing, which is a testament to Leica's commitment to creating high-quality cameras. The SL3 has an IP54 rating, which is not bad for an interchangeable lens camera, especially considering the size and weight of the body.

One of the features that I think sets the SL3 apart from other cameras in its class is the ability to use a variety of lenses through the L Mount Alliance. This partnership between Leica, Panasonic, and Sigma allows users to access a wide range of lenses, including some amazing options like the 100mm macro lens from Panasonic. For example, I had the chance to try out the Panasonic 100mm macro lens, which is one of my favorite lenses from the past couple of years. It's an incredible lens that offers outstanding optical quality and is perfect for those who need a high-quality macro lens.

The SL3 also features a new higher capacity battery that was introduced in the Q3, and I was happy to see that it's compatible with older SL2 batteries. However, I did get a warning message when I tried using an older battery, which indicated that some features might not be available due to the lower power capacity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make me think about the trade-offs that come with using older batteries.

I want to note that the SL3 was used during pre-production testing, and I'm looking forward to reviewing the final version of the camera once it's released. For now, I can say that the SL3 is an amazing camera that offers a lot of value for photographers who want high-quality images without breaking the bank.

**Comparison with Other Leica Cameras**

One of the cameras that I was excited to compare the SL3 to was my trusty Leica M11. The M11 is a rangefinder camera that has been my daily driver for a while now, and it's an incredible tool for those who want to shoot traditional photographs. However, the M11 is not designed with autofocus in mind, and it's much smaller and more portable than the SL3.

While the M11 is perfect for those who want to use a rangefinder camera without any electronic features, I think that the SL3 offers a lot of advantages for those who want to shoot with an electronic viewfinder (EVF). The SL3 has a built-in EVF that's much larger and higher-resolution than the M11, making it easier to compose shots and check focus.

Another camera that I was interested in comparing the SL3 to is the Leica Q system. The Q series cameras are designed with a more compact size and portability in mind, which makes them perfect for travel photographers who want to shoot on the go. However, one of the things that I think sets the SL3 apart from the Q series is its expandability.

One of the features that I love about the SL3 is that it's compatible with Leica's native SL lenses, which are designed for optical excellence and offer some amazing features like long reach and high magnification. However, these lenses come at a cost in terms of size and weight, which might be a drawback for those who want to carry their camera around easily.

**Manual Focus on the SL3**

One feature that I'm excited about with the SL3 is its ability to use manual focus adapters, like the Leica Lim adapter. This allows users to adapt rangefinder lenses to the SL3, which makes it a great option for those who want a compact and lightweight camera. However, I do think that there's room for improvement in terms of manual focus features on the SL3.

I would love to see more advanced manual focus capabilities on the SL3, like some of the features that are available on other cameras. For example, some cameras offer features like focus peaking or zebra stripes to help with manual focusing, and I think that these features would be really useful for photographers who want to shoot in manual mode.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I'm extremely impressed with the Leica SL3, and I think it's an amazing camera that offers a lot of value for photographers who want high-quality images without breaking the bank. The SL3 has a robust build quality, excellent autofocus capabilities, and a wide range of lenses to choose from through the L Mount Alliance.

I'm also excited about the expandability of the SL3, which makes it easy to adapt different lenses and accessories. However, I do think that there's room for improvement in terms of manual focus features, and I hope that Leica will address this in future updates or revisions.

For now, I'm looking forward to reviewing the final version of the SL3 once it's released, and I invite all my readers to drop me a comment below with any questions or feedback they may have.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso this is the just announced brand new Leica sl3 which is the latest Flagship in leica's mless SL lineup there's some really nice improvements over the SL2 including for the first time in an SL camera phase detection autofocus but there are a lot more new features that really make this camera not only very competitive but an outstanding choice for a full-frame mirrorless camera system so welcome back everyone in this video we are going to talk about the brand new Leica sl3 Leica invited me to come to lights Park in vetar Germany 2 weeks ago and I got to have a 24-h hourish Hands-On with the brand new camera and it is very impressive and I want to share a lot with you guys in this video a lot of the sample images that you're going to see are of the low collection at the National Auto Museum the auto museum is pretty new and the low collection is probably one of the most comprehensive and diverse auto collections of rare cars in really all of Europe they have about 150 cars that spans about 135 years of Auto history my favorite pieces are the early cars like the 1912 Rolls-Royce grey ghost that looks like it's brand new at the dealership they also have early examples of Bentley's duesenbergs from the 1930s rare Bugattis mercedesbenz they even have a Fiat talino that were all on display so the sample shots that you're going to see in this video are of these cars of course they also have modern Formula 1 cars of significance the obligatory DeLorean Aston Martin and even a 2005 one-of-a-kind Maybeck accelero so this was actually a really good place to test the sl3 because not only are you in low light but there's a lot of colors so you're going to test the dynamic range you're going to test the color rendition as well as noise with higher isos but let's get into some of the specs first on the sl3 so the sl3 is built around the 60 megapixel TR resolution sensor that we saw with the M11 as well as the Q3 cameras you can output both DG and JP Peg files at either 60 36 or 18 megapixels the base ISO in this camera is 50 and you can push the camera all the way up to 100,000 the sl3 as I mentioned features a new hybrid autofocus system which uses both contrast as well as phase detection autofocus points and it also incorporates object detection algorithms which is a first in an SL camera and quite frankly long overdue of course the system is very close to what Panasonic is doing in their full-frame mirrorless cameras the AFS mode takes Vantage of the contrast detection points for accuracy AFC uses phase detection for Speed and tracking and of course we also have iaf for humans and animals as well as object recognition and if you're familiar with the Q3 autofocus system you'll be right at home with the sl3 the sl3 also features leica's latest Maestro 4 processor which is one of my favorites really on any camera system you get very little noise at high isos and the image quality is absolutely gorgeous with this processor colors are well representative and the files retain depth and contrast even when you're pushing at those higher isos it's on par with the SL 2s but with a 60 megapixel sensor instead of a 24 the Maestro 4 offers a significant speed increase as well so we can now do things like record 8K video or h265 files the faster speeds also allow the camera to take advantage of using a CF Express card there are dual slots in this camera but you can still use SD cards as well but since we're talking about speeds this is probably a good time to mention the Le a photos mobile app okay so if you're like me you probably don't use a lot of camera manufacturers apps on the phone because quite frankly a lot of them are junk I will not say that about leas photo app it is actually very good and has been very good for a long time it's just had a speed issue with actually getting your files off of the camera what I love about the Le of photos mobile app is that it actually just uses your camera R to store the dng files but what it does is it remembers which files there are so when you want to clean things up or delete them from the phone after you put them somewhere else it's really easy to do because you'll see them in like a photos now I mentioned speed has been an issue on this app for a while and what I really love about the new sl3 is first of all we have improved Wi-Fi speeds and so if you watch these are 60 megapixel files and you can actually see when I did a little transfer test how fast they are transferring to the phone the other thing that I really like about it now is we now have USBC compatibility with M if you're using an iPhone or an Apple product and this really speeds things up if you use the cable and it's also really easy to use you literally just plug the cable into the camera you plug the other end into the phone and voila it recognizes the camera you can bring your photos right in now it's also compatible with Lightroom as well as capture one so if you're using either one of those mobile applications I use the Lightroom Mobile app all the time in fact all the images that I took on this trip with this camera I not only used the app to transfer from the camera to the phone but I stored them on my camera roll brought them into Lightroom it uploads them into the cloud when I come back here to the studio it automat automatically downloads everything and it is so seamless this is the way to travel we've been waiting for something like this for a long time and kudos to Leica for actually figuring this out to where it is very usable so I am really impressed the sl3 also features some significant changes in the body design over the SL2 most notably we have an LED lit power button which I actually really like so colors on this button will indicate charging status for instance red green yellow and there's also a standby mode which we didn't have with the standard on andof switch so it's nice to be able to just put your camera in standby when you're not going to use it for a minute and be able to power it right up very quickly the body itself is a little bit shorter and a little bit less wide than the SL2 but it's also slightly thicker than the SL2 it still feels extremely solid and the grip is maybe even more comfortable than the SL2 which is one of my favorites the screen is now tiltable which is really nice for high angle or low angle shooting and the screen itself Now features gestures as well as touch functionality like swiping to scroll the menus or you can go back you'll also notice a new dial on top of the camera which is defaulted to control ISO but what I really love about leica's approach to this camera really any camera in the SL line is that all of the dials are customizable to pretty much whatever you want them to be and what I really love about the sl3 is it gives you enough custom functionality also you'll notice much like this is an SL 2s but the buttons aren't labeled as anything so you're not going to look at it in ciso even though you've mapped it to something else and so first of all that makes sense because you can customize it exactly how you want it the other thing I loved about the sl3 is it gives you enough functionality between gestures on the screen all the custom function buttons you probably don't ever need to dive into the menus once you have it set up plus you have all your user save settings so you can set it up for different scenarios it's a very functional and very versatile camera system you'll also notice that the three interface buttons that are pretty much on every like a camera have been moved they're now on the right side of the display screen so this makes one-handed operation possible it's a really welcome addition to the cameras design and since we're talking about usability so when I was in Germany at lights Park they did a presentation before we had hands on with the cameras we could hear about it we could hear from the engineers and the people who actually worked on the cameras the designers as well and for the first time at any camera presentation that I've ever been to they actually had a ux designer come up and talk about the changes and the overhaul to the design system itself now there's nothing drastic on here so if you're used to the ASL system you're going to find it very comfortable you'll know where everything is but what's really nice is just having a consistency in icons the way they display the way they're organized the way you're going to go through the screens this is something that's really welcome it's very well thought out and there's a whole system that they've designed for the new icons in fact like I like to call them Lyons but anyway it was very cool and I'm really glad to see a camera actually put an emphasis on user interface design that's something is much needed in this industry another feature that I really like on the sl3 is that when you pair this up with the mobile app you can install a new color profile which Leica call Eternal it is available in the app like I mentioned and it looks great the reds are really pronounced the contrast is good and this profile actually embeds into the raw data so it's not something you have to burn into a JPEG and I thought this was a really interesting idea that's come from ly and I can see a lot of use from this down the road the profile is very saturated and is very intensive and so you can bring it into Lightroom and you can actually take out the embedded color profile and you can go back to Adobe color or whatever you want it to be I like to use my own presets still one because I designed them and I know what to expect out of them I also thought that the Reds were really intense with the Eternal profile and sometimes I want my yellows to come up for more of a film look and so I'm able to do that with my presets if you were interested in checking out my Kodak and Fujifilm simulations I'll put a link in the show description below I use them all the time you're seeing them on some of the images here they're very cool and worth checking out and a few other new features for those of you concerned with weather resistance the sl3 does have an ip54 rating which is not bad for an interchangeable lens camera and the sl3 also uses the new higher capacity battery that was introduced in the Q3 now you can use the older SL2 batteries I only had one battery when we were out shooting and so I brought some of my SL2 batteries you do get a warning which is really interesting and it just tells you that you're using an older battery that's a lower power capacity and it just says some features may not be available I don't know which features those are it just says some of them and I'm not going to get into reviewing this camera that deeply because I do want to say that this was pre-production firmware that we were using and I don't really think it's fair to review that I want to review what is available to the public once it comes out so I will do a more in-depth review later on down the line so to wrap this up what do I think about the sl3 so obviously I thought the sl3 was pretty awesome if you can't tell from my enthusiasm here I do think the SL system is like as approached moving forward I think the L Mount Alliance was really smart I think that what you get out of the El Mount Alliance is the ability to have different companies kind of fill different needs in the lineup so for instance I reviewed the Panasonic 100 mm macro lens which is one of my favorite lenses that's come out in the last couple years I think that lens is amazing Leica don't have a one:1 SL macro lens they just don't so if that's something you need well you can use the Panasonic lens and all the functionality works on the Cameron so that's something that is really cool now I do want to kind of compare the SL to some of the other cameras in leica's lineup so one of the most obvious would probably be the Leica M system this is my Leica M11 I bought this as soon as it came out this is really my daily driver I'm a huge M fan there have been a lot of people who want to see an m camera come out without a rangefinder they want to see it with an evf and while I think that's okay that is not what the m is that is actually what an SL camera is and I think this is the system for it the M represents an older camera design that is very traditional and it's for those who want to use it is the only Rangefinder in existence other than you could argue the pixie cameras which are APS C size sensors at this point and so it's really the only competitive one plus having just a traditional M Mount I mean the M11 is an incredible camera however if you're interested in autofocus and you're interested in evfsnyx0ecm camera system you can take it anywhere it's very portable I think that a lot of people will get into the Q system because of that but quite frankly I also think a lot of people get into the Q system because it seems like a good price point for Leica it's going to be a little bit cheaper and the lens is included however I think one thing you're looking at later on down the line with something like the Q is it's not expandable when the Q4 comes out one day you'll have to replace your entire system which from a cost perspective doesn't make as much sense again this is where the SL comes into play now I want to get into this when I do a full review on this but one of the things that I do love about the SL is that you can use the native SL lenses which are pretty large they're designed for optical excellence and I think that's something that is really cool like is an Optics company and it's something they excel in and I think that's something that you need however the trade-off is you're going to have bigger and heavier lenses one of the things that I love about the SL system this is my SL 2s is that you can use the Lim adapter and adapt just about any Rangefinder lens to this which gives you a manual focus only lens but it's very small very compact very lightweight one of the things that I would love to see Leo or any camera company do is give us more features and functionality in terms of manual focus we have all these things with autofocus but there are some manual focus AIDs that I think would be very easy to do and I'll get into this in a later video but of course as always I would love to know what you guys think so feel free to drop me a comment below ask me any questions this a pretty amazing camera so thank you Leica for having me out to Germany and allowing me to try this out and test it more videos to come I guarantee we see you guys in the next video Until then laterso this is the just announced brand new Leica sl3 which is the latest Flagship in leica's mless SL lineup there's some really nice improvements over the SL2 including for the first time in an SL camera phase detection autofocus but there are a lot more new features that really make this camera not only very competitive but an outstanding choice for a full-frame mirrorless camera system so welcome back everyone in this video we are going to talk about the brand new Leica sl3 Leica invited me to come to lights Park in vetar Germany 2 weeks ago and I got to have a 24-h hourish Hands-On with the brand new camera and it is very impressive and I want to share a lot with you guys in this video a lot of the sample images that you're going to see are of the low collection at the National Auto Museum the auto museum is pretty new and the low collection is probably one of the most comprehensive and diverse auto collections of rare cars in really all of Europe they have about 150 cars that spans about 135 years of Auto history my favorite pieces are the early cars like the 1912 Rolls-Royce grey ghost that looks like it's brand new at the dealership they also have early examples of Bentley's duesenbergs from the 1930s rare Bugattis mercedesbenz they even have a Fiat talino that were all on display so the sample shots that you're going to see in this video are of these cars of course they also have modern Formula 1 cars of significance the obligatory DeLorean Aston Martin and even a 2005 one-of-a-kind Maybeck accelero so this was actually a really good place to test the sl3 because not only are you in low light but there's a lot of colors so you're going to test the dynamic range you're going to test the color rendition as well as noise with higher isos but let's get into some of the specs first on the sl3 so the sl3 is built around the 60 megapixel TR resolution sensor that we saw with the M11 as well as the Q3 cameras you can output both DG and JP Peg files at either 60 36 or 18 megapixels the base ISO in this camera is 50 and you can push the camera all the way up to 100,000 the sl3 as I mentioned features a new hybrid autofocus system which uses both contrast as well as phase detection autofocus points and it also incorporates object detection algorithms which is a first in an SL camera and quite frankly long overdue of course the system is very close to what Panasonic is doing in their full-frame mirrorless cameras the AFS mode takes Vantage of the contrast detection points for accuracy AFC uses phase detection for Speed and tracking and of course we also have iaf for humans and animals as well as object recognition and if you're familiar with the Q3 autofocus system you'll be right at home with the sl3 the sl3 also features leica's latest Maestro 4 processor which is one of my favorites really on any camera system you get very little noise at high isos and the image quality is absolutely gorgeous with this processor colors are well representative and the files retain depth and contrast even when you're pushing at those higher isos it's on par with the SL 2s but with a 60 megapixel sensor instead of a 24 the Maestro 4 offers a significant speed increase as well so we can now do things like record 8K video or h265 files the faster speeds also allow the camera to take advantage of using a CF Express card there are dual slots in this camera but you can still use SD cards as well but since we're talking about speeds this is probably a good time to mention the Le a photos mobile app okay so if you're like me you probably don't use a lot of camera manufacturers apps on the phone because quite frankly a lot of them are junk I will not say that about leas photo app it is actually very good and has been very good for a long time it's just had a speed issue with actually getting your files off of the camera what I love about the Le of photos mobile app is that it actually just uses your camera R to store the dng files but what it does is it remembers which files there are so when you want to clean things up or delete them from the phone after you put them somewhere else it's really easy to do because you'll see them in like a photos now I mentioned speed has been an issue on this app for a while and what I really love about the new sl3 is first of all we have improved Wi-Fi speeds and so if you watch these are 60 megapixel files and you can actually see when I did a little transfer test how fast they are transferring to the phone the other thing that I really like about it now is we now have USBC compatibility with M if you're using an iPhone or an Apple product and this really speeds things up if you use the cable and it's also really easy to use you literally just plug the cable into the camera you plug the other end into the phone and voila it recognizes the camera you can bring your photos right in now it's also compatible with Lightroom as well as capture one so if you're using either one of those mobile applications I use the Lightroom Mobile app all the time in fact all the images that I took on this trip with this camera I not only used the app to transfer from the camera to the phone but I stored them on my camera roll brought them into Lightroom it uploads them into the cloud when I come back here to the studio it automat automatically downloads everything and it is so seamless this is the way to travel we've been waiting for something like this for a long time and kudos to Leica for actually figuring this out to where it is very usable so I am really impressed the sl3 also features some significant changes in the body design over the SL2 most notably we have an LED lit power button which I actually really like so colors on this button will indicate charging status for instance red green yellow and there's also a standby mode which we didn't have with the standard on andof switch so it's nice to be able to just put your camera in standby when you're not going to use it for a minute and be able to power it right up very quickly the body itself is a little bit shorter and a little bit less wide than the SL2 but it's also slightly thicker than the SL2 it still feels extremely solid and the grip is maybe even more comfortable than the SL2 which is one of my favorites the screen is now tiltable which is really nice for high angle or low angle shooting and the screen itself Now features gestures as well as touch functionality like swiping to scroll the menus or you can go back you'll also notice a new dial on top of the camera which is defaulted to control ISO but what I really love about leica's approach to this camera really any camera in the SL line is that all of the dials are customizable to pretty much whatever you want them to be and what I really love about the sl3 is it gives you enough custom functionality also you'll notice much like this is an SL 2s but the buttons aren't labeled as anything so you're not going to look at it in ciso even though you've mapped it to something else and so first of all that makes sense because you can customize it exactly how you want it the other thing I loved about the sl3 is it gives you enough functionality between gestures on the screen all the custom function buttons you probably don't ever need to dive into the menus once you have it set up plus you have all your user save settings so you can set it up for different scenarios it's a very functional and very versatile camera system you'll also notice that the three interface buttons that are pretty much on every like a camera have been moved they're now on the right side of the display screen so this makes one-handed operation possible it's a really welcome addition to the cameras design and since we're talking about usability so when I was in Germany at lights Park they did a presentation before we had hands on with the cameras we could hear about it we could hear from the engineers and the people who actually worked on the cameras the designers as well and for the first time at any camera presentation that I've ever been to they actually had a ux designer come up and talk about the changes and the overhaul to the design system itself now there's nothing drastic on here so if you're used to the ASL system you're going to find it very comfortable you'll know where everything is but what's really nice is just having a consistency in icons the way they display the way they're organized the way you're going to go through the screens this is something that's really welcome it's very well thought out and there's a whole system that they've designed for the new icons in fact like I like to call them Lyons but anyway it was very cool and I'm really glad to see a camera actually put an emphasis on user interface design that's something is much needed in this industry another feature that I really like on the sl3 is that when you pair this up with the mobile app you can install a new color profile which Leica call Eternal it is available in the app like I mentioned and it looks great the reds are really pronounced the contrast is good and this profile actually embeds into the raw data so it's not something you have to burn into a JPEG and I thought this was a really interesting idea that's come from ly and I can see a lot of use from this down the road the profile is very saturated and is very intensive and so you can bring it into Lightroom and you can actually take out the embedded color profile and you can go back to Adobe color or whatever you want it to be I like to use my own presets still one because I designed them and I know what to expect out of them I also thought that the Reds were really intense with the Eternal profile and sometimes I want my yellows to come up for more of a film look and so I'm able to do that with my presets if you were interested in checking out my Kodak and Fujifilm simulations I'll put a link in the show description below I use them all the time you're seeing them on some of the images here they're very cool and worth checking out and a few other new features for those of you concerned with weather resistance the sl3 does have an ip54 rating which is not bad for an interchangeable lens camera and the sl3 also uses the new higher capacity battery that was introduced in the Q3 now you can use the older SL2 batteries I only had one battery when we were out shooting and so I brought some of my SL2 batteries you do get a warning which is really interesting and it just tells you that you're using an older battery that's a lower power capacity and it just says some features may not be available I don't know which features those are it just says some of them and I'm not going to get into reviewing this camera that deeply because I do want to say that this was pre-production firmware that we were using and I don't really think it's fair to review that I want to review what is available to the public once it comes out so I will do a more in-depth review later on down the line so to wrap this up what do I think about the sl3 so obviously I thought the sl3 was pretty awesome if you can't tell from my enthusiasm here I do think the SL system is like as approached moving forward I think the L Mount Alliance was really smart I think that what you get out of the El Mount Alliance is the ability to have different companies kind of fill different needs in the lineup so for instance I reviewed the Panasonic 100 mm macro lens which is one of my favorite lenses that's come out in the last couple years I think that lens is amazing Leica don't have a one:1 SL macro lens they just don't so if that's something you need well you can use the Panasonic lens and all the functionality works on the Cameron so that's something that is really cool now I do want to kind of compare the SL to some of the other cameras in leica's lineup so one of the most obvious would probably be the Leica M system this is my Leica M11 I bought this as soon as it came out this is really my daily driver I'm a huge M fan there have been a lot of people who want to see an m camera come out without a rangefinder they want to see it with an evf and while I think that's okay that is not what the m is that is actually what an SL camera is and I think this is the system for it the M represents an older camera design that is very traditional and it's for those who want to use it is the only Rangefinder in existence other than you could argue the pixie cameras which are APS C size sensors at this point and so it's really the only competitive one plus having just a traditional M Mount I mean the M11 is an incredible camera however if you're interested in autofocus and you're interested in evfsnyx0ecm camera system you can take it anywhere it's very portable I think that a lot of people will get into the Q system because of that but quite frankly I also think a lot of people get into the Q system because it seems like a good price point for Leica it's going to be a little bit cheaper and the lens is included however I think one thing you're looking at later on down the line with something like the Q is it's not expandable when the Q4 comes out one day you'll have to replace your entire system which from a cost perspective doesn't make as much sense again this is where the SL comes into play now I want to get into this when I do a full review on this but one of the things that I do love about the SL is that you can use the native SL lenses which are pretty large they're designed for optical excellence and I think that's something that is really cool like is an Optics company and it's something they excel in and I think that's something that you need however the trade-off is you're going to have bigger and heavier lenses one of the things that I love about the SL system this is my SL 2s is that you can use the Lim adapter and adapt just about any Rangefinder lens to this which gives you a manual focus only lens but it's very small very compact very lightweight one of the things that I would love to see Leo or any camera company do is give us more features and functionality in terms of manual focus we have all these things with autofocus but there are some manual focus AIDs that I think would be very easy to do and I'll get into this in a later video but of course as always I would love to know what you guys think so feel free to drop me a comment below ask me any questions this a pretty amazing camera so thank you Leica for having me out to Germany and allowing me to try this out and test it more videos to come I guarantee we see you guys in the next video Until then later\n"