With the silver variant of the Leica SL2 and Leica SL2s on the market, we’re pretty sure that the Leica SL3 and SL3s might be coming next year. But we don’t actually know if that’s what they’ll be called, considering that Leica is taking inspiration from their vintage R series cameras for this. It might just be called the Leica R3! We’re not here to chat about the name, though. Instead, let’s talk about what Leica really needs.
The Grander Photography Space
As time has gone on, Leica’s prices seem pretty in reach of many photographers who make taxable income from their images. Even if you use a camera for your work, they all seem pretty reasonable, considering the features that you’re getting. Granted, you’re not getting lots of the best and brightest tech that the Japanese manufacturers are stuffing into their cameras. But instead, you’re getting durability, simplicity, and a color rendering that I haven’t seen from many of these other brands. Leica’s menu system isn’t all that complex — though it is lengthy. And compared to something like Sony’s menu, it’s a relief. Even paging through Nikon’s menus and setting something as a custom function is painful on the mind. But with Leica, all you have to do is press and hold a button for a while until the menu item pops up for you to rewire it.
I purchased the Leica SL2s a while ago. And while it isn’t perfect, I think that it’s still really good if your work primarily consists of photographing people. While it launched with incredible autofocus, the other brands have also become much better. In the end, it’s still more about who the photographer is that’s shooting the images than the camera itself.
We’re sure that the Leica SL3 will have similar capabilities.
The Design
Considering what the Leica Q3 became, we’re very confident that the Leica SL3 will have a tilting LCD screen of some sort. It’s also bound to keep the joystick — which is a major part of how you use the camera.
We hope that the Leica SL3 will add a few more buttons for the photographer to be able to customize the experience more. And most importantly, we don’t want it to be a camera for the creator space. Instead, it should just target photographers. If creators want a camera made by Leica for their needs, then consider something like the SL2s with its incredible video output. However, this camera should be just for photographers.
So, what do photographers need that the Leica SL3 could add? We’re taking inspiration from the Leica R6 for this one. You can read our review of that camera here and look at the gallery above?
- More buttons, as stated previously. Make them programmable as well.
- A drive dial or some sort of dial on the top left of the camera’s viewfinder area. There’s enough space for this and buttons.
- A higher-density electronic viewfinder
- A shutter shield sensor protector of some sort
- Wireless charging would be really cool
- Multiple exposure mode
- Live View Composition (from Panasonic or OM System)
- A touch-capable menu system
- The ability to constantly have the information shown in menu 1 displayed on the back LCD screen when cycling through the display settings.
- Buttons that light up or glow in the dark
These are just a few things that the Leica SL3 could get that would make it really over the top and worth the purchase for me. But of course, then there are specs.
The Specs
We can’t really expect that the Leica SL3 will be able to compete with something like the Sony a1. However, Leica has been the only brand that can get the 60MP sensor from Sony. Other brands go for somewhere in the range of 45MP max. Since we want the Leica SL3 to be a photographers camera, here’s what we’d like:
- 15 frames a second in mechanical shutter mode. We’ve got no need for 20 fps.
- Really clean high ISO output so when we print at 17×22 we’ll see lots of detail and little noise.
- AI scene detection for humans, animals, and birds. We don’t really need vehicle detection modes.
- The creative profile looks that the Leica Q3 has.
- Dual card slots and a lot of internal memory. The Leica SL2s had 4GB of internal memory. Can the Leica SL3 get 500GB or 1 TB?
- Low ISO shooting down to ISO 50
- A silver variant on launch
- Up to 8 stops of image stabilization
- Product detection (Fujifilm has this feature on their newer cameras, and it’s pretty cool)
- Continued IP durability ratings
- An optional vertical grip that can make the camera shoot at a faster frame rate
- Autofocus detection that works on people of color in low light moving around
These are on my dream list. I’m sure that it’s going to be a Sony sensor at the heart of the Leica SL3, and I wish that other manufacturers had sensors worth looking at. But that’s not the case right now.