The Rumors around the launch of a Leica Q3 are expanding quicker than Takata airbags.

The public spaces at Seaholm in downtown Austin have an area covered with nice shade trees. A nice place to sit outside on a hot day and have a cool drink with a friend. And until very recently they had beautiful little café tables in different pastel colors. They were small and spare and minimalist. Just the way we like small tables here at VSL. Sadly, one day, they were just gone, and replaced by these 1970s referenced ugly as F tables. All of them feature a ghastly green finish and all the chairs are cabled to the chairs for that added touch of urban paranoia. Public life on a downward slide...

Across the web I'm starting to see everyone referencing the imminent launch of the latest Leica "Q". Destined to be called, if we believe the web, the Q3. I guess it's time to update and upgrade but I was just settling in to the Q2 and no one has come close to cobbling together anything to rival it so I'm not sure why Leica is in a hurry to push out yet another camera... but let's take a look at the rumors.

The exterior of the camera is supposed to be a dead ringer for the current camera....at first sight. But in a gigantic and earth-shattering departure from Leica's usual design ethos of structural integrity over popular feature spread it looks like they might be going with a flippy screen for the rear LCD panel. Not a swivel-ly screen. Just a flippy screen. I don't need one. I didn't ask for one but I guess I could get used to it in a pinch. I imagine enough "street" photographers like to shoot surreptitiously, from the waist level, and so the addition of this capability will be seen as a plus by them. Personally, I like that there are fewer pieces  to break off on the first two iterations of the camera. LCD screens that move around are one of the mechanical parts that fails most often on other camera brands. I just happen to be a fan of structural rigidity and simplicity...

The next big change seemed destined to arrive at Leica from the moment Sigma launched their fpL camera. It's the inclusion of a 61 megapixel imaging sensor which also includes (for the first time on a Leica camera) PDAF. I suppose this means that we'll see two effects. One good for advertising and one a headache for the Wetzlar marketing team. The first effect (the bad one) we might confront is that very few of the current Leica lenses, or Panasonic lenses were designed to take advantage of PDAF and might not be able focus any faster or better than on the older cameras, which are contrast detect AF only. On the other hand, given that the AF system will be brand new and only needs to be integrated with a permanently attached, single focal length lens, I think we'll see much hyperbole about the "fastest AF camera in the world." At least until some enterprising website does an A/B comparison to disprove the marketing hype. 

But wait! There's more. 

If we can believe the "leaks" the camera will be the first of the Q series to feature either wireless charging (not thinking this is so great....) or charging through USB (which I think is a good idea). Either way, users will be able to charge the battery without removing it from the camera. And what a battery it is supposed to be. The new battery is compatible with the current battery across the line of SL cameras and the latest Q2. The big news is that (as Panasonic improved two years ago) the battery will now be more powerful. Something like 2100 milli-amp hours, up from 1800. It's not a dramatic increase but I'll take any increase in battery life they can give us. I just hope it doesn't come packaged with an excuse to raise the price of batteries to $325 from $285. The current price is already in the realm of sinister capitalist fantasy. I hope it doesn't spread.

I haven't read it yet but I can't believe Leica would launch a Q3 in 2023 without increasing the EVF resolution to what has become standard across the SL line. That would be just a hair shy of 6 million dots. And that would be a worthwhile improvement. It would move the EVF from pretty darn good to spectacular and I can only think the standardization of parts would benefit...everyone.

All of this Germanic magic and craftiness in one small box is supposed to hit the market, according to the shadowy sources on the internet, by the end of this month. But par for the course I'm sure Leica will have made a couple hundred copies at the outset in an attempt to fill thousands of orders. After all, the Q series has been their most successful seller in the digital space. Why would they want to satisfy all consumer demand in the first week, month or even year of the launch? Inconceivable. If they stretch it out they can milk the desire for years to come... ... ... 

So, will I get one? That's an unknowable question. If past trajectory gives us any sort of launch target I'm sure I'll eventually get one. Maybe five years from now when it's long in the tooth and prices have stabilized. Maybe in the next quarter if the markets don't crash. Maybe never if I can convince myself that the current Q has more than enough resolution, focuses quickly enough and with complete accuracy for my needs, and if I can convince myself that the addition of a flippy screen is an aberration and that making the decision to shamelessly appeal to the masses Leica will have ensconced the Q2 as the last super quality contender in the space. More robust and well sealed than its successor and blessed with a sensor that is the perfect compromise between noise performance and resolution. Then I'll just buy a second Q2 to have as a back up and go on with life. You can't have too many Q2s. And you can interpret that two different ways.

I'm happy though that Leica keeps making and marketing new cameras. It gives the Sony and Canon users among my group of photographer friends something more to tease me about. And the prices keep imparting a subtle frisson between my rationale brain and the bigger, more robust, impulsive shopper part of my brain which is...enervating. Oh hell. You see where this is going, right?

Are you now lining up to pre-order one at your favorite Leica dealer? Should I try to beat you to the punch? Or maybe we should just all go out for another walk. 

Banal melange of 1970s buildings. Now made chic through the passage of time and the 

diminishing of architectural taste in general.

As a home owner I have come to think of drainage as being holy. A must have.

Stereo dinner jackets.

I'm loving the strength training. It's fun to go to the gym. It's funny to watch jacked up/pumped up guys strut in front of the mirrored wall and check out their own biceps. It's funnier to watch the young women take selfies in the mirrors of their own butts. But it's mostly fun to lift the weights, do the machines and then, two days later, feel the results in the pool. Stronger means more stability in the strokes and that translates into either more speed or more endurance. Mostly your choice. 

My goal is to build swim strength, not abnormal muscle size. So far I have resisted any desire to photograph my own butt with my cell phone in between sets. We live in an insane world. Really. But, as Lao Tzu once said, "People are gonna people."