Leica’s new Q3 Monochrom camera sees color as a distraction. So much so that even its all-metal body is entirely monochrome, breaking convention by not featuring the brand’s signature circular red logo on the front.

This newest edition of the Leica Q3, a mirrorless full-frame camera compact enough for day-to-day use, shoots exclusively in black and white, which Leica describes as photography in “its purest form.” 

It’s fitted with a specially developed 60 megapixel sensor that’s unable to process any colors. This means it doesn’t need features like a Bayer filter, typically used to help the sensor better interpret colors, and allows all light to reach the sensor, resulting in a sharper final image with additional depth.

These are the details that black and white photography purists crave, and the Leica Q3 Monochrom is squarely targeted at that audience. 

Priced at $7,790, over a grand more than a regular Leica Q3, the monochrome camera is a niche product with a cost to match. But there is an audience for it, as this camera creates the most detailed monochrome images and 8k colorless videos from a Leica Q3.

Leica already caters to a core clientele. The company, which invented the first mass-produced 35mm camera back in 1925, still makes use of heavy materials like brass, rarely found in today’s modern cameras, to both ensure durability and give its creations a sense of weight rare in our digital world. Its cameras are also handmade in its German factory using traditional techniques, an obsessive level of craft that’s made it a staple in the world of professional photography.

The camera company's Monochrom line, and its newest Q3 Monochrom edition, is precision-engineered for an even smaller circle of obsessives that still shoots the old-school way, in black-and-white.

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