Both Canon M3 and Leica SL have 24.0 MP resolution sensors but Canon M3's sensor is APS-C (22.3 x 14.9 mm ) and Leica SL's sensor is Full frame (36 x 24 mm ).
Since Leica SL's has a larger sensor area with the same resolution, this means that it also has a larger pixel area hence better light collecting capacity for a given aperture compared to Canon M3.
One other difference between these two cameras that is worth mentioning is that Leica SL's sensor doesn't have an anti-alias (Low-Pass) filter. Removing anti-alias filter increases the sharpness and level of detail but at the same time, it increases the chance of moiré occurring in certain scenes.
Below you can see the M3 and SL sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Leica SL has a 2.6x Larger sensor area than Canon M3. Larger sensors give photographer more control on the depth of field and blurry background compared to smaller sensor when shot in same focal length and aperture.
DxOMark Sensor Scores
DxOMark is a benchmark that scientifically assesses image quality of camera sensors. It scores camera sensors for color depth (DXO Portrait), dynamic range (DXO Landscape) and low-light sensitivity (DXO Sports), and also gives them an overall score. Canon M3 and Leica SL sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that SL has a better overall score of 88, 16 points higher compared to M3's score of 72.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Canon M3 |
72 |
22.8 bits |
11.8 Evs |
1169 ISO |
Leica SL |
88 |
25.0 bits |
13.4 Evs |
1821 ISO |