I’ve been waiting for this review. Back in November 2008, I tested what I considered to be the best compact digital camera currently available: the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. I gave it a well-deserved 10 out of 10 and an Editors’ Choice award, and named it Compact Camera of the Year at this year’s awards ceremony. I wasn’t the only one who admired the LX3; I was one of them. She’s also won an impressive array of top awards from a number of other photography magazines and websites. I mention this because today I’m looking at the Leica D-Lux 4.
There are some obvious differences, the most obvious of which is the price. The LX3 isn’t cheap, and even 18 months after its launch it still costs around £320. However, compared to the Leica D-Lux 4, which costs between £510 and £595 depending on where you buy it, it seems like a bargain. That’s the price of a good mid-range DSLR with a kit lens. What’s so good about it?
So is it good value for money? Like the LX3, the D-Lux 4 has excellent build quality and a simple, classic design, but there are some subtle differences. Leica is one of the oldest brands in photography, having invented the 35mm rangefinder camera format in 1923, and unsurprisingly it’s happy to benefit from this impressive heritage. Modern Leica film and digital cameras closely resemble their 90-year-old ancestors, and the D-Lux 4 also has a distinctly retro look and feel. While the overall body shape is nearly identical to the LX3, there are some subtle differences. The top plate is flat, rather than rounded like the LX3, and the D-Lux 4 lacks the comfortable front grip of the Panasonic version. The camera’s front panel is flat and simple, and doesn’t distract from the small, expensive red logo in the upper left corner. The D-Lux 4 has all of the great features of the LX3. The best of these is the excellent wide-angle lens, with an aperture of f/2.0-f/2.8, equivalent to a 2.5x zoom at 24-60mm. This lens is Leica’s main contribution to the success of the design. While some may find the limited zoom range restrictive, the fast maximum aperture gives the camera excellent low-light capabilities at all zoom settings, and the sheer optical quality gives the D-Lux 4 excellent photographic quality.
The D-Lux 4 also features the same HD video recording mode as the LX3,Leica D-Lux 4 camera Battery
Records at 1280 x 720 resolution and 24 frames per second with mono audio. Editing time is limited to 10 minutes in HD mode, and the optical zoom cannot be used while recording.
As expected, the overall performance of the D-Lux 4 is exactly the same as the LX3, which is to say it performs quite well. It starts up in just over two seconds, and in single-image mode, the shot-to-shot interval is about 1.7 seconds in the highest JPEG quality mode. When shooting in Raw mode, the shot-to-shot interval is 1.8 seconds, and even at the Raw + Fine JPEG setting, the shooting time is 2.3 seconds, which is quite fast performance by compact camera standards. “‘Conclusive’
The Leica D-Lux 4 is the ultimate luxury compact camera. It is very expensive, also because it carries the legendary Leica brand, but despite this it is still an excellent camera with a simple, classic and beautiful design, as well as excellent build quality, handling, performance and image quality. It may be identical to the Panasonic LX3 in all but name, but for some people, the name is worth the money.
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