Leica V-Lux 4 user report in the ZOO with lots of images.

On sunday morning I took the camera for a test-drive to the famous Blijdorp Zoo in Rotterdam. It was a special day because of the birth of a rhinoceros. In a large indoor housing a crowd was gathered to see this little baby. I tilted and turned the LCD to shoot over the heads of the people and then zoomed in to get the shot.

The good stabiliser and bright F2.8 aperture made it possible to get these shots without the use of a tripod. Unluckily the little rhino went to sleep behind its mother and was not to bee seen any more for the rest of the morning. For the rest of the time in the Zoo I used the electronic viewfinder for 90% of all shots. It is much sharper and with less lag then in the previous Leica V-Lux 3. The Leica V-Lux 4 has all the options to get a very good out of the camera JPG file. You can use the numerous program/scene modes or adjust the colour, contrast, sharpness and NR of the image. I mostly put it on A and F2.8, set the noise reduction to "0" and let the rest on standard. The I-resolution setting gives an "intelligent" sharpening of the image and can be useful for display of the images on the internet or your television. For more serious work it is often to much sharpening. Personally I always shoot in RAW and edit in Lightroom 4, which is included with the Leica V-Lux 4. The RAW files of the V-Lux 4 have a nice "flexibility" to gain more detail in the highlights, strong colours and shadows. A good sample are the shots of the "screaming" red Scarlet Ibis. I have used a lot off camera's who were not able to show colour differences and/or details in deep reds. As you can see the V-Lux 4 coped very well.

The good use of the shallow depth of field of the 600mm at F2.8 can be seen in the shot of the birds of prey which were behind very fine netting.

What I noticed in a very positive way was the very short shutter lag and the fast and accurate autofocus from 25-300mm. In the 600mm position the focus was slower, but this is normal for a strong tele.  The short shutter lag made it possible to capture some great action  moments, like the roaring lions, the "cleaning" pelican and the eating monkey.

In the Blijdorp Zoo you have also many large indoor places to look at animals. This was great because it had started to rain. Taking images of reptiles and fishes is challenging because of the reflecting and sometimes dirty windows. Also the fishes are always in motion. The Leica V-Lux 4 performed quit well and I managed to get some nice images and HD movies. There is however one mayor drawback  of the huge zoom range of the V-Lux 4 and that is the usability for medium range macro shots. As mentioned before you can get extremely close in the 25mm position, but this is unusable for animals behind glass. The moment you start to use the zoom in the macro position, the minimum distance is extended to 30cm and 1 meter in the 600mm position. The result was that I could not take nice close-up images of small creatures behind glass. When you have the opportunity and luck that no other people are in front of the display you can stand further away and zoom in to get your shots.  The great steady shot is a good help here. I managed to take, like this, some great shots of a sleeping reptile.

The lightning of all the aquariums is visually very nice but very bad to capture with a camera like this. You need a high end full frame camera with high iso 12.000 to get a good shot. In the weekends you can also go inside the science lab and there they have very bright small aquaria. The V-Lux 4 was in its element here and the results were great.

Also a shot HD movie of a hermit crab jumps of the screen in colour and detail. You can See the Movie on the Flikcr account (see loink at the end of this article).

On my way out of the Zoo I took some pictures of the elephants to show the huge zoom range of the Leica V-Lux 4.

My opinion about the Leica V-Lux 4:

I liked working with the Leica V-Lux 4 and the mega zoom gives you a very wide range of subjects of which you can take pictures. The camera is very responsive and good for action shots. The build in stabiliser makes it possible to take sharp and detailed images without a tripod, even in the 600mm position. The creative possibilities are endless and in combination with the supplied Lightroom 4 software also Raw files can be edited. So is this the camera for all purposes? No, although very good, a camera with a huge zoom range like this is still a compromise. The sensor size is small and gives noise at the higher ISO and also the level of detail is less then that of a APS-C camera. I have relatively big hands and it happened often that I pressed a function button with the palm of my hand. So instead of taking a picture I could only set the WB or AF field. So in handling such a compact body you have to be careful how to hold it. Would I personally buy this camera, probable yes, but only as an allround tool to have always with me next to my larger camera. There is no alternative in zoom range and light sensitivity in APS or full frame.

You can view more images taken with the Leica V-Lux 4 on the Flickr account below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/transcontinenta/sets/72157631999730664/

Enjoy the images

Robert.