Leica Digilux 1

Opinion: a review on a 9 years old camera is always going to look very different.

this camera is not and has never been *great*, even in his heyday you had to wrestle with it to truly get the best out of it.

but to this day i have not given it away, and to this day i will use it as a "special" camera when i want a different "look" to what i am doing.

the redeeming features are:

* beautiful design. to this day it is a showstopper. and it is built very, very neatly; a very satisfying tactile and visual experience with its Bauhaus design.

* it is *fun* to play around with. it is Feb 2010, and i still like to take it out and take pictures of things to see what i get, and some of the pictures (colors, separation, and that slight posterization effect that is a personality trait of this camera) are simply gorgeous.

i think it still is a great camera for people to learn photography basics with.

it is engaging, at times frustrating, and oddly satisfying.

and from a design perspective, there is a lot in this camera that vendors should look at.

back in the day i didn't think it was as bad as its press - even though it was overpriced for what it was. but these days, it is a total bargain for someone looking for a third or fourth camera that is very different; and definitely fun to use to this day.

Opinion: To explain the rating; This camera is buildt like a tank. The features are few, and
thank God for that. Only the Ricoh GR-D comes close, so maybe it should have
gotten five stars instead of two? I chose to give image quality five stars, because of
the corner to corner sharpness, unlike almost all compacts today. Noise reduction is
poor, and that gives me the choise of choosing the level of NR in PP. Cudos to Leica.
Only Ricoh and Olympus have chosen same aproach. To me, sharpness is
everything, noise is style, or the manufacturers fingerprint. B&W prints are
astonishing from this five year old camera.
The camera is as responsive as a DSLR. And with an Extreme III card, TIFF writing
speed is under 5 sec. and you can take four fine quality jpeg's in 1 sec. The ease of
use is unparallelled.
I got mine used with extra battery for $200, so the value for money was of course
exellent:-) I was planning on buying a new Olympus 730/ 770 or Pentax 30W, untill
I looked at test images. The lenses of these new compacts are really bad, and the
sensor is to small. They are so soft in the edges that it's a joke.

Here is a hint: Shoot in tiff with sharpness at max, and color/ contrast at low setting.
Enhance contrast and saturation in PS, and apply Noiseware or NoiseNinja
moderately.
And of course; Take one of these to a party and you'll be the coolest person there.
The retro style is awsome! And the battery lasts forever.
This must be the most under-rated camera of the century.

Opinion: It was a great camera to start shooting digital photography. Quirky, original,
fun to use. Construction quality not great. But four years on I still look at it
with fondness. It's still used regularly, but now by my daughter. I now shoot
with a Leica Digilux 3. The digital clock moves on at an alarming pace...

Opinion: I recently bought this camera used because of the magical Leica name even though this 4 MP Model is almost five years old. I’m thinking that 10 MP with one of the small sensors that comes with these new automatic cameras is a cruel marketing joke. Used within it’s quirky constraints, the Leica Digilux 1 is capable of superb images.

Pros:
- Great Pictures in Natural Light.
- Awesome Macros.
- Built of die cast magnesium and like a 'tank.'
- Really Terrific 2.5 inch, 205,000 Pixel LCD Screen.
- Fast and Accurate Focusing most of the time.
- Very Cool Looking Camera. Nothing else looks like this baby.

Cons:
- Pictures in artificial light are not so great or maybe it's the software I'm using, which is an old version of Adobe Photoshop Elements that came with the camera. Pictures taken under fluorescent light have a yellow cast, which I just can't seem to get rid of.
- Doesn't have as many modes as more modern digital cameras, but maybe that's not so bad.
- I take all my pictures at ISO 100 and use a tripod if necessary. At higher ISO’s, the pictures are just too noisy.
- No RAW output.
- Won’t handle strange lighting situations (like backlighting) as well as more modern digital cameras with more sophisticated software.

Opinion: I have just returned from a trip to Canada (great country!!!) and I took with me on this trip my old and trusted Digi1. I could have taken my Nikon D50 with multiple lenses, but I chose the D1 because of its ease of use. I have never encountered the soft focus problem you read about from some shooters. I took several hunded shots and I wold say 80% of them turned out to be beautiful photographs. The other 20% were might fault as a photographer...waiting to long to snap the shutter or hurriying a shot when a second or two more would have made great art. The color reproduction I get out of the Digi 1 is wonderful...I seldom have to do anything in Photoshop except a small crop, because the images are so crisp and clean. It makes outstanding B&W prints as well. In fact i did a book three years ago with it in black and white. While the camera may be pushing four years in age, and other boxes no have 10, 11, and even 12 mega pixels, this little black box with tis super lens just keeps shooting and shooting and shooting. I think most of the carping about it comes from guys (and gals) who don't know how to shoot. A steady hand, a creative eye and a soul wanting to capture a moment in the universe– that's what makes a great photographer. Not the box. Give the Digi 1 and I'll shoot all day and have fun doing it. Give me the Digi 2 and I'll do even more. Two great cameras that have been maligned way too much.

Digi's forever.

Opinion: Well, this camera was one of the great disappointments in my photographic life. Admittedly, this camera is several years old now and can't be compared to any recent product, but some of the issues here are inexcusable. What really makes it worse is that I have a Canon S300 from the same years that had all of these issues sorted out already, so there is no excuse for a manufacturer of Leica's caliber to have released a product like this.

I am a very active hobbyist, and own several late-model DLRs, both digital and film, as well as several smaller automated family cameras. I do a lot of digital photography, and consider myself pretty knowledgable. I always wanted a Leica, and the opportunity to take control of a digital Leica belonging to a friend was a great way to get to know this brand in a medium I know quite well.

I'm sorry to report that this camera is really pretty useless.

The Leica seems virtually incapable of auto-focusing, and only every third shot has the subject nailed. Often it is the wall in background that is sharp, and I tried various AF settings.

In single shot mode it takes a staggering 10+ seconds between shots while the camera writes the data to the card. RAW is not available, so you can either shoot JPEG or TIFF.

The coloration is WAY off. I calibrate my monitor weekly, and the shots coming off this camera are all slightly greenish in hue. It's subtle, but to a trained eye it is impossible to miss.

The various controls are reasonably accessible via digital menus (aperture, shutter speed) but not well-coordinated with the brains of the system. The worst part is that the buttons and toggles on the camera are so flimsy that every time you take the camera out of the bag, chances are that you just switched it to Manual Focus or Macro, or that you are burst mode. Or you hit the shutter release and find yourself recording video.

The little monitor on the back is nice and large, though never big enough to confirm whether the shot was in focus. There is no histogram. The various menus are reasonably easy to get to, but neither intuitive for an experienced photographer, nor someone familiar with digital gadgets.

This camera is really unacceptably bad, and should have been declared poor at the time it came out. Leica would be well advised to give current owners a $100 toward a new camera, and ask for the old ones back as brand management.

Opinion: It might seem odd to be writing a review of a digital camera that is 3+
years old now. Technology has moved on, pixel concentration seems to
double every 6 months . . . The Leica Digilux 1 uses a 4 megapixel
sensor; these days even inexpensive compact cameras boast 5 or even 7
megapixels. Why, then, am I moved to write a comment about what
may seem like a dinosaur among digital cameras? Frankly, I just don't
recognise what some other people have written about this camera. In
fact, I consider some of the reviews posted here to be downright
perverse. I have been using several cameras, film and digital, including
a very nice Fuji digital that I have reviewed elsewhere on this site. On a
recent trip, however, I decided to take the Leica -- no particular reason
other than it is there in the camera cupboard. In brief, it performed
superbly: it was like revisiting an old friend, and the experience was
both rewarding and reassuring. If you are reading this you have
probably read other reviews that mention the issues with the Leica's
performance at "higher" ASA settings of 200 or 400. While much of the
digital noise that these produce can be controlled with post-capture
software, the simple fact is that in many hundreds of shots I have taken
with the Digilux 1, fewer than 10 have been at anything other than ASA
100. At that basic sensitivity, the Leica consistently returns images that
are sharp, clean, beautifully saturated and balanced -- easily the equal
of the Fuji F810 I have praised so warmly for its colour rendition. What
makes the Digilux such a joy to use are its handling characteristics too:
it's solid, chunky, beautifully made, easy to use, with that marvelous
2.5 inch screen, complete with quirkily-retro screen hood that is a God-
send in sunlight. The camera just feels great. No, it won't fit in a shirt
pocket -- or at least no shirt I would wear; it's about the size of an M
series or Conxtax G2, but that's one of its attractions in this age of ever-
diminishing toy cameras.

User control is as good as one expects to find on DSLRs: exposure
compensation, flash compensation (a great feature for portraiture), spot
metering, focus and exposure bracketing, white balance (auto is always
enough), the works. The screen menus are logical and intuitive, and
don't require a PhD to interpret.

And there's that lens: whether it's made in Germany or Japan, it's still a
superb piece of glass, and the quality shows in the images it produces.
Moreover, the lens (through a neat mounting ring) will take 49mm
filters, including a polariser.

Other manufacturers may continue to offer new models every week, but
the Leica Digilux remains a rock-solid stand-by, just like it's build
quality, that is a delight to use several years after its introduction,
whether or not it has the large red dot on its face.

Opinion: I am a pro photographer. I have always used film cameras (Nikon, Hasselblad). I decided this to be my first digital camera. I bought it for an insane price of 1200 Euro in Spain (2002) so now it’s already 3 years using it.

*** Very few PROs:

Nice big LCD screen but useless under sunny light conditions. Nice ‘retro’ design but not ergonomic at all to handle. Battery life quite acceptable, but very expensive price for spare Leica batteries.

*** Huge amounts of CONs:

Not the price you’d pay for a 3,9 MP camera anyway.
I was extremely disappointed with the Digilux1 since the very first moment. I wish I’d never bought it. I expected much more from Leica, until I realised that Digilux1 is really a Panasonic. The lens, which I thought was manufactured in Leica's headquarters in Germany, is manufactured in Japan "under Leica’s control", as well as Zeiss lenses for Sony.

Unacceptable huge amounts of noise on pictures. Even in ideal light conditions and at 100 ASA. At first I thought it was a breakdown that needed servicing. They changed
it for a new camera, but still the same fully noticeable eggs-pattern all over the pristine blue skies I pictured, as well as horrible tremendous noise at any place where a situation of low shadow was. Also,the system of pixel interpolation is of a very poor quality.

Don’t ever go outdoors with Digilux1 without a Neutral Density filter. You might not be able to take pictures at a certain level of luminosity. i.e sea, snow or extensive light-reflecting surroundings. The CCD won’t allow you to, even at full stop and maximum speed. Terrible!!

Slooooow auto-focus system and not accurate focusing: half of the pictures always come out of focus though the OK green light confirms the subject is focused.

Impossible to use in a studio with Flash lights. Camera won’t ever focus subject with the low light that you find in a studio with flash lights. You will never see anything on the screen until you use the flash. So you will have to rehearsal by focusing manually and checking results on the screen. Aaaagh!!

Also, a very bad idea about not having a screwing system on the lens, to screw filters. The Leica tubular accesory designed for using filters is a total turn-off.

Very long times of recording TIFF pictures on the memory card, almost half a minute.

MOV video format. For the price of this camera, one would expect a more standard video format like MPEG (as Sony does), which would avoid hours of PC work to convert from MOV movies to MPEG. Not everyone uses Quick Time player. In fact, very few.

I would not recommend this camera to anyone, not even to an amateur. I should guess that Digilux2 has solved this problems in an important way, but in the meanwhile, who's lost 1200 euros?

Leica, kings of quality photography, you should be ashamed !!!!

Opinion: i have been use the digilux 1 for 2 years now, and a lot. It was
intended as a back up to my 6x6 rolliflex and has somehow taken
over, and I love 6x6! maybe it's the addictive 'instantness' that
always reminds me of shooting polaroids. Anyhow I've enjoyed it
very much. It's simple and versatile and the massive LCD is a
winner. I don't know why more camera's have big lcd's it's such a
part of shooting digital. Great feel to the images, good camera,
but...