My 42 year old Leica M4 has a new companion to keep it company in my original Domke bag!
I travel often on business and prefer to carry a minimum of gear. The last few months I've obsessed about having a compact camera with SLR-like image quality and sharp optics.
A week ago, I finally decided to buy the Leica D-Lux 4. Thanks to the great service at B&H, I ordered the camera on Wednesday night, had it in my hands Friday and then promptly flew off to Japan last Sunday. I didn't have much time to play with my new camera, but was able to spend an hour and half walking around with the camera Friday morning near the Ikebukuro station, in Tokyo. By coincidence, they were having some type of disaster readiness drill, so it gave me an interesting event to photograph with the D-Lux 4. While I always shoot in RAW, I don't believe CS3 supports the camera yet, so I had no choice but to test out the camera's JPEG setting.
Overall, I'm really impressed with this little gem. It's truly pocketable, the interface and controls are well thought out. I really like the focus option allowing you to move the point to any part of the scene, thus eliminating the need to focus and recompose. The lens is very sharp and distortion seems to be very well controlled. And, I was pleasantly surprised with the JPEGs from this first outing. Colors are spot on, with a pleasing and natural saturation.
While there are a few things about the D-Lux 4 (like the easily turned Mode dial) that could be better, this camera comes very close to satisfying my desire for a compact camera featuring high quality optics and manual controls that I can slip into my briefcase and take with me anywhere.
Note 1: All photos shot in Standard JPEG setting. I kept ISO at 200 or 400. Aperture varied between f/4.0 and f/5.6. Exposures ranged from 1/20 to 1/200. Except for minor cropping on three photos, and setting the black and white points (levels) using CS3, I didn't do any post processing to these JPEGs.
Note 2: The last photo is not part of the disaster readiness exercise, but I thought it was a nice example of the sharpness of the D-Lux 4 lens. This is a store display for an opticians shop near my hotel.
Note 3: Click on any of these thumbnails to see a larger file.
