Phil Hanson goes wide with Leica’s new compact and says it delivers pictures a pro would be pleased with.

Most of today’s compact digitals are good at pulling in reasonably distant objects with the ‘long’ end of their lens but suffer at the other end of the zoom range, where some cannot even offer a modest 35mm full-frame equivalent.

That’s fine for many photographers who can’t or don’t want to get close to the action, or who like a nice telephoto effect for their portraits. But the market hasn’t been kind to those who like to take photographs in the thick of things, or who enjoy the visual impact of wide panoramas.

Leica’s D-Lux 4 embraces the needs of wide-angle enthusiasts, offering a genuine 24mm full-frame equivalent view. And it goes one step further, with an optional 24mm optical viewfinder that slides into the hot shoe.

DÉJÀ VIEW

The D-Lux 4 replaces the similar looking and well regarded D-Lux 3 but there are many changes to what at first seems like a familiar camera. For example, the D-Lux 3 zoomed to an equivalent 112mm whereas the newcomer stops at 60. The D-Lux 3 didn’t have a hot shoe. But most important, the D-Lux 4 takes better pictures, if only because of less noise at higher ISO. The earlier camera was starting to get noisy at 400 ISO; now, 400 is fine and 800 quite usable.

Two things that haven’t changed are the quality feel of a well-built product and its good handling. I’m somewhat clumsy but the D-Lux 4’s controls, though small, are so well positioned that I never hit the wrong button, something I can say about few compacts.

WIDE PRIDE

The DC Vario Summicron lens offers an aperture of f2 to f2.8 and performs well wide open across the zoom range. Those who buy the D-Lux 4 for its wide view will be pleased by the low distortion and vignetting. Adding icing to the wide-angle cake is the ability to switch to a 16:9 picture format, in which the effective resolution drops to nine megapixels instead of the 10 in 4:3 format. I’m going through a 16:9 junkie phase, so that’s where I pretty much left it.

ON THE GO

Unfortunately, the D-Lux 4 is just a little too big to carry in a shirt pocket, but would be fine for a jacket or bag, meaning it can still be a constant companion.

Leica allows users to have full manual control, or you can just click it into Program and let it work on your behalf. This became my favourite mode because settings can be tweaked to suit your needs.

An easy alternative is using the various Scene modes, ranging from soft skin to film grain; but because Murphy’s Law says you always have the wrong scene selected for the picture that needs to be taken, I abandoned it in favour of Program.

CONCLUSION

Many compacts only produce pictures in JPEG format and there’s no problem with that for many applications. But the D-Lux 4 also shoots RAW, which allows a huge range of adjustments in post-processing and is favoured by professionals.

It’s when burying your head in the pixels during RAW processing that the stellar performance of the D-Lux 4 becomes apparent.

It’s no Leica M8, but costs a fraction of its big brother’s price and will produce images that are perfectly acceptable for the pro and keen amateur.

LEICA D-LUX 4 – Specs

• Manufacturer: Leica

• Model: D-Lux 4

• Price: $1495

• Effective pixels: 10.1 million

• Lens: DC Vario Summicron 5.1-12.8mm ASPH zoom (24-60mm full-frame equivalent) with image stabiliser

• Viewfinder: 24mm equiv 
optional accessory

• Monitor: 3-inch TFT colour LCD

• Shutter: 60 sec-1/2000 sec

• Aperture: f2-f2.8

• ISO: auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200

• Shooting modes: Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, Manual, 2 x custom modes, video

• Exposure metering: Multi-field, Centre-weighted averaging or Spot

• Focus modes: Autofocus, face recognition, AF tracking

• Media: SD, SDHC, MMC

• File format: JPEG, RAW

• Flash: Auto, auto and anti-red-eye, long-time synchro and anti-red-eye, flash always, flash off, first/second shutter curtain

• Interface: USB 2.0

• Battery: Lithium-ion rechargeable or optional mains unit/charger

• Dimensions: 109 x 60 x 27mm (W/H/D)

• Weight: 228g

CONTACT

Your nearest stockist

PROS

• Genuine wide-angle performance

• Optional manual adjustment for almost everything

• Excellent images

• It’s got that red Leica dot

CONS

• Too big for my pocket

Somewhat pricey

Design                      18
Performance             18
Features                   18
Image Quality           19
Value for money       15

TOTAL     88/100

This article if from D-Photo issue 29.

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