Leica D-lux Review

Olympus XZ-1 - Review

We understand why the Olympus XZ-1 won the Red Dot Design Award for 2011.

Olympus has managed to pack most photographic essentials and a super lens into a small 275g compact camera and still retain the size and polished clean look.

It has the fastest lens in a compact camera on the market — the f1.8 28-112mm lens.

The 10megapixel (highest resolution 11,3megapixels) camera shoots HD stills and 720p HD-quality videos clips.

Around the lens is a mechanical lens ring and wheel which manually adjusts ISO, aperture and shutter speed.

It has a decent 1/1,63inch sensor, auto ISO (sensitivity) ranges between 100-800 and manual ISO goes up to 6400. Disappointingly, it doesn’t have an optical viewfinder, but the 3,0inch OLED monitor makes up for it.

It has a micro HDMI connector, a USB adapter and an AV adapter, so you can plug it into your TV or laptop to view videos or edit images on a bigger monitor.

Minor image editing like red-eye reduction and resizing can be done on the camera.

Be careful, though, if you turn it on before manually removing the lens cap, the protruding lens will forcefully push the lens cap. The camera can’t sense that the cap is still on. The XZ-1 is clad in timeless colours; it comes in matte black or white lacquering.

Some say the XZ-1 is Olympus’s answer to the Canon S95 or Leica D-Lux 5. We definitely think its R5500 price tag is the best answer to competitors.

mutheiwanam@fm.co.za

Review: Leica D-LUX 4 | TechCrunch

Leica has a stranglehold on the the hearts and minds of photographers everywhere. Even if the professionals call it a “dentist’s camera,” as in a camera that is popular with folks with too much money and not many photography chops, there’s something about that little red dot that is as iconic as the black and white of a Speedmaster or the clean lines of a Ferrari GTO. It’s something that survived the ravages of time relatively unscathed – perhaps worn down by evolution and advancement but still, at least to the part of the brain that desires comfort in the permanence of the material, the same.

So we come to the Leica D-LUX 4, the latest lovechild of Leica and Panasonic. The D-LUX 4 is, at its core, a Panasonic LX3K and but the price disparity is so slim that you’ll barely notice it. The D-LUX, like the LX3, has a 10-megapixel sensor, 3-inch screen, and a 10x optical zoom. The minimum focal length is 5.1 mm and the max is 12.8 (about a 24-60mm equivalent on a 35mm frame). It has a tiny pop-up flash and ISO sensitivity from 80 to 3200. It weighs 8 ounces.

I won’t go into the D-LUX v LX3 fight here but suffice it to say there is very little difference, on the aggregate, between the two. This site shows excellent side by side comparisons, for example, and there is little clear difference in the pictures.

On the whole this is a heavy-duty camera built for discerning point-and-shooters. At $699 it’s $100 more than its Panasonic-made twin and comes with little more than a battery and charger, AV cable, and USB cable. It takes SD and SDHC cards.

Shooting is great fun with the D-LUX 4. The pictures come out crisp and clear, even in low light. Take this shot, for example:

This was shot in Aperture Priority mode at the settings you see here. I have been hard-pressed to grab a shot like that, especially from about 20 meters from the subject in a dark room, with my Canon Rebel let alone a typical point and shoot. For me, that’s worth the price of admission right there.

The UI is quite clean and the buttons are all well-placed and easily accessible. The Mode wheel is a little light – it will slip out of your set mode if you jostle it too much in a bag – but once you start shooting everything is painless. I was also amazed at the quality of the LCD. Usually the LCDs on point and shoots are a “sketch” of the image taken. This LCD was absolutely true to the actual scene and was a great gauge of a shot’s value.

Photographer's Guide to the Leica D-Lux 4, Getting the Most from Leica's Compact Digital Camera

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