Leica D-lux 3

Any updated user reviews or comments on this camera?

Haven't seen anything formal yet, but me and my mate think it's a big brick of a thing that

neither looks nor feels like a Leica.

You must be getting it confused with the Leica Digibrick! The D Lux 3 is a superb little camera the size of a packet of cigarettes and smaller than many point-and-shoots, but with full manual control, 10 mega pixels, RAW and excellent lens.

Michael, you can see a dozen B&W pictures that I've taken with the D-Lux 3 <a href="http://

www.flickr.com/photos/10268776@N00/"><u>here</u>.</a>. The others, some 100, are

taken with the GR-D. I got the D-Lux 3 to be able to shoot at 40-55mm-equivalent because

the GR-D only has a 28mm lens and fanrastic 21mm adapter.

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--Mitch/Bangkok

Its a contradiction. It has manual controls sure which is nice-but then it has no viewfinder-instead it has a big (and beautiful lcd) it has nice leica glass and 10mp but tons of noise. And despite being expensive it comes with a slow non highspeed USB port. Its a nice camera but I wouldn't buy one unless the noise was taken care of and the usb was fixed and the screen was shrunk down and a vf added. Hopefully number 4 will fix these.

I bought a Leica D-Lux 3 two weeks ago to complement my Ricoh GR-D because I wanted

to be able to shoot at 40-50mm-equivalent in addition to shooting at 28mm and 21mm

with the GR-D. But when I got my GR-D, which has a flash- shoe where you can place an

external viewfinder, I thought that I would be using my VC28 and Leica 21 viewfinders. But

in using the camera I found that I prefer using the LCD monitor because it leads to a more

"fluid" and "looser" shooting style: the few days I had an external viewfinder on the camera

I found I never used it at all, prefering to frame with the LCD. And mind you I use reading

glasses (but not for shooting), which means that I never see the image on the LCD that

clearly but I can just about make out the what the aperture and shutter speed is.

 

Perhaps the transition to using the LCD was relatively easy for me because I've been using

a Leica M6, which, unlike an SLR, one tends to bring up to one's eye only for framing the

shot, not for deciding what to shoot, if you know what I mean. Similarly with the D-Lux

and GR-D, like just seeing the scene and then framing on the LCD and then continuing to

look at the scene directly when pressing the shutter. Indeed, I've gotten to like framing

with the LCD so much that I'd be reluctant to get a DSLR because these cameras don't have

a live LCD preview. I would also miss this in the Leica M8.

Mitch, I'm curious about the degree of steadiness that can be achieved when composing with the LCD screen. When shooting with a conventional viewfinder, I steady the camera by holding it (or the hand holding it) firmly against my face. Have you printed any of your shots large enough to see whether the image is sharp enough when the camera is held at a distance?

 

By the way, as I noted in a prior thread on the same subject, a friend of mine recently bought a D Lux 3 to use as his personal camera while on assignment as a video cameraman in China. He loves it.

 

As a second aside, I wish Leica would adopt a different naming system for their digital models. The current Dlux/Vlux/Digilux can be as confusing as Fuji's system for naming films. Wasn't it simpler when -chrome meant slide and -color meant negative?

Jonathan, so far I've only printed my D-Lux 3 pictures at A4 (roughly US Letter size); but

I've made huge prints (100x133cm or 40x52 inches) from the Ricoh GR-D, which is similar

in terms of holding it steady: I haven't had a problem and have shot at some low speeds,

like 1/8th sec handheld ? of course I'm referring to pcitures that I didn't want blurred as

opposed to the once I hace blurred on purpose.

 

Yes, the D-Lux 3/Digilux 3 nomenclature is absurd and confusing, as is the Panasonic

LC2/LX2 one.

 

--Mitch/Bangkok

 

BTW, the question mark above should be a dash. Also, I forgot to add that I seem to be able

to hold these cameras steadier when I shoot than I do with my M6.

Could someone list the physical size of the sensor ?

The recent LFI shows different sizes for the other cameras

in the current bunch (M8, Digilux 3, Vlux-1) but the D-lux-3

was not in the review. I am thinking of getting a Dlux-3 for digiscoping.

 

Thanks,

 

Doug

I've had a D-Lux-3 for a few months. We all know its strong and weak points.

 

But I've made 18x8? (whatever the 16:9 format prints) size prints native RAW size that are stupidly good. This was at ISO 200, 100 is even better.

 

Noise?grain? We should face it that the new digicam cameras are the new Minox but no Minox would be as good. Sean Reid called them the new format. I call them the new Minox.

 

I, like Mitch would rather see grain/noise than a super smooth worked over image like from say my wifes Canon 450? 540? Very nice image. Very fake looking.

 

As for VF's? Wish the DL3 had one but try this. Just hold the camera up to or against your eye. Shoot. I'm serious. When the lens is wide, maybe prefocused (or the 3 area setting) you can really shoot this way. Yes totally blind no framing just look and shoot. It is steadier than holding it at arms length. It is fine for grab shots and you are a lot less visble than holding a camera at arms length. I have done it a @50mm length with less sucess but with practice it could work.

 

Neil

OK I had saved a large PSD version. This is a little JPG version. This made a wonderful 18x8ish print with some grit/grain and yet you can read the signs in the backround, on the trash in the lower right corner and it holds alot of detail not masked buy noise removal.

 

The DL3 was zone focused with the wonderful little DOF scale the camera offers. It was ISO 200.<div></div>

Just because it has RAW doesn't make it any less of a point-n-shoot. In fact RAW is more of a necessity than a feature on that camera because of the unusually high noise above ISO 100 and the abominable in-camera NR applied to JPEG's. The RAW files are huge and fill up a 2GB card in a hurry, and the extra step of NoiseNinja or the like is obligatory above ISO 100. It is an example of added megapixels for the sake of the megpixel race producing a camera that's worse than the one it replaced. There are plenty of more compact and better-performing point-n-shoot digitals on the market, and cheaper to boot. For me the lack of an optical viewfinder is a dealbreaker, because in the daytime it's hard to see and in a theater it's sure to get negative attention from the people behind you--and the usher.