Let's talk a bit more about the new craze of compact cameras. The ones with zoom lenses and lots of features.

 

I took a small, compact camera with me on a commercial job in Santa Fe this Spring. It was nearly perfect. It was the Leica DLUX8. It's currently one of my favorite cameras. Just one or two little flaws...

Nothing gaffer's tape can't fix.

I've always been a fan of small, self-contained, compact cameras. I illustrated an entire book once with a Canon G10 camera which was a small camera with a fairly good zoom lens and 14 megapixels of resolution, which at the time was "class leading." That camera worked well for my 100+ illustrations because I was mostly photographing objects that didn't move. I could put the little camera on a huge tripod and shoot at the base ISO. And at the optimum aperture (f5.6?). If I needed to photograph models or lifestyle scenes for the book I had time to light them with strobes or high powered lights and, again, use optimum settings. 

The Canon G series camera I have right now is the G15 which is very easy to use, very reliable and offers RAW files as well as Jpeg. It has image stabilization, blink detection, and shoots fast. It has a 5x optical zoom that starts out at f1.8. It's a solid brick of a camera with 12 megapixels of rez, and it's even got a built-in ND filter. Its only downside, really, is the small sensor size. 1:1.7. That sensor size limits dynamic range and high ISO performance but for an all-around, carry everywhere camera it's been great. 

The compact camera I give the most attention to right now is the Leica DLUX-8. It's a modern version of the compact zoom cameras and it's got really good image quality. I wish it had the 3 stop ND filter of the Canon which would allow greater exposure flexibility in bright sun... But there's a lot that Leica/Panasonic got right in this current camera.

The DLUX-8 makes really pretty files. If you shoot in raw you can push the files around in post production to a much greater degree than earlier generations of compact cameras with smaller sensors. Since the sensor is based on the m4:3rds format it gives up a bit of resolution and sensor size to several non-zoom compacts like the Ricoh GR iii or the Fuji X100Vi. But its advantage is the flexibility of having a good zoom lens which, to my mind, in a small, everyday carry camera is a distinct advantage. 

For my use the EVF is the stand out feature of the DLUX-8 when compared to other small cameras. I was not interested in this camera until I had lunch with my friend, Andy, who is the quintessential early adopter of eccentric cameras. One day at lunch he pulled the tiny DLUX out of a bag and handed it to me. At first blush it seemed like every similar model from major camera makers. Then I brought the camera to my eye and looked into the EVF. It was outrageously good. They had me at the EVF.

When I took delivery I was expecting the usual nice Leica features. A very good and easy to use menu/interface. The category killer finder. The industrial design... But I expected the camera to operate and deliver like similar cameras from Panasonic that I had used in the past. On paper it seemed that they used the same lens and rumors were that the lens on the new camera was decent but nothing to write home about. Once again "reviewer failure" struck. The lens was actually extremely good in conjunction with that camera's sensor. Really good. Sure, reviewers get a lemon from time to time. But I think what happens more often even is that the supplied "demo" camera from a camera maker gets sent along, serially, to reviewer after reviewer. Since the camera belongs to the company and not to the reviewer I think the reviewers, generally, are less careful, less protective of, and less liable to treat their temporary review product with care. They bang them around, test them out in conditions that fall outside the engineering parameters for the device and also do their actual tests shooting mostly handheld in a car with bad springs while driving over potholes and railroad tracks. 

The DLUX-8 has a 24-75mm lens that starts at the wide end with f1.7 and ends up with f2.8 at the long end. My own DLUX8 is fitted out with a half case, a thumb grip and a high quality protection filter (something I don't use on my more expensive ILC lenses mostly because if they become damaged beyond repair they don't take the host camera along to the graveyard....). 

I bought three extra batteries at time of purchase but that was a mistake. The camera is easy on batteries and I could have erred on the other side of caution and gone with just one extra battery. 

I mentioned one "con". There are really two. One is operational while the other is aesthetic. I'll start with the nuts and bolts issue: the diopter adjustment wheel moves from its set position far too easily. When I start out a walk with the intention to photograph the first thing I have to do is to re-adjust the diopter. It needs much firmer clicks!!! That's where the gaffer's tape comes in handy. 

The second con has nothing to do with image quality or usability. Not at all. It's totally a visual preference thing. When the camera is turned off the lens is close to the body, like a pancake lens. It looks perfect. Just perfect. Then, when you turn the camera on the lens extends out from the body to its fullest extension and stays there. It looks awkward. It looks visually unbalanced. I understand that the lens has to be a certain size to work; especially with a wide to short tele range as wide as the one in the DLUX, but it would look so much cooler if the camera worked instead at the fully retracted position. Since you don't notice it when you have the camera up to your eye I guess it's really a moot point --- but there it is. 

The camera doesn't come with a stand alone battery charger. You can charge the batteries in camera via the USB connection but I chose to buy a third party charger to hurry the process along. 

I've had nothing but good luck with the images out of camera. I'd use it most of the time but I keep a Leica Q2 in the car for the days, like today, when it's pouring down rain. The DLUX8 doesn't even pretend to be weather sealed. Not weather resistant --- or even the least bit enabled to resist moisture intrusion. You have been warned. 

Would I buy it again? If I could pick up another one at the originally introduced price I would already have my credit card out and be the punching numbers into a website. At $1900+ I'd want to have a specific project in mind that would benefit from me having back up camera. At $2400+ ? Nope. Not for a second body. And even if I wanted to buy one and saw that price I'd buy a mint SL2 body instead. Not every shooting situation calls for a pixie camera. 

Why does this category exist? It continued life as a follow on from a vast range of very successful and popular compact film cameras that hit the market in the 1980s and 1990s. Cameras like the Rollei 35S which was small and light but, of course, used the full frame of 35mm in conjunction with a Zeiss 40mm f2.8 lens to deliver incredibly sharp and detailed files. The Nikon 28Ti and 35Ti compact cameras which were made with titanium shells and featured wonderful lenses. The Minox ML. And then going back all the way to the 1970s with rangefinder (real rangefinder) compacts like the Canonets and the Olympus RC cameras. The difference being that most of the film compact cameras came with single focal length lenses. That changed with the introduction of the Contax Tvs which was a film compact camera with a Carl Zeiss 35-65mm f2.8 to f5.6 zoom lens camera. High end compacts starting becoming available with good quality, short range zooms. They were a fundamental back-up resource for photographers who were traveling light, with only one pro camera, but who understood the need for a decent back-up camera; just in case. 

In the last ten years the camera makers, who continued to make digital compacts cameras even after conventional wisdom seemed to doom the category because of ever improving cameras in iPhones, soldiered on with cameras like the Sony RX100 series, the Leica X Vario, and a subset of "Super Zoom" fixed lens cameras from Olympus and Panasonic. Most of them good enough for just about any situation in which the images will be destined for the web. 

Panasonic and Leica made a number of models based around a small camera design featuring a short range, standard zoom, an m4:3rd sensor and a nice overall package. The DLUX8 is a continuation of that family of cameras. 

While most photo bloggers assumed that consumers would opt for either using their phones for photography or stepping up to mirrorless cameras or DSLR cameras the market had other ideas. The Fuji X100 (original) sent up a signal flare announcing that the category of smaller, compact but optically powerful cameras was far from dead. As the line of X100-x cameras progressed consumers could not get enough of them and by the time they introduced the X100V the product was so popular that they were almost unobtainable. Other camera makers took notice and came back to the fold to profit from a newly reawakened product category which could compensate, financially, for the rapidly declining, sub $1,000 small DSLR products. The compact, non-interchangeable lens cameras offered consumers a significantly better choice between the phone cameras and the full fledged interchange lens mirrorless and DSLR cameras. 

The compact, fixed lens cameras now offer much bigger sensors than their digital predecessors, more advanced processors, more features, more resolution and more advanced image processing. For most uses where the photos will end up on social media or on websites these cameras can be quite competitive. While they won't totally replace professional cameras in the camera bags of professional photographers they will provide really great images within a wide but not "ultimate" range of uses. And usually at a much lower price.

There are many people, in addition to rank and file consumers, who want to do really great photography but don't want to carry around the bigger cameras or mess with changing lenses while out on the street or while traveling. If they know their technical chops they can get the kinds of images they want from the best of the compacts. 

I chose to pick-up a DLUX-8 partially because, over the years, I've owned at least a dozen of the luxe compact film cameras from Leica, Minox, Canon, Nikon and Contax. All were very, very good and they are the cameras with which I first started making photographs. They could be dedicated monochrome cameras if all you ever bought was black and white film. They were able color cameras with no loss of detail to anti-aliasing filters. Or they could be an all-around camera and make use of both. Many of the earlier cameras were able to be used even if the metering batteries failed. Mechanical shutters were there for your use. 

I've owned fewer of the digital versions but have always seem to have one sitting in the camera bag or in a desk drawer for those times when I thought stealth and compactness were more important than "ultimate" image quality; if such a thing even exists. Until recently the Canon G series was my favorite. The cameras were dense, solid and well engineered. And more importantly they made files that looked great. I got back into the compact premium cameras with the Fuji X100V but sold two of those cameras to skew my budget toward a new (at the time) Leica Q2. I still consider the Q2 and the Q3 to be two of the best ever compact, non-interchangeable lens cameras but sometimes I want something smaller, lighter and more adaptable to a wider range of situations. The new DLUX-8 seemed to fit the bill perfectly. And, with the two "cons" I mentioned above I think it does. 

If I were the manager or owner of a big camera company I'd be moving full speed into high end, compact, zoom lens cameras. It seems that everyone has more or less settled on shooting with 28, 35 and 50mm lens and nearly everyone I know would almost always prefer to pick a compact camera over a full sized pro camera for just about all of their work. Maybe that's why the Canon G7X mark iii is sold out everywhere. Same for the Fujis and the same for cameras like the Ricoh GR series. Those are the cameras that tyros and pros alike are clamoring for. Tastes may change again but the phones have taught consumers that you can do a hell of a lot in a smaller package. Cameras makers are paying attention. 

Below: Images from the Leica DLUX-8: