Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have had the D-Lux for about a month now. If you search on this camera you will find plenty of reviews that list the technical data, so it doesn't add much value for me to simply repeat it. Instead, I'll report what it is like for me to use this camera. I am a hobbyist, but I shoot a lot of pictures. My previous camera was a Canon S95 PowerShot, probably the third PowerShot I had. I wanted to step up to a camera that would be easier to control manually, but at the same time would allow me to shoot autofocus or aperture priority when I wanted. I'm a consultant, and I travel 35 to 40 weeks year, and I also wanted a camera small enough that I could throw into my briefcase so it would always be there. I’m very, very happy with the D-Lux. It does exactly what I wanted this camera to do for me: it has reconnected me with the fundamentals of taking pictures – aperture, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. I've gotten in the habit of checking all of those things every time I start up the camera, and they connect me to the camera and to the craft of taking photographs. And because it's such a rewarding camera to work with, I want to take more pictures, and so I have the camera with me all the time. As other reviews have said, it will not slip into the pocket of a pair of jeans, but it will fit, with some fiddling, in the pockets of most of my jackets. The aperture ring moves smoothly with reassuring clicks at each stop, as does the shutter wheel and the exposure ring. The exposure ring removes a little too freely for my taste, and I often find after pulling the camera out of my pocket that my thumb has moved it a few notches. I've tacked it a little bit with a piece of black gorilla tape, which I've also used to cover the bright red Leica dot - some of the places I go, that would make me a target. It takes really great pictures. When it's focused correctly the images are very sharp, and it shoots really well in low light. And they just look good - it’s hard to describe, but there seems to be something aesthetically pleasing about the way they look. Although the camera is mostly plastic, it feels solid in my hands - not Leica M9 solid, but not a toy either. I dropped it once on the table, and it creased the case, but it has not affected the camera's performance. I really like the electronic viewfinder. It’s very bright and clear. Holding it to my eye and focusing through it feels like using a real camera again. There is a handy thumbwheel next to the electric viewfinder that allows you to adjust it to your own vision, a very useful feature. When I raise the camera to my eye, the large back screen goes dark and the electronic viewfinder becomes active - slick. I've configured the camera so that most of the data that can be displayed in the viewfinder is not, so I can simply focus on aperture, shutter speed, and the metering - and the metering, by the way, seems to be consistently a little dark, something I can fix in Lightroom without much trouble. After reading a lot about the camera, I decided to buy the Leica auto lens cap lens cap, and I also bought a half case (not Leica's) so that I could get a grip with my right hand, having read that the body felt slippery to some people. The case works fine. Once or twice in the month that I have had the camera I've had trouble with the lens cap. Something about the way it closed incompletely signaled the camera that there had been a system problem. Turning the camera on and off cleared it every time. I'm less pleased with the Leica software which wirelessly moves files from the camera to my iPad. There is next to no documentation for the software, and it took me several weeks to realize that the reason it wouldn't move over my files was that it does not move RAW files. By exercising the option to shoot both JPEG and RAW, I am now able to use my iPad to make preliminary selections of photos. And the camera, or the software, forgets too easily that I’ve already paired the camera to my iPad - I need to do it every few days. There are some things I don't like, but none of them would've prevented me from buying the camera if I had known about them. I wish it didn't take so long to start up. I wish there was a way I could manually put it to sleep - sometimes I'll pull it out of my pocket turned it on to take a picture, and I want to put it back into my pocket without turning it all the way off. I can't do that until the lens retracts, and the lens doesn't retract until the camera goes to sleep, so I end up carrying the camera in my hand with the lens extended. It's inconvenient, but not a big deal. The big screen on the back of the camera is plastic, and it has already developed a few scratches. I need to put a screen protector, but I wish I didn't have to. But, as I said, none of these would've prevented me from behind the camera If you get this camera, plan on spending a lot of time learning it. The menu system is quite logical, but is extensive. I've downloaded the manual to my iPad, and have been dipping into it regularly. It’s pretty well written as such things go.