Leica V-Lux 1 review

Features
The most attractive feature of the Leica V-Lux 1 is its big, fast lens: a Leica DC Vario-Elmarit 12x optical, 35mm-to-420mm (35mm equivalent), f/2.8-to-f/3.7 zoom. Coupled with Panasonic's Mega OIS optical image stabilisation, this lens's long reach becomes even more useful, but it would've been better if the lens was wider than 35mm. Since not many superzooms go that wide, it would be a good selling point and would help when trying to shoot group portraits. Of course, that'd probably push the price of this camera up even more, and it definitely doesn't need that.

If you do feel the need to get wide, Panasonic offers a 0.7x conversion lens, as well as a 1.7x teleconverter for anyone who needs more than the built-in lens's 420mm equivalent (12x). Since the V-Lux 1 and DMC-FZ50 are so similar, these and other Panasonic accessories meant for the FZ50 should work with this camera as well.

In addition to the usual run-down of AF and AE modes, Leica includes two high-speed focusing modes, as well as nine-zone selectable spot focusing. There aren't many other stand-out features, though. One of the niftier ones is the flip animation mode, which lets you shoot as many as a hundred 320x240-pixel images, then string them together into a video clip that's as long as 20 seconds. Another nice touch is the high-sensitivity scene mode, which brings the camera's sensitivity up to an equivalent of ISO 3,200. In all other shooting modes, the sensitivity goes up to ISO 1,600, which is still impressive. The V-Lux 1 includes 15 scene modes, in addition to the high-sensitivity option, so if you're one of those photographers who doesn't like using manual exposure controls, you don't have to.

Tweakers, take note: the V-Lux 1 can record raw images, as well as the usual JPEGs, so you have more flexibility than some non-SLRs offer when adjusting for things such as exposure or white balance after the fact. Despite the fact that Leica makes a big deal of supporting Adobe's DNG raw format in the M8 and some of its other cameras, the V-Lux 1 seems to record in the same raw format as the Panasonic DMC-FZ50 does. Another nice feature is this camera's 16:9 video mode, which records at a resolution of 848x480 pixels instead of just chopping down the 640x480 pixels of the 4:3 video mode. Also, there's a white-balance adjustment mode, which lets you shift the various white-balance settings to make them more blue, green, amber or magenta, or a combination of those as they fall into the X/Y grid offered by the control.

Performance
Leica's V-Lux 1 performed well in our tests, though came in slightly slower than the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50. Since the cameras have different firmware, including seemingly different JPEG compression, it's no wonder we saw different results.

The V-Lux took 1.4 seconds from power-up to capturing its first shot. The time between subsequent shots was 2.1 seconds without flash and 2.8 seconds with the flash turned on. The time between capturing raw images was a respectable 5.4 seconds. This may seem like a long time, but if you want significantly faster raw performance, you'll have to step up to an SLR. Shutter lag measured 0.7 seconds under bright light and 1.1 seconds in dim lighting conditions. In continuous-shooting mode, we clocked slightly more than 1fps when capturing VGA-size JPEGs and approximately 1.2fps when capturing 10.1-megapixel JPEGs.
  

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H2

1.5 

2.6 

0.4 

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

1.7 

1.5 

0.4 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50

1.2 

1.1 

0.5 

Kodak EasyShare P850

1.7 

4 

0.6 

Leica V-Lux 1

2.1 

1.4 

0.7