Leica V-Lux 1 review

Typical continuous-shooting speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Typical continuous-shooting speed

Kodak EasyShare P850

3.6 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50

2.7 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H2

1.5 

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

1.5 

Leica V-Lux 1

1.2 

 
Image quality
We were pleased with images from the Leica V-Lux 1, which showed slightly better JPEG compression than the Panasonic DMC-FZ50, which also turned in very pleasing images. The most noticeable effect of the JPEG compression was the elimination of jaggies in certain curved or diagonal lines, though this did come at the cost of a minor amount of overall sharpness. So the V-Lux 1's images were ever-so-slightly softer than the FZ50's, but didn't have those unwanted jaggies.

Exposures were generally accurate and colours were well saturated. Also, we saw very little distortion from the lens at its midpoint and also at its furthest telephoto settings. At its widest, the lens showed some noticeable barrel distortion, though you'll probably notice it only if you're shooting something with straight lines, such as a skyscraper or a telephone pole. For a non-SLR lens, it's very sharp.

Even at its lowest sensitivity setting of ISO 100, we saw a very minor amount of noise when viewing on our monitors, though it was mostly in shadows and darker colours and probably wouldn't show up in prints. At ISO 200, it grew slightly, but again shouldn't be noticeable on photo paper. At ISO 400, noise was more apparent and showed in all colours. We also noticed a slight fall-off in the sharpness of finer details. At ISO 800, noise was obvious, but images were still usable for prints, especially at smaller sizes. At ISO 1,600, we saw abundant noise and most fine detail was obliterated. We suggest that you shy away from using this setting and stick to lower ISOs. Despite this, we were pleased to see that these Leica/Panasonic cameras have started to make some headway in keeping noise under control.

The automatic white balance turned in horribly warm images with our lab's tungsten lights. The tungsten preset was much better but still not totally neutral. Manual white balance yielded the best results. On the plus side, the camera does an excellent job of balancing fill flash with existing lights.

Though it's much bigger and more expensive, Leica V-Lux 1 offers serious competition to our current superzoom favourite, the Canon PowerShot S3 IS. Given the versatility offered by the Canon's small size and light weight, the V-Lux 1 won't take away the S3 IS's crown, but it's worth a look if you can get over its large size.

Edited by Jim Hoffman
Additional editing by Nick Hide