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Average user rating:
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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4.0 stars
"excellent camera for the real world"
Pros: easy to use, excellent photos
Cons: a little large for pocket carry, slow re-charge between shots
Summary: This is my first digital camera. I've used the same slr for all my work for years, and the change was quite dramatic.
I bought this camera because I wanted something I could use to take quick photos, which was simple enough to use that I could hand it to a bystander and ask them to shoot for me if need be but that would produce photos of sufficient quality that I could crop and fix a little, plop into a layout and email to my printer for mass production without any hoo-haw. My reasons for buying the camera were ease of use and speed to production. But I needed something that would produce a photo good enough to go to print.
I've taken photos for publications for years, but I'm not a professional photographer. There's nothing artsy about my work. I simply need to illustrate copy in a clear, almost stark way that communicates the idea to a casual reader at a casual glance.
This camera does all that.
I eliminated other brands of cameras one by one, for different reasons for each one. The Leica I bought has a Panasonic twin that is priced for less. But when I compared warranties, the price difference flattened out. I just have a prejudice against companies that do not respect their products enough to warrant them. I've been burnt in lots of contexts by ignoring this. So...I went with the Leica.
I've carted the camera around everywhere. On long trips and short, through some tough work days. It's small enough to put in my purse or waist pack, but not my pocket. During the time I've owned it, I have taken about 2500 photos that were good enough to keep, (I have no idea how many I deleted. As I said, I'm not all that great as a photographer.) and I have mass printed a quite a few of them, some after massive crops. The weakest of them came through with good-enough resolution and clarity to tell the story.
I don't know what other people are looking for. I've heard complaints about noise in low light, but again, the camera appears to me to take good-enough low light photos to be reproducable if you fix them a little. That's all I need and all I ask.
This is my first Leica. I tend to use cameras for a long time. It's just easier when I use tools that I know. As I said, I'm not a professional or an artist and I don't have those standards. Truth told, my eye isn't really good enough to appreciate it. But this is a hard-working, simple little camera with a lot of flexibility and power and what seems to me to be a very nice lens.
I'm glad I bought it.
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