The new Leica C-Lux 3 is palm-sized, dressed in black and satin chrome with the distinctive red dot signifying it’s top of the class. You can also buy the little Leica in gloss white but the red Leica badge on black comes first.
The CCD captures 10.1 million effective pixels, imaged by a Leica DC Vario-Elmarit 5x optical zoom lens that equals a range of 25-125mm in SLR-speak. I have one carp about this lens: it has a maximum aperture of f2.8 at wide angle but this closes to a tiny f5.9 at the zooms tele end … that’s more than two stops lost.
Maximum image size is 3648×2736 pixels; from this you could make a sharp 41×31 cm print. There are options so you can shoot 16:9 wider screen ratio stills and run them on the home tele as a slide show. HD movies with sound can also be shot at the 1280×720 pixel size at 30 fps and played to a High Def TV via a component output.
Leica C-Lux 3 Features
The metering options are basic: just Program AE and metering is multi zone. However, a mountain of scene modes can take care of out-of-the-ordinary situations. These include night portraits, night scenery, shots of food, party scenes, babies, pets and a high sensitivity setting that ramps the ISO figure up to 6400!
Then there are attractive, experimental settings to enable you to replicate shots made with a pinhole camera or induce exaggerated grain (as when fast film is used).
The colour of images at the point of shooting can be tweaked to capture in standard, natural or vivid colour saturation or in B&W and sepia.
Panasonic/Leica’s well-regarded optical stabiliser can be used in either of two settings: mode 1 is always on; mode 2 is active only when the shutter button is pressed.
The face detection mode can determine correct exposure and focus on a number of faces in the shot.
Startup Time
A moderately good set of figures: it took the camera three seconds from power on to first shot; following shots could be taken at intervals of two seconds.
Distortion
As with the Panasonic camera, the Leica showed negligible distortion of any kind at any zoom setting. A very good performance.
Leica C-Lux 3 Specs
- Type: Fully automatic, fixed lens digital compact camera.
- Lens: Leica DC Vario-Elmarit f/2.8-5.9/4.4-22 mm (25-125mm as 35mm equivalent). 4x digital zoom.
- Focusing Range: W/T 50 cm/1.0 m to infinity; macro W/T 5 cm/1.0 m cm to infinity.
- Shutter Speeds: 60, 30, 15, 8-1/2000 second.
- Metering: Multi zone.
- Exposure Control: Program AE.
- Sensitivity: Auto, ISO 100/200/400/800/1600/6400.
- Sensor: 11 mm CCD, 10.1 million pixels.
- Image Size: 3648×2736, 3648×2432, 3648×2056, 3072×2304, 3072×2048, 3072×1728, 2560×1920, 2560×1712, 2048×1536, 2048×1360, 1920×1080, 1600×1200, 640×480. Continuous mode: three full, size shots at 2.5 fps or unlimited shots at 2 fps.
- Movies: 1280×720, 848×480, 640×480, 320×240 at 30/10 fps.
- Formats: JPEG, Motion JPEG. PictBridge and DPOF compatible.
- Flash: Auto, red-eye reduction, forced off and on, slow synchronisation. Flash range (ISO Auto): 60 cm to 6.9 m.
- Viewfinder: 6.4 cm colour LCD (230,000 pixels).
- Storage: Removable SD/SDHC/MMC memory card (none supplied), 50 MB internal memory.
- Interface: USB 2.0, PAL/NTSC AV, DC input.
- Power: Rechargeable lithium battery, optional AC adapter.
- Dimensions (WHD): 95.8×51.9×22 mm.
- Weight: 126 grams (without card, battery).
