Reviving the Leica

Leica: the most famous name in photography? Certainly the one most associated over many decades - fairly or otherwise - with superb cameras and lenses, and carefully-crafted, artistic pictures. Above all, with photo-journalism, although many kinds of photographer aspire to own a Leica. Cameras for the connoisseur, most definitely. Very expensive cameras! And that great cost is part of the point: the red Leica dot on a camera is saying 'I am so in love with photography, so committed to finding and taking great pictures, that I spent a small fortune on buying this camera, and all its accessories.' I am also sure that some Leica owners - men, I'm guessing - have a Leica slung on their shoulder or hanging from their neck for the same reason they wear a gold Rolex watch on their wrist - for all to see and envy.

Expensive trophies they may be, but these cameras are also fine picture-taking devices. And they are not stuck in a traditional past. Since the 1970s, and especially in the last ten years, Leica has been anxious to innovate and develop, and justify the high prices it must charge to stay viable as a camera manufacturer.

That said, not all Leica products cost thousands of pounds. In June 2009 I was able to purchase a Leica D-Lux 4, which was a small digital camera based on the Panasonic LX3, and made in the same Japanese factory, but to Leica standards; with Leica's firmware, not Panasonic's. So although it wasn't a model with an historic pedigree, it was still a Leica. It had different styling to the Panasonic, extra-nice accessories, and that famous red dot. It also, most importantly, had that excellent Leica lens. It cost me just over £600.

And here it is in my hands, the day after purchase, and already I was getting experimental with it. It begged to be used imaginatively. I needed no special encouragement whatever.

I soon added a stout handgrip, and some other things. The grip was essential. The styling was smooth and slippery - I needed something to curl my fingers around. The only thing was, with the grip attached to the baseplate, I couldn't use the lovely leather case that came with the camera. This was a brown leather affair that screamed quality and luxury - absolutely unbeatable - but you could slide the camera into it only if no grip or viewfinder or lens hood were attached. And there was nowhere to put a spare battery. So it has never been used. Instead I bought a black canvas substitute by Lowepro with an orange interior, padding, and handy little pockets. It's attractive and very practical, but has no class when compared to that brown leather case. Sigh.

I never gave my new Leica a name. It has always been 'the little Leica'. It's certainly diminutive. This it, later in 2009, and in 2010, when still new.

Here it is, alongside a really small film camera, my Minox GT-E.

And this is it, next to a film SLR, my Olympus OM-1, which is about the same size as a modern mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses.

That smallness didn't detract from the credibility of the little Leica as a serious camera. It was obviously a different proposition from the average point-and-shoot camera of the time. Indeed, it got noticed whenever I went into museums and art galleries. I recall being challenged in Bournemouth's Russell-Cotes Museum and Art Gallery in 2013. Perhaps the red Leica dot had caught the eye of the staff. One said she had followed me around, trying to guess my intentions. Was I a professional taking unauthorised pictures? Perhaps it was my care in getting the composition right each time - I was shooting statues and pictures mainly - that half-convinced her that I was after free pictures for non-private use, when by rights I ought to have declared myself, signed forms, and paid a proper fee. Just as I had some years earlier, back in the early 1990s, when I went there sporting a full-blown SLR.

Once or twice, when bagging Street Shots in the Lanes of Brighton, I was stopped and questioned - though this time it was by fellow-photographers. Surely that red dot again. On some of their recent cameras, Leica have greyed the dot, so that it's not so obvious that one is using a Leica. I was surprised that my little camera got attention. It was surely no secret - if you knew anything about the long-lasting partnership of Leica with Panasonic - that my camera was essentially a Japanese clone, and had not been handmade in Wetzlar, like this Leica M9 I saw last year in the hands of a chap called Stuart at Broughty Ferry in Scotland. 

Now that's a camera to drool over! But the general public seems to know only that the red dot means Something Desirable, and hence the owner must be worth talking to. Oh dear! My D-Lux 4 was a genuine Leica; but actually only that accessory handgrip bore the legend 'Leica Camera Germany'.

I will say, however, that the little Leica has proved to be a star. It took 62,515 photos up to its replacement by a newer camera in August 2015. It has come out of retirement once or twice since, and currently has 63,591 shots under its belt. But it's still functioning perfectly. In the course of ten and a half years' use, it has acquired some small signs of wear and tear, but it's still remarkably handsome. This was it in May 2017, and it looks just the same now in January 2020.

Maybe I do take proper care of my stuff, so that it lasts well. But I think there must be high quality built in, to look like this after so much use. 

So why this post?

Well, by the second half of 2019 I was starting to take a renewed interest in using a ‘proper’ camera. I continued to be highly satisfied with the photographic output of my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone. It was excellent, no other word, for taking perfect 'record shots' of whatever caught my attention. It got everything right, and its camera was easy to deploy, at least in Automatic mode. I loved the large bright screen: what an aid to composition! And its low-light abilities were impressive - hence my ever-greater fascination with dimly lit church interiors! Its processing power ensured that everything was as sharp as could be. No wonder I enjoyed using it. 

Except that the camera on the S8+ had a fixed aperture of f/1.7 (nice and fast, but no choice about depth of field) and no optical zoom (although you could safely crop in afterwards to simulate, say, a x2 zoom). Its creative possibilities were limited because the controls were limited, even in Pro mode. And there no dials, levers and buttons. Just whatever a finger could do on the touchscreen. And sometimes a hasty finger made unwanted things happen, messing up the shot. 

Then there were the results. The S8+ produced amazingly good pictures from a tiny stack of plastic lenses and marvellous, but intense, processing. But somehow these results were not quite as good as those one might achieve using a regular camera equipped with a glass lens - and lighter processing. It could not all be done by tiny lenses and clever electronics! At least not yet.

Were the phone's pictures a shade too sharp and factual, and lacking in 'mood'? Where was the 'bite' that a bit of film-era graininess - or the noise prevalent on early digital cameras - could confer? The shots taken with the phone were a joy to zoom into on the laptop screen, and then study closely. So much detail! But a nagging voice told me that a 'real' camera could turn out something different, something better in a pictorial sense. It would be more suitable for creative work.    

So should I now consider buying a 'real' camera? 

There was a lot of choice, mostly very good. But so expensive! The modern direct equivalents of the handy little Leica D-Lux 4 were the Panasonic LX100 Mark II (launched in August 2018, and now around £800) and the Leica D-Lux 7 (launched in November 2018, and now just over £1,000). Alternatives from Fuji, Sony, Canon and Nikon were at much the same price level. Realistically, such prices were beyond my means if I wished to save up for the other things I needed to give priority to - such as a new car, a top-of-the-range replacement phone, and a high-spec replacement laptop.  No, it couldn’t be afforded.

I could of course consider a lower-priced new camera, perhaps one lately superseded by a newer version. Or take a chance on a second-hand model. But anything comparable to (say) the Panasonic LX100 Mark II would still cost several hundred pounds. 

So I decided to revive the little Leica D-Lux 4, using it for specific photographic purposes.

What would those be? In most technical aspects, Tigerlily (my Samsung Galaxy S8+) beat the little Leica hands down - especially on resolution, and when shooting in low light. 

But not in general handling. And the Leica’s optical zoom, though modest, gave it an edge over the phone. So did its lens, which yielded results that were somehow more ‘natural’ than Tigerlily’s accomplished but highly-processed output. The Leica’s shots were not quite as sharp, but if I wanted a particularly grainy and moody black-and-white image, then the Leica could give me a better result. 

Perhaps I hankered after using a device that ‘felt’ like a proper camera. Small as it was, the Leica provided that experience. It was definitely more satisfying to take pictures with. 

This was not to dismiss the conveniences of, and results from, the very capable phone. I’d still be using Tigerlily and her successors for my social life, and anything that required a sharp and precise record. But away from that? When the detail didn't matter? When making the most of patterns and abstractions did? 

I now saw a fresh role for the faithful and still-fully functional little Leica - it could be my ‘art’ camera, specialising in gritty black-and-white pictures, or experiments in pure colour.    

This was a great notion. And that's what I'm doing henceforth. 

You can skip the rest of this post - unless you would like to see what the little Leica can do, with or without some extra work on the laptop. 

It was easy to dig out a selection of shots to show. A laptop search using 'DLUX' produced over 7,000 Leica pictures, representing my favourites. Obviously many more are archived on my external hard drives. Here are some of the ones I most like from 2009 through to 2018.

I now intend to add some more pictures on these lines during 2020, using the little Leica. May it continue to perform as well as it has for so many years! 

One thing I don't want, though, is attention when I'm snapping away in public. But I may get it. Everybody uses phones nowadays, unless they are sporting big cameras with hefty lenses. The small compact camera is a rare sight. So if I am using one, I could risk attracting a curious glance! I'll be on my guard.