Leica V-LUX 1

[DonR]

I'm new here and I have the Leica V-LUX 1. It is a re-make of the Panasonic FZ50 that several of my forum friends have and love.

The reason I paid $300.00 more for the Leica V-Lux 1 over the Panasonic FZ50 is the Venus lll processing engine. On the FZ50 the noise removal smears the details even at the low setting. Leica changed settings on their camera (color, sharpness, contrast, & NR) to come closer to what their users are used to. I don't know exactly how they did it, but I do not see the smearing of detail with the Leica V-LUX 1 that I do with the FZ50.

As you can imagine, there are different opinions about this, including, there is no difference at all, but to my eyes there is a big difference and it was well worth the extra money.

The V-LUX 1 is not a DSLR but if you know what you are doing and how to get the best out of the camera, it will match DSLR's with kit lenses. It is not as good in low light but the pictures are very usable at ISO 800. Sometimes I do need to use a NR program in post processing.

If you are like me and do not want to carry all the lenses around and do a lot of changes for different shots I don't believe you can do better that the Leica V-LUX 1. It's expensive but not as expensive as a DSLR with several different lenses, especially Stabilized lenses.

DonR