Leica x1 who is it for

This is a camera that rewards a slower, more considered approach - don't expect to be able to consistently capture moving subjects with it. It's also certainly not a camera for the faint-hearted thanks to the the extraordinary cost of ownership. Having said that, if you can live with the X1's deliberate lack of bells and whistles and more importantly its general sluggishness, it is undoubtedly a delightful camera that takes superb pictures.

Highly recommended if that description fits you, but otherwise steer clear and consider one of the more responsive and crucially much cheaper Micro Four Thirds cameras. The last 3 weeks have been some of the funnest times and also some of the most frustrating times I have had shooting a camera.

I have been shooting and vigorously testing a Leica X1 and man oh man, this thing is like a pack of firecrackers, with the occasional dud. Leica sent me the camera in all of its packaging, along with a grip and leather ever ready case for review and I have to say, the packaging puts even Apple to shame! The X1 presentation is super fun.

Read the full review ». The X1 has clearly been designed as an instrument for taking photographs, pure and simple, and features a pared-down, traditionalist design in service of that goal. Shutter speed and aperture are controlled by dials on the top plate, and all other major shooting settings are directly accessible from buttons on the back.

This is a design that utterly rejects fripperies in the quest for uncomplicated functionality; if you're after an aquarium mode, HD movies or background music for your slide shows, you'll need to look elsewhere.

The Leica X1 is a high-end, fixed-lens compact camera with a key difference - its large, Focusing area Normal: 60 cm - infinity, macro: 30 cm - infinity, manual focus: 30 cm - infinity.

AF metering range 1-point, 1-point high speed, point, point high speed, spot, face detection. White balance Auto, halogen, daylight, flash, cloudy, shadow, manual 1, manual 2; White balance adjustment 2 axis.

Exposure Program automatic, aperture priority automatic, shutter priority automatic, manual. Resolution x pixels Playback mode thumbnail display, zoomed playback 16x Max. Storage medium Built-in memory approx. Latest Reviews Popular Reviews. Download the sample movie. Camera effective pixels Light metering Intelligent multiple, center weighted, spot. Auto review 1 s, 3 s, 5 s, hold. Aspect ratio Resolution x pixels Built-in-memory approx. Hot shoe Yes.

LCD display 2. Power supply Li-ion battery pack included. Battery capacity approx. Battery charging time min. Canon EOS D. Fotopro Action Mount. Wonderful Dry Box 12L. Complete Control In Automatic Mode, the camera takes control quickly providing settings for precise exposures. Live View The live-view function replaces an optical viewfinder and shows an accurate preview with all essential image information.

Precision Autofocus The autofocus of the X1 provides fast, precision focusing enabling photographers a choice of 1 or 11 AF segments and an additional high-speed mode for each. Face Detection Technology When taking photos of people, face-recognition mode allows users complete concentration on the composition and framing of the picture.

Changes to white balance are reflected on the monitor screen. ISO adjustments range from to in 1EV steps. This makes them easily accessible through the User Profile function in the menu, which is accessed by toggling up from the first page. The stabilisation system in the X1 is also engaged via the menu — seven steps down from the Resolution setting.

It works by recording two pictures in quick succession with different shutter speeds and is only applied to JPEG files. Data from both exposures is combined to produce an image with optimal sharpness. Regardless, the image sizes differ in the three cameras and the X1 and Ds only offer a aspect ratio. Only one raw file size is available: x pixels. Leica provides no information about the image processor used in the X1- which is disappointing.

Playback Options for reviewing recorded images are fairly limited, despite the prominence of the Play button on the rear panel. Pressing this button displays the last shot taken. The camera prioritises playback in favour of images stored on a memory card so, if you have shots stored in the internal memory, you must remove the memory card before they can be viewed. Rotating the manual focus dial lets you browse back and forth through recorded shots. The horizontal arrows on the arrow pad also support image browsing.

Shots can be displayed with or without shooting information by toggling the Info button. A further press of this button lets you view a histogram. Exposure clipping can also be highlighted via the Play Histogram setting in the menu, which provides four options: standard histogram without clipping, standard with clipping, RGB histogram without clipping and RGB with clipping. You can set the duration of the auto review to off, 0ne second, three seconds, five seconds or Hold and the auto power off to 2, 5 or 10 minutes.

The auto LCD off can be set to 30 seconds or one minute. You can also copy images stored in the internal memory to a memory card and create new folders in either memory for storing images from different shoots. Supplied software As mentioned above, the X1 comes without a software disk. RAW files can be opened with most image editors that support raw file conversion. Users who register the camera with Leica can download a free copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. Lightroom is much more powerful than the applications normally provided with digital cameras so its value should be taken into account when considering the price tag of the X1.

Performance Although contrast-detect AF systems are noticeably slower than the phase-detection systems found in DSLR cameras, the system in the review camera was significantly slower than most. In fact, AF lag made the camera quite frustrating to use and we found many shots of moving subjects were out-of-focus because the subject moved in the time between when the lens focused and the shutter fired.

JPEG resolution was well below expectations for a megapixel camera, while the resolution of raw files was slightly above expectations. The graph below shows the results of our Imatest tests across the aperture range of the lens.

The differences between raw and JPEG files were also reflected in our Imatest tests at different sensitivity settings. These revealed only a slight loss of resolution as sensitivity was increased. The graph below shows the results of our Imatest tests. Low-light performance was excellent at all ISO settings.

Little noise was visible in shots taken at ISO , regardless of whether they were long exposures or flash shots. Raw files provided more scope for shooting subjects with a wide brightness range than JPEG shots and it was possible to record both highlight and shadow details in raw files with minimal shadow noise, even though the camera lacks any dynamic range expansion facilities.

In this episode, Laing goes back 25 years to provide an in-depth overview of Nikon's unique Coolpix camera, which was half compact camera, half PDA. The adapter includes optics to help offset the crop factor of APS-C cameras. OM Digital Solutions — the company that's bought the Olympus imaging division — has just launched the M. Zuiko Digital ED 20mm F1. Click through for a closer look. Chris and Jordan tease-out the differences. After quickly selling out of its first batch back in , Lomography has announced that it's re-releasing its color-shifting LomoChrome Turquoise Film in 35mm, and format.

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