For most serious photographers, Leica is a name that needs little introduction. For decades now, the German company has produced some of the finest small format film cameras ever made. Made famous in part by photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, the small, light, quiet, precise and rugged Leica rangefinder film cameras, in particular, have earned a stellar, almost mythic, reputation among both professional and serious amateur photographers. It is in large part because of this reputation that photographers, for several years now, have been calling for a digital Leica “M” rangefinder camera; something like a digital equivalent of the current Leica M7.

Traditional and conservative in nature, measured in pace, Leica has been slow to enter the digital arena. A small company, Leica chose to partner with Panasonic for the design and production of its digital cameras released to date, including the Leica Digilux 1 and now the Digilux 2, as well as various other cameras aimed at casual photographers. Panasonic, reportedly, manufactured the sensor used in the Canon 1D and of course has extensive digital electronics expertise and capability, both of which Leica lack.

Until very recently, Leica had maintained that existing technology would not allow them to make a camera that would be compatible with existing M series lenses. Just recently however, they announced the ongoing development of just such a camera which they expect be available in about two years. Working in cooperation with both Kodak and Imacon, Leica is also developing a ten-megapixel digital back for it “R” series SLR cameras which they expect to introduce in the fourth quarter of 2004. The technology used in this back is said to form the basis for the digital heart of the new digital M series rangefinder.

When news of the Leica Digilux 2 first trickled out to the press and Internet discussion groups, some expressed the hope that this camera would be the digital rangefinder that many have been looking forward to. As its specifications were released, it became clear that the new camera, while styled much like a traditional Leica rangefinder, would in fact use an EVF instead of an optical finder to complement it’s LCD screen and would use a fixed zoom lens instead of interchangeable lenses. So it would not be the “digital M” but would instead be a step in that direction; a product Leica refers to as a “digital analog” camera. Given Leica’s history and reputation, expectations have been high for the Digilux 2.








One of the best things about the design of the Digilux 2 is that all major controls for exposure, focal length and focus can be readily accessed via traditional style analog controls; a shutter speed dial on the top of the body and rings on the lens barrel for aperture, focus distance and focal length. If one is setting exposure manually, as I often do, it’s easy to see at a glance, on the actual controls themselves, the selected aperture and shutter speed as well as focus distance and focal length. There’s no need to hunt through menus or even look at an LCD settings screen to get this information. Having been frustrated with the little zoom buttons and levers on most compact digital cameras, it is a particular pleasure to use a zoom ring on the Digilux 2. The rings and dial that control these settings on the Leica seem well made. The zoom ring is well weighted and moves smoothly. The focus ring is lighter in feel but solid, and the aperture ring feels a bit a too light and loose.

Overall build quality of this metal-bodied camera is quite good but I would have liked to see some levers, etc. made of metal rather than plastic. This is mostly nitpicking, however, because in practice the camera’s functional design is excellent. Attention to these kinds of basic controls is something many of us took for granted with film cameras but cannot take for granted with many compact digital cameras. The latter often seem to show a clear computer-gadget heritage and typically seem to be designed without enough attention to the controls most often used by professional and serious amateur photographers. The Digilux 2, on the other hand, was clearly designed by people who know and use traditional film cameras.




In practice, shooting among the crowds at Daytona, this design made the camera quick and intuitive to work with. With a few exceptions, discussed below, this is a camera that doesn’t get in one’s way; it works like the tool that it is supposed to be. Just as with a film rangefinder, I could see just from glancing at the lens barrel and shutter speed dial that I was, for example, at F/8 at 1/250 sec. with the lens set to a focal length of 35mm (in terms of 35mm format-equivalent field of view) and a distance of seven feet. That’s the kind of information I want readily available when I’m trying to concentrate on what I’m photographing and not on the camera I’m using. It’s a huge improvement over the way in which most small-sensor digital cameras operate. The camera, like its predecessor the Leica Digilux 1, also has very little shutter lag.




Automatic settings are all set on their corresponding dials or rings. Setting “A” on the shutter dial tells the camera to set the shutter speed according to the lens opening and available light. Setting “A” on the aperture ring tells the camera to set the lens opening according to the shutter speed and available light. Move either control from “A” and that control will be set manually to whatever you chose. For example:

Aperture Priority: Lens opening set manually, shutter speed dial set to “A”

Shutter Priority: Shutter speed set manually, aperture ring set to “A”

Manual exposure: aperture ring and shutter speed dial set manually

Full auto exposure: shutter speed dial set to “A”, aperture ring set to “A”

It’s an intuitive and intelligent system that works beautifully in practice. The aperture and focus rings have lock buttons that must be depressed in order to change from automatic to manual modes. The camera can display lens opening, shutter speed, histogram, EV compensation setting, capture quality, capture size, metering mode, battery strength and flash mode (among other things) in either the EVF or LCD screen. This means that the camera can display a live histogram, which is very useful when tweaking exposure. This plethora of information doesn’t really crowd the large and bright 2.5” LCD but can crowd the EVF.






Autofocus is set by moving the focus ring to either “AF” or “AF Macro” modes. This is also well designed but it does require giving up a feature I use often on my Canon AF lenses. On the latter, one can very quickly measure subject distance by using autofocus and then switch to manual focus mode to lock that distance in. So, for example, on the streets of Daytona, my Canon lens distance scale can tell me quickly that my primary subject is, say, five feet away from me. If I’m going to work for awhile at about that distance, I know that I can set the lens manually to five feet and then allow depth of field to cover some subject distance variation. If, like myself, one prefers to use manual focus to obtain a certain kind of control, the Leica doesn’t allow that fast distance measuring option. Of course, traditional manual focus cameras didn’t allow that option either and it isn’t much of a problem. Like anyone else though, I’ve been spoiled by certain kinds of useful technology like this and use it when it’s available.

The Digilux 2’s auto focus speed is OK but not instantaneous and not as fast as either my 1Ds or 10D with a Canon USM lens. In order to have the camera ready to respond immediately, I most often used the Leica in manual focus mode, as I often do with my DSLRs. The difference is that the 1Ds with a good USM lens will auto focus nearly as fast as one can press the shutter whereas with the Digilux 2 one can easily trip the shutter well before the camera is able to lock focus. This is yet another area where the Digilux 2 is well suited to traditional methods, including manual focusing. I haven’t done any direct comparisons yet, but its auto focus speed seems to be similar to that of many other compact digital cameras I’ve owned or tested.







Setting ISO on the Digilux 2 requires pressing the “function” button, a couple presses on a control toggle to select the desired sensitivity and then the “function” button again. It’s not as quick as on my 1Ds but it’s faster than it may seem (from the description above). Setting white balance uses a similar process and is as quick. Exposure compensation is set by pressing a dedicated button that also works quickly, in practice. Overall, I found the overall access of key camera functions to be about as good as on any DSLR I’ve used and much better than most compact digital cameras I’ve owned or tested. Kudos to Leica for this aspect of the camera’s design.

Exposure metering on the camera was as good as I’ve seen on any digital camera and a little better than on my Canon D30, 10D or 1Ds. The Canons usually need an EV compensation of about minus 1/3 to 2/3 stop in order to not overexpose the highlights when shooting in bright sunlight. I routinely watch the histogram on the Canons to be sure the camera isn’t overexposing. With the Leica I’ve found it less necessary to watch over the histogram because the camera tends to set the exposure pretty well except in very tricky conditions. As with all digital cameras, however, the highlights can blow out easily in bright sunlight.





I’m not happy with the EVF on the Leica just as I haven’t been happy with the EVF of any camera I’ve tried. It does seem to show 100% of the frame and it does allow exposure and other information to be visible when the camera is held to the eye but it doesn’t have enough resolution to allow me to accurately see the picture I’m making. Interestingly enough, it’s not as bad when working with existing light indoors (except for having a certain amount of lag) but in bright sunlight outdoors I found it to be almost unusable (as I’ve found to be the case with every EVF camera I’ve tried). One’s eyes, of course, adjust to bright sunlight and when I put the EVF finder to my eye outdoors I found the view to be dark and generalized. It could only show me where the edges of the picture were and give me a rough sense of where objects were within those edges. There was no way that I could see the subtle expression and gesture that I need to watch when I make pictures of people. Adjusting the EVF brightness level didn’t help much. Each time I use an EVF camera I start to adjust to it and think, “well this isn’t so bad”…until I look again through a good optical finder and am reminded of the dramatic difference between the two. As EVFs go, this 235,000 pixel unit is reasonably sharp and bright but in my mind it’s really no substitute for the glass finder in an SLR or a rangefinder.

The LCD screen, by comparison, is more useable. At 2.5”, it’s the largest screen I’ve seen on a digital camera (aside from previous Leicas and Panasonics). It’s fairly sharp and it can be seen even in bright sunlight. It’s large enough that I was reminded a little bit of the view one sees on the ground glass of a 4” x 5” view camera, albeit much smaller. Photographers who like to use LCD screens should find this one to be a real pleasure.