The Leica Digilux 1 came out in 2002 and was the second digital camera produced by Leica. The original Digilux was developed in collaboration with Fuji, while the Digilux we're talking about here was developed in collaboration with Panasonic , with whom Leica continues to collaborate. The Leica Digilux 1 is similar to its Panasonic relative - the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC5 - but there are some differences.
The Digilux 1 is housed in a retro box that recalls the design of Leica rangefinders, while the LC5 has a more modern casing, but the two cameras share the same controls. One unverified difference is believed to be based on image processing: the Digilux 1 does less processing, resulting in colors and contrast more in line with what you'd expect from a Leica camera. The Panasonic DCM-LC5 performs post-processing that increases contrast and saturation to create photos acceptable to the consumer market.
The camera was initially presented as a digital reportage camera. At the time, the Digilux 1 boasted the lowest shutter lag of any camera in its class and this, in combination with its fast lens, made it suitable for reportage/photojournalism applications. Additionally, it boasted one of the largest screens of the time.
The camera features a Leica-designed Vario-Summicron with apertures of f/2.0 and f/2.8 at maximum zoom of 3x (33-100mm in 35mm equivalent terms). Compared to modern compact cameras, which often have a maximum aperture of f/3.5 - f/5.6, this was a fast lens. The lens was built by Panasonic to Leica standards and is also used on the Panasonic DMC-LC5, DMC-L40, Toshiba PDR-M70 and Canon G2-5. The lens is said to have accounted for 50% of the total cost of the camera. The sensor is a humble 3.9 megapixels.
A unique feature of the Digilux 1 (and the Panasonic DMC-LC5) compared to all other Digilux cameras is that the sensor uses a complementary filter, CMYG rather than RGB as in later models. This filter has two advantages: The range of wavelengths of light captured by the sensor is much wider: it captures approximately 2/3 of the visible spectrum, compared to RGB which captures only 1/3, so colors, especially reds and blues are more saturated. This is an advantage especially for landscapes. The second advantage is that the CMYG filter allows twice as many photons to pass through, so the camera is inherently twice as sensitive to light at the base ISO of 100 - this means that exposure times are half that of a similar camera with RGB filter.
The Digilux 1's images are not as noise-suppressed as those of modern cameras, so it may be necessary to use a noise-suppression filter in post-processing when shooting above base ISO 100. If you do this, images at ISO 400 can be quite acceptable.
On sunny days the light can be too bright for the camera, which has a minimum aperture of f/8 and a faster exposure time of 1/1000 second, so it's helpful to have a polarizing filter or filter on hand. neutral density. Attaching filters requires an adapter that extends the lens housing beyond the farthest travel of the zoom lens (it's basically a metal tube with a thread on each end).
The Digilux 1 can be set for manual focus and Macro. It also has a built-in Flash , which is great for fill-in.