Canon G7 vs. Leica D-LUX3: Fight
About six months ago, my main camera bag had gotten so big and heavy that I didn't want to carry it around much. So I took the idea into my head that I should get a point and shoot camera that's good enough that I'm willing to use it at those times when I don't want to carry the 30D around all day, or don't want to draw much attention to myself.
I have been wanting this crazy thing forever, but it's still vaporware more than a year after it was announced. Meanwhile this Leica D-LUX 3 had just come out, with a similar pretty design, plus I could own something with the magic red dot for "only" $600..so that's what I did.
Lots of people will tell you these days that point-and-shoot cameras have gotten so good that there's no real difference with an SLR. I don't know what those people are doing, because for me, that's not even close to true. Once I had the Leica out of its beautiful, Apple-esque packaging, I was instantly frustrated with all the same things that have always sucked about point and shoot cameras: slow to turn on, lame motorized zoom and focus, no viewfinder, clunky menus to change anything, horrible noise at anything over ISO 200.
Not feeling blown away by the Leica, I ended up also buying Gary's Canon G7 which he had barely ever taken out of the box. The problems are pretty much the same, so I resigned myself to the fact that there just isn't a point-and-shoot that I can use like an SLR. But now Gary is thinking about buying the same Leica, so he asked how its noise compares to the G7. I didn't really know, so I did this little experiment. (I threw in the 30D for reference; it's not a fair comparison because it has a much larger sensor. That's kind of the point of an SLR.)
| Leica D-LUX 3 | Canon G7 | Canon 30D | |
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| 100 | |
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| 200 | |
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| 400 | |
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| 800 | |
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| 1600 | |
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As I well knew, both cameras are pretty rough at ISO 400, and anything higher is basically unusable unless you punt to black-and-white and try to pass it off as a grainy film look. I have been doing this with the Leica and have been reasonably happy with the results:
But notice the interesting difference in how the two cameras degrade: The G7 takes on texture like bad TV reception, but the D-LUX 3 takes on weird blocky artifacts that look almost like bad compression. This suggests that maybe I should be using the G7 if I'm going to go for the grainy look.
The Leica's in-camera software is obviously working much harder at noise reduction, because if you look at its uncorrected raw files, the noise is awful, much worse than the G7 jpegs. With the thing Bibble calls "basic Noise Ninja," you get back into the same ballpark:
 D-LUX 3 in-camera JPEG (ISO 800) |
 raw file passed through Bibble+Noise Ninja |
You get quite a different effect, but it's hard to say which one is better. The fact that Bibble failed to remove the phantom color tints is troubling, but I cheat around that by going to black and white anyway, and I really don't like the plasticky artifacts that the in-camera process gives you instead.
Meanwhile, we can't compare this with the G7 raw output because there's no such thing. The G5 and G9 have this feature, but, inexplicably, the G7 does not. There is a weird firmware hack that restores it, but it's not straightforward–even once you have a G7 raw file in your hot little hands, no ordinary program can render it. You need more weird hacks, after which it might mostly work. I'm skeptical that this is worth the trouble, so I haven't tried.
I don't like the G7's native 4:3 aspect ratio, which looks like "digital camera" to me. Unlike the Leica's 16:9 format, which looks new and exotic.
They can both make arbitrarily long full-motion videos. The Leica can do this in either 4:3 or 16:9, but only the G7 can operate the zoom while recording.
If you want to look cool, the Leica excels at that. Several non-photo-geeks who know nothing of Leica have said, "Wow, that looks like a really nice camera." There is also a beautiful retro-style leather case that you can never find in stock. (Yes, it's $130 for a case; you're dealing with Leica now.) Looking pretty isn't everything, but it isn't nothing, either. The G7 isn't without its charm, but it's only going to catch the eyes of other photo geeks. Everybody else is just going to wonder why your camera is so big.
The G7 has a hot shoe, which is crucial if you are into wacky lighting. I am just getting started on that road, but even slapping the Speedlite with Omnibounce on top gives you the ability to light up a room and escape high-ISO hell, which the Leica will never do. It does make for an oddly proportioned setup, though.
The G7 has two customizable program settings on the dial. I have one set to what I call "Portra" and the other to "Velvia." But, I end up not using these, because I don't usually want to take risks with weird settings when the result will be baked into an unfixable jpeg. Bizarrely, the custom programs also memorize the focal length of the lens, so when you switch modes, you have to wait while it zooms to some random position.
On the other hand, when the D-LUX 3 is given enough light, there is a certain softness to the highlights and overexposed areas that looks Leica-ish to me. This is no doubt an illusion created by decades of Leica marketing, but I like it anyway. For example:
With the exceptions noted above, either of these cameras will do whatever you want. Whichever one I spend more time with will be the one that makes better pictures for me. So far, as you can see, that's been the Leica. I seem to prefer the smaller and prettier one when I'm not going to take my "real" camera. The G7, being neither here nor there, tends to get left at home. That may change if I start bringing my own light.
One last thing: if you are thinking of buying the Leica, you probably already know that you can get exactly the same hardware without the magic red dot for $240 less. This is called the Panasonic DMC-LX2. The Leica version supposedly has different firmware, but I don't know what the differences are.
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