frank_vanriper's Full Review: Leica Minilux 35mm Film Camera
LEICA MINILUX: Simple, Super-Sharp, Expensive
By Frank Van Riper
Professional Photographer, author and photography columnist for <Washingtonpost.com>
I’m on record touting the Contax Tvs III as the finest point and shoot camera on the market. Shortly after I made that bald assertion, both here and on <Washingtonpost.com>, a ton of folks e-mailed me asking: “What about the Leica Minilux and the Minilux Zoom?”
It’s a fair question. I had compared the Tvs III with the Leica C1, and found the C1 woefully inadequate against the Contax. And I confess: I used the C1 for comparison because it was Leica’s newest point and shoot, and one that Leica had touted as a fine camera.
In fact the older Leica Minilux—it comes in both a zoom and fixed focal length model—is a closer fit to the Tvs III than the C1, and fairness dictated that I weigh the Tvs III against these two cameras.
I have done that and happily, for me anyway, I can stick by my guns. These are two great machines. Yet pound for pound, shot for shot and feature by feature, the Contax Tvs III remains in my opinion the finest point and shoot camera going.
But I’ll tell you something funny. The Contax may be the best all-around P&S, but it’s the Leica Minilux [not, as you might expect, the Minilux Zoom] that is going to wind up in my camera bag.
First some background.
The elegant Tvs III (list: $1550; street $999 appx.) is a titanium-clad, multi-function, zoom-lens little tank of a camera that features, among other things, a funky fold-down front that protects its Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar 30-60mm f 3.7-6.7 lens. One of the best things about this camera is the fact that I can manually set aperture, as well as focusing distance, if desired. Its features are almost intuitive to use, and clearly are geared for the photographer who is used to doing things for him or herself.
If only it didn't cost and arm and a leg.
I found the features on Leica’s Minilux Zoom (List $849.50; street $750 appx.) to be slightly more awkward to use than those on the Tvs III. One obvious annoyance is a separate and small plastic lens cap for the Leica zoom—something else to lose—that points up the ingenuity of the Contax drop-down front. I should add here that the non-zoom Minilux features a fine built-in metal shade that moves over its supersharp lens whenever the camera is turned off.
Like the Contax, both the Minilux and Minilux Zoom boast a titanium body. The Minilux zoom features a Vario-Elmar 35-70mm f. 3.5-6.5 that is all but identical in performance to the Contax zoom. But where the Contax relies solely on its built-in flash for low-light pictures, the Minilux Zoom has, in addition to a built-in flash, a hot shoe that can accommodate an auxiliary flash. Now in theory this may sound like a nice feature, but frankly I find it to be one that is lost on a point and shoot camera. After all, these cameras are made for [all together now] “Pointing and Shooting” not for “Pointing and Shooting After Attaching the Auxiliary Flash That I Know is Around Here Somewhere.”
Which brings me to the delightfully uncomplicated Leica Minilux (List: $749.50; street $650). I had forgotten how much spontaneous fun a P&S could provide when you don’t have to wait for a pokey zoom lens to go in and out. You zoom with your feet and make the shot. And with the Minilux, you often can make the shot without the need of flash because this baby has one heck of a lens—a fixed 40mm f2.4 Leica Summarit-- probably the best P&S lens I’ve ever used, and certainly the fastest.
[One minor complaint: I wish the camera were powered by two or more ubiquitous AA's, not a pricey 3-volt Lithium.]
With reasonably fast film (say Kodak’s great T400CN bxW film), this lens can see in the dark—at least compared to other such cameras—and it’s so sharp it can slice tomatoes. For example, when I was testing the Minilux, I made a photo of a young mom and her baby, during a friend’s birthday party. Frankly, I was expecting the camera’s auto-flash to go off, but an overhead lamp provided plenty of light for the Summarit lens. Thus, what would have been a harshly lit flash snapshot with another camera became instead a pleasant available light portrait with the Leica Minilux.
And that’s why this amazing little P&S is going into my camera bag.
Frank Van Riper is a Washington-based commercial and documentary photographer. His latest book is Down East Maine / A World Apart (Down East Books.) He can be reached at <fvanriper@aol.com>
High-quality 35mm compact camera with handsome titanium body High-speed Leica Summarit 40mm lens (f/2.4) Automatic exposure or aperture priority (pres...More at Amazon Marketplace
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