Watching the price on the Panasonic DMC-L1 drop lower and lower, when the price of the camera and Leica 14-50 lens dropped to barely $120 more than the cost of the lens alone I decided to buy one. I've gotten excellent results from my previous Panasonic cameras with Leica-branded lenses, the Live View LCD feature was appealing to me, and I just liked the darn thing. I figured that if the body was a total lump of junk, the lens had to be worth it and I could stick it on a better 4/3 System body as needed.
It arrived today. I hooked it up on AC power, updated the firmware to the latest, formatted a couple of SD cards for it, and put the battery on the charger. An hour later, battery all charged up, I took a short walk, met friends ... http://www.gdgphoto.com/l1test/ thots: - NICE lens. Very NICE lens. - Very reasonable noise at ISO 400-800, better than I expected. - A bit on the bulky side; I'll want at least one compact, light prime lens. Maybe an old 20mm Nikkor with a mount adapter, or that Oly 35mm f/ 3.5 macro. The Summilux D 25mm f/1.4 looks interesting but (as expected) very expensive. I can fit Pentax lenses to it easily with a 4/3 mount adapter too. - Focusing and shutter release are quite responsive, deceptively good. - Form factor and layout are very different from the Pentax DSLRs I've been using for a while. That will take some time to get used to. Its capabilities and strengths complement my Pentax kit nicely. - Live View is extremely good. - Optical viewfinder is better than expected although no contest against the Pentax K10D. It's a very different camera in use, feels much like I remember the Leica M in the hand although a bit bulkier. The shutter and mirror are quiet and have a pleasant sound. It feels very nicely made through and through. I still need to learn some of the details in the menu and control functions. It was worth it... It will be a nice complement/adjunct to the Pentax kit. Bob W and I can share 4/3 mount lenses next time I'm in London... ;-) enjoy Godfrey -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
