10th January 2026

The older you get the less you want to cart around heavy cameras and lenses, save for the times when a job requires them. But you still want to have a 'pocket' camera that isn't an iPhone. It should be easy with the wide range of equipment available today. But is it?

After literally years of prevaricating I decided that it was time to get a small, pocketable camera that would give me the quality and ease of use that I wanted, but that wasn't an iPhone. Don't get me wrong, I love iPhones and the results that the camera gives under ideal conditions, but I HATE the ergonomics with an intensity that I would otherwise reserve for Donald Trump!

What I was looking for was simplicity personified; a compact Nikon with a fixed lens, but capable of zooming, and a layout, controls and a menu system that I was familiar with - in short a modern version of the late and much lamented Nikon CoolPix P7000. Surely that's not much to ask for?

Yet after much hunting I discovered that there is nothing in the current Nikon range that matched my dream. I must confess that I was shocked.

So I decided to cast my net wider. I knew what I DIDN'T want. No vulnerable lens protection blades that always fail within weeks of (ab)use. No interchangeable lenses that would allow the entry of dust. No external dials that could be rotated by accident when brushing against clothing, such as I found when borrowing my friend John Robert Young's Fuji X-Pros a few years ago. In short, a simple camera.

Yet at every turn I found myself thwarted. No manufacturer seemed to make a small camera that did what I wanted. So then I turned towards a manufacturer that had always been lurking in my peripheral vision, even before I became a professional photographer over half a century ago - Leica. I confess that I have only had two encounters with them in my career. My mate and late business partner Robin Adshead had used Leicas and Leicaflexes when I first met him in the early 1970s, and whilst changing his Leicaflexes for Nikons later he always kept a couple of Leica M6s with him. I hated them! I thought that they were really over rated in every way save one - they were whisper quiet. Similarly, my friend John Robert Young loves Leica M3s, but of course I didn't want a film camera. I wanted a digital one.

However, the Leica D-Lux range appeared to offer broadly what I wanted and price wasn't really an issue. Wow, I could at last be one of the 'Leica brigade', which is a bit like the Formula One driver's dream of joining Ferrari.

So in mid-2025 I decided that I would buy a Leica D-Lux 8. But wherever I looked I found that they were simply unobtainable; demand seemed to be through the roof. Eventually, after a great deal of hassel, I purchased a D-Lux 7, the previous edition. I opened the box, drooled over the exquisite packaging and the beauty and 'heft' of the camera. I ordered some extra batteries and a charger, a protective UV filter and a lens hood and then started to use it.

And that's when I should have been delighted...

...but in fact I was hugely disappointed. The menus weren't ones I was familiar with! My muscle memory had never had to factor in Teutonic ones that seemed to defy all logic. I hunted through the manual and on-line sites in an effort to get the camera to do what I wanted and yet I couldn't bend it to my method of working.

The results were excellent though. Not outstanding, and I would say not as good as the old Fuji X-Pro1, but acceptable. Now 'acceptable' is not something that you expect to hear in the same sentence as Leica, but that's what I found. I only took about fifty shots with it before hating it so much I had to be restrained from throwing it away. Sadly, all my purchase did was to reinforce my dislike of Leica.

What I want, what I really, really want is a 'Nikon Z-Lux' and then I'd be happy.

Today I sold my first - and last - Leica.

20260110

How Buying A Leica Was The Wrong Thing