Successor to V-Lux 5 in the offing?

[jhluxton]

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At the start of this year I had been contemplating upgrading my venerable and very well used V-Lux 3 to a V-Lux 5 as I usually take many ship photographs and the zoom is of great use for this type of photography.

However Covid came along and travel restrictions ended curtailed my ship trips considerably thus I deferred the acquisition and my photography this year ended up being close range for which my old X1 and brace of digital M's were all I needed.

However, I noticed a few weeks ago that the V-Lux 5 is now being bundled with a Billingham bag. (No point in me taking up the bundle as I bought one of these bags a year ago).

Now going from previous the previous V-Lux that was offered as a bundle for some time before the the V-Lux 5 appeared. 

Just wondering if the appearance of the current bundle is a indication that a V-Lux 6 will be appearing say in the next 6 months or so?

John

  

 

[stuny]

If the bundle is directly from Leica it might indicate  it's coming, but a better indicator would be if Panasonic releases a replacement for their equivalent of the Vlux5 -- A few months later it's likely Leica will release their new Vlux.

There have been a number of improvements since you bought your Vlux 3.  With the Vlux 4 the camera less frequently focuses on glass between the camera and the subject, and uses the same zoom as the "3" with a long end of 600MM equivalent.  With the Vlux114 the camera gets significantly bigger and heavier, and the long end of the zoom gets shorter (400MM equivalent), but it incorporates an ingenious algorithm that doubles the long end of the zoom to the equivalent of 800MM via interpolation, so you won't see loss of image quality -- Panasonic has put that in all their PanaLeicas since at least the Dlux5.  Another improvement with the Vlux114 is it's possible to focus manually with out much difficulty.  Starting with the Vlux114 the short end of the zoom gets wider to an equivalent 25MM.  With previous versions manual focus was so difficult to do that it was virtually useless., but with ehVlux114 you can focus manually with some care. I've only touched the Vlux5 for about 10 minutes at a friend's house and did not detect changes over the Vlux114.  Who knows what and when its replacement will be.

Here's an  example of the long end of the Vlux114 using their "iZoom" extension to 800MM have a look at this image:

 

 

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[jhluxton]

1 hour ago, stuny said:

If the bundle is directly from Leica it might indicate  it's coming, but a better indicator would be if Panasonic releases a replacement for their equivalent of the Vlux5 -- A few months later it's likely Leica will release their new Vlux.

 .

 

Thanks for the comparison of the cameras. Yes the bundles offered at least in the UK are from Leica the Billingham Bag has a tag "Billingham for Leica" which in the past only the M combination bag has carried and from press photos the bundle comes in a Leica box. I had perused the Panasonic site for clues as to new releases which may influence future Pana _ Leicas . I will keep on waiting as I have no immediate use for an upgrade as at the moment I am hardly using the Vlux3 compared to the other cameras and I don't see the situation changing for a few months yet.

John