D-Lux Type 109, still viable in 2025

[Anthony Miller]

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I was looking into getting a D-Lux as I wanted a sort of "point and shoot" sized Leica. Something small enough to be every day carry but still have manual, aperture priority and even auto capability.

The D-Lux 8 looks great, if you could find one and still just within budget but not sure I "need" all the features. For M bodies, my main users, I am more than happy with what my M9 and M9M can do (replaced sensors in both). I just don't need the added features of an M10 or M11. For mirrorless where I want auto focus, my SL Type 601 has more than enough features so this got me to thinking whether the D-Lux Type 109 would be enough over a D-Lux 7 or 8.

I watched lot of YouTube videos but still have questions. How is reliability? I saw a few mention zoom lens failure......is this a concern?  Any other real shortcomings or failures with a Type 109?

Don't need or want a touch screen, don't shoot video and rarely even shoot RAW. JPG has been good enough for me. as my images only gegt shared to my social media and looked at on my laptop screen. 

Love my M9 and SL Type 601 for planned photo outings but wanted smaller for my daily travels, running errands, lunch dates out with my wife, etc...

Thanks for any thoughts you can share

 

 

 

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[stuny]

I've had a number of the earlier versions of the D-lux 7, and they all performed reliably, exactly as expected. The only problem I ever had with the D-lux 109 (the last one I owned) was the lens retraction would sometimes stall when using the automatic lens cap (opens as the lens extends, closes as the lens retracts).

Additionally, and this might not matter to you since you are an M shooter, prior to the D-Lux 8, all the D-lux cameras have a function while in jpeg mode called "i-Zoom," which is an algorithm that doubles the long end of the zoom range, but does so via interpolation rather than just throwing away the pixels at the edges of the frame, producing nearly lossless results.  That means the D-Lux 7 tele end of the zoom range is 150mm equivalent vs. the native 75 mm equivalent.  

Please let us know what you do regarding the camera.