Now you can have an affordable high-end, travel-friendly camera … for a mere USD $1,250
Leica isn’t exactly known for offering cameras that both offer long-zoom lenses and a relatively affordable price, but it’s ready to bend those rules a bit. The company has introduced the V-Lux 5, an upscale rebadge of Panasonic’s FZ-1000 II long-zoom camera. The differences mostly boil down to a spruced-up design with the signature red dot on the front, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when the core camera is solid — this is a fairly powerful option for travelers.
The centerpiece is the combination of a 20-megapixel, 1-inch sensor with a 16X 25-400mm equivalent f/2.8-4.0 lens. You should get good low-light performance and overall high quality, even when you’ve zoomed all the way out. The Panasonic roots also ensure fast autofocus (as little as 0.1 seconds), continuous burst shooting at 12 frames per second and 4K video up to 30FPS. The 2.36M electronic viewfinder and 3-inch swiveling touchscreen remain intact, too.
Like many of Leica’s other rebadges, the price gap over the Panasonic equivalent is significant — the V-Lux 5 is available for $1,250, or well above the $899 for the FZ-1000 II. That’s a bargain by Leica’s standards, though, and it gives the brand’s fans a true multi-purpose camera without forcing them to buy into an interchangeable lens system.
Source: Leica (1), (2), Engadget
