Camera News
Panasonic vs. Leica
Evan Powell — April 9, 2014
You don't have to look around at digital cameras very long before you realize that Panasonic and Leica have an interesting partnership. They each produce cameras under their respective brands that look physically identical. Not only do they look identical, but the Panasonic versions use Leica lenses with the Leica brand etched into the rim. And when you go to compare the spec sheets...there is no difference. The only difference seems to be the brand logo and the huge price difference.
For example, at this writing the superzoom Panasonic FZ200 can be acquired new for $499. The Leica V-LUX 4, which is the Leica version of the FZ200, is $899. They look the same and the specs are identical...
So what's going on here? Are you just paying a $300 premium for the famous red dot Leica logo and an extra year of warranty?
The cynics among us claim that this is precisely what is happening. You get (they say) the same performance out of either brand's version of a particular camera, and only suckers pay extra for the red dot.
Well. We recently ended up with a Panasonic FZ150 and a Leica V-LUX 3 on hand at the same time. These are the predecessors to the FZ200 and V-LUX 4, and just like those slightly newer models, many would say the V-LUX 3 is simply a rebranded FZ150 with nothing changed but the logo.
So we took them out for a side by side test, shooting the same scenes in a variety of different lighting situations and exercising the zoom and image stabilization features. Here is what we found in the field:
** The Leica's power zoom drive was much faster. These cameras both have an inbuilt 24x zoom lens, from 25mm to 600mm equivalent. The Leica was able to zoom from maximum wide angle to maximum telephoto in 2 seconds. Meanwhile, it took the Panasonic a rather pokey 5 seconds to get from end to end.
** The Leica was much faster at finding the subject and locking focus.
The operational experience was night and day. Though these cameras look and feel identical, it soon became obvious that these were not the same camera at all.
Back in the lab, we pulled our images down and did some close pixel peeping with the same subjects viewed side by side. Here is what we saw:
** At all zoom settings the Leica produced noticeably sharper, cleaner pictures with greater detail definition. But the Leica's advantage was particularly acute at maximum zoom where image stabilization was able to produce remarkably sharp images compared to the Panasonic.
** The Leica images showed higher contrast and better saturation.
So...not only do the cameras behave differently in operation, they produce different results in the final images. The internal motor drives of the Leica support faster operation, and the image processing logic produces a noticeably higher quality images.
This is not to say that the Panny FZ150 is a bad camera. Quite the opposite; for the money it is an exceptional camera. We routinely recommend it and its successor the FZ200 with no reservations for people looking for superzooms in their price range. But after our side by side test of the FZ150 vs. the V-LUX3, it appears to us that when you pay $300 extra for the red dot, you are getting some very real performance improvements for money--in addition to the extra year of warranty.
Evan Powell
Editor
For example, at this writing the superzoom Panasonic FZ200 can be acquired new for $499. The Leica V-LUX 4, which is the Leica version of the FZ200, is $899. They look the same and the specs are identical...
So what's going on here? Are you just paying a $300 premium for the famous red dot Leica logo and an extra year of warranty?
The cynics among us claim that this is precisely what is happening. You get (they say) the same performance out of either brand's version of a particular camera, and only suckers pay extra for the red dot.
Well. We recently ended up with a Panasonic FZ150 and a Leica V-LUX 3 on hand at the same time. These are the predecessors to the FZ200 and V-LUX 4, and just like those slightly newer models, many would say the V-LUX 3 is simply a rebranded FZ150 with nothing changed but the logo.
So we took them out for a side by side test, shooting the same scenes in a variety of different lighting situations and exercising the zoom and image stabilization features. Here is what we found in the field:
** The Leica's power zoom drive was much faster. These cameras both have an inbuilt 24x zoom lens, from 25mm to 600mm equivalent. The Leica was able to zoom from maximum wide angle to maximum telephoto in 2 seconds. Meanwhile, it took the Panasonic a rather pokey 5 seconds to get from end to end.
** The Leica was much faster at finding the subject and locking focus.
The operational experience was night and day. Though these cameras look and feel identical, it soon became obvious that these were not the same camera at all.
Back in the lab, we pulled our images down and did some close pixel peeping with the same subjects viewed side by side. Here is what we saw:
** At all zoom settings the Leica produced noticeably sharper, cleaner pictures with greater detail definition. But the Leica's advantage was particularly acute at maximum zoom where image stabilization was able to produce remarkably sharp images compared to the Panasonic.
** The Leica images showed higher contrast and better saturation.
So...not only do the cameras behave differently in operation, they produce different results in the final images. The internal motor drives of the Leica support faster operation, and the image processing logic produces a noticeably higher quality images.
This is not to say that the Panny FZ150 is a bad camera. Quite the opposite; for the money it is an exceptional camera. We routinely recommend it and its successor the FZ200 with no reservations for people looking for superzooms in their price range. But after our side by side test of the FZ150 vs. the V-LUX3, it appears to us that when you pay $300 extra for the red dot, you are getting some very real performance improvements for money--in addition to the extra year of warranty.
Evan Powell
Editor
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