Wondering about Leica D-lux 5 macro photography? You are in the right place, here’s a review / overview of the macro capabilities of this small Leica point and shoot.
Leica D-Lux 5 Macro photography
If you are into macro photography, the D-Lux 5 is one great camera to get in order to have an extremely portable macro kit.
What makes Leica D-Lux 5 macro photography so good? First off the portability. If you like the image samples in this article, you can put off lugging around your larger Leica and macro lens.
While the sensor of the camera is quite small, once it comes to macro, the Bokeh is simply stunning. There’s a switch on the left of the camera’s lens, simply put it on the setting with the little flower icon and voila, you are in macro mode.
The autofocus is adequate for static objects but also moving objects like moths, bees and butterfly. Even better, just because you are in macro doesn’t mean that you can’t zoom in either. You have full control over the zoom range in macro so that you don’t scare away your subjects.
You can shoot as close as 1cm or 0.4 inches, making is a very powerful macro in a tiny body. The Bokeh is quite striking as some of the images seem like they are done with a DSLR and not a small 1/1.63″ CCD sensor.
Whatever is in focus in your shots is REALLY sharp making the subjects leap out of the frame, especially when everything else is blurry.
If you do not have a moving subject, you might want to consider the Leica EVF 1 viewfinder. This allows you to crouch down and helps with framing since you can flip the electronic viewfinder at an angle.
There’s a few other points that make Leica D-lux 5 macro photography interesting. First of all is the zoom range, like I said before you essentially have the whole zoom range (24-90mm) to play around with while in macro, this makes it possible to be creative with your composition, including / excluding parts of the frame.
Second is the ratio button. Not only you can control what is in the frame, you can control the frame itself right in camera. Simply look above the lens and with the flick of a button you can have instant feedback if your macro image looks better in the 4:3, 3:3 or 1:1 aspect ratio.
All of this is instant, no need to crop afterwards on the computer.
The lens is fast, it goes from f2 to f3.3, so yes that means stellar Bokeh but more importantly you can shoot if relatively low light, especially when it comes to the wide angle end. This is great because when it comes to macro, shooting where there’s shade is better.
The shadows are softer and makes everything so much more dreamier. See the difference for yourself in these sample images:
The images above were shot with little regard to the light, the result is uneven light and not quite pleasing results. Here’s when we move to the shade:
You can see how much more pleasing the soft shadows are, and the unified light. The problem with the shade is that, well, you need more light to shoot. Or in the case of the D-Lux 5, you have a fast lens.
This is great because you can shoot in the shade and not need to ramp up your ISO, the f2 on the wide angle end is fast enough to need very little light and not need to go above uncomfortable ISOs. The D-Lux 5 is a small sensor cameras so it can get graining very quickly.
Luckily, not only does the aperture allows you to shoot in low light, you can even shoot in very slow shutter speeds and still have a sharp image. The fact that this camera is light helps you hold it nicely but it also has pretty stellar stabilization so it allows you to shoot macro photography in pretty dim places.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this article about Leica D-lux 5 Macro photography, in short it’s an excellent macro camera that might allow you to simply ditch your larger camera for a more convenient and creative macro kit. It is highly recommended. Click here to launch best price checker.