Leica’s first consumer digital camera

Leica digilux (1998)
1,500,000 pixels (1280x1024)
2 MByte SmartMedia
The First Digital Leica
$800.00 USD

Leica digilux (1998) by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

My Little History of Digital Compacts

That's a great looking camera. Some simple cosmetic upgrades make it look much more expensive than the original Fujifilm model, which is just as well... ;-)

Expensive and Leica, go well together 😎

I think is odd they release a "Digilux" and then 3 years later a "Digilux 1"

.

In addition, the Leica Digilux 1 is the fourth 🙄

Leica digilux (1998)
Leica digilux Zoom (1999)
Leica digilux 4.3 (2000)
Leica digilux 1 (2002)
Leica D-LUX (2003)
Leica digilux 2 (2003)

And finally in 2006 the magnificent Leica M8 ❤️

There is also the Digilux 3! Which was the Lumix L1 rebadged. Oh yes, I love my M8, even more than my M9P 🥰

Yes, I have the Panasonic version

Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 (2006) first 4/3
With a superb zoom signed Leica

Even today the Leica version sells for two to three times more expensive on eBay than the Lumix version.
The Leica logo is expensive! 😎

Lumix DMC-L1 (2006) by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

In the end, rather than a mediocre camera, pretty from the outside, but with rather questionable performance!

Yes... the Digilux 3 never got the "cult" following as the Digilux 2.

I went down the rabbit hole looking for one of these a while ago. What a delusional mindset some sellers have. Leica's name on it or not, it's now technically the equivalence of garbage. Good luck finding a sucker willing to pay a premium just to own what's basically a branded paperweight.

The Digilux 2 or the 3? Yes, they are overpriced but people is willing to pay for them, like the "X100 phenomenon", I just saw a few version 1 on ebay asking between 700-900!!

Glad to have paid my little X100 $340.00 USD in 2016 😎

I was looking for any of them for giggles. All crazy price tags I saw. Asking and someone paying are not equal. Besides some tiny niche of very obsessive collectors, how big do you think the demographic to pay hundreds of dollars for a Lecia camera that makes one megabyte images is?

Except that vintage digital cameras are cool right now, so they will probably have the last laugh. One man's garbage... I also find it funny that you wanted this garbage until is was too expensive.

Just a couple of days ago I saw completed auctions on ebay of the original X100, sold between 700 and 900 bucks. Is all about the hype!!

My own Digilux. Once carried daily in pre-iPhone times, now serves as a shelf decoration. It needs a new battery and, unfortunately. I think the charger may have been techcycled during a pandemic cleanout.

I purchased the camera new from B&H in New York. The sales associate didn't want to sell it to me — insisting that I should buy the Fuji version. Same camera. I wanted the red badge as a digital complement to my M6 and I was happy enough to pay the difference for my vanity. He finally relented and allowed me to make my purchase when I explained that I was into leather. My jacket, and the dress worn by the woman accompanying me, served to reinforce this claim. I showed my appreciation for his efforts to protect my interests by letting him sell me the accessory package even though I didn't actually need anything from it. (That's how B&H made its money at the time, no margin in cameras themselves, and I believe that associates were measured on this conversion.)

The camera was objectively terrible, at least for my purposes. Laggy and a poor low-light performer. It remains a favorite anyhow.

Taxi Stand, Grand Central Station…