On the D-Lux109

Christian Robotti has come to our attention as a prolific contributor of street photography to the LFI Gallery. Almost all of his pictures are shot with the D-Lux109 – so we took the opportunity to talk to him about his experiences with the camera.


How did you come to own your D-Lux?

In 2014, I took part in the 4th annual contest of the Coral Gables Museum, called Capturing Coral Gables. I won in the Street Photography category, and also won the People’s Choice Award. The grand prize was a Leica D-Lux109. Up until then, my go-to digital street camera had been the FujiFilm x100s.


What were your first impressions of the camera?

Initially I wasn’t sure whether I was going to like the D-Lux, for several reasons. First off, it isn’t a rangefinder or has no optical viewfinder. I had become used to looking through the finder and seeing the world pass by in real time. Secondly, the D-Lux is only a 13MP camera, whereas I like being able to print large formats. Thirdly, it has a zoom lens. When it comes to street photography, I love to shoot wide, and actually dislike having the option of zooming in on my subjects. But after a year of shooting with this camera, any concerns or reservations have completely disappeared.


What about its size and handling?

The camera is small, easy to carry around, and quiet – three very important qualities if you are a street or documentary photographer. It enables me to be very unobtrusive, though I recently changed the settings so that it now makes an electronic shutter sound. I was missing that psychological connection in the actual moment of taking the picture. It's still very quiet, so unless you are in a completely silent room, people around you won’t hear it. The camera’s small size also allows me to document the bridal preparations at weddings, when I want the kind of maneuverability that my Canon rig just doesn’t give me. I also tend to use the D-Lux to shoot the dancing at the reception, because by that time my arm usually feels as though I’ve been carrying a small elephant all day. And with the D-Lux I can get very close without having my camera, flash and diffuser bounce around all the bodies on the dance-floor, where people are trying to have a good time.

But the majority of your Gallery uploads are street shots.

I’m the type of photographer who goes out and captures whatever I come across. I don’t have a preconceived plan, unless I’m shooting documentary work. I don’t say to myself, “Okay Christian, today we are only going to shoot reflections.” That’s just not me. Street Photography is a form of meditation, and creating walls or barriers becomes counter-intuitive to the Zen of walking the streets. So with this process, I am in high-noon sunlight or shadow, inside a bar or outside in an alley, always looking for that moment that I feel is worth documenting. Having an electronic viewfinder takes away a lot of the guess-work, allowing me to meter the scene with pin-point accuracy. This is important to me because I come from a school-of-thought where the print is very important, and having a brilliant exposure obviously helps.


Do you also make use of the D-Lux’s 4K Video?

I actually rarely use it, though again it's nice to have the option – you never know when you might want to shoot in high-quality video. It’s extremely easy to use: you simply click the red button once to record, then click it again to stop. It’s much easier than the Canon Mark II series. I mostly use it to create 12-second video montages as part of my family portrait sessions.


So how would you summarise the shooting experience?

What makes this little camera such a beast is its versatility.