[Leica] re: minilux or hexar

[Brian Reid <brian@reid.org>]

My mother has a Minilux. I've used it quite a bit. I have never used a
Hexar, or even seen one. However, my mother's Minilux has one problem that
is in my opinion so awful that it, by itself is enough reason not to buy
the Minilux: it does not have a lens cap and cannot be fitted with one.
This means that, in order to protect the lens, you have to go to
extraordinary lengths when putting the camera away. I built her a custom
camera case out of a container that was designed to hold boxed fruit juice
for school lunches, but I glued a piece of semirigid nylon sheeting over
the part that would cover the lens, and I put 16 little plastic bump-feet
all around the edge of it, so that when the camera is slid into this case,
it will reliably cover the lens without touching it.

When I bought a point-and-shoot I bought an Olympus Stylus. Olympus lenses
are not shabby, and it has a very good clamshell design that protects the
lens. The new-from-the-factory image quality is not as good as the Minilux,
but nobody ever puts point-and-shoot cameras on a tripod (there goes half
your lens quality right there) and the lack of a lens cap means that most
people who buy one will grind the front coating off of it within a few months.