Does anyone have any experience with the durability of the finish on black (non-zoom) Miniluxes as compared with the titanium-finished Miniluxes? Are black Miniluxes constructed of painted titanium or are they constructed of a different material? Does Leica still manufacture black Miniluxes? If not, when did they stop? Is there any price difference between black and "regular" Miniluxes? Thanks.

-- Chris Crevasse (ccrevasse@millermartin.com), January 12, 2001

Answers

The black Minilux is painted, and the finish does wear off easily, particularly at the corners of the camera. I've barely used mine, so the finish has not worn off at the corners yet....I'm actually looking foward to the finish wearing off because I think that will make the camera look better not worse.....

Leica no longer manufactures these. I bought a new one about a year ago. At that point, they had already been discontinued for a while, and it was very hard to find a new one.

I think these were "discontinued" because they did a just a few production runs. It is probably not cost-effective for Leica to do any more production runs. As far as the price difference, I had to pay full retail. You'll probably have a difficult time finding a new one at a retail store. I got the second-to-last one from Wall Street Camera, and I called about 20 places looking for the painted black Minilux about a year ago. These come up on ebay sometimes.

Good luck,

-- matt shimao (flymatt@yahoo.com), January 12, 2001.