My dream has come true - I walked into a thrift store and found a boxed black Leica in almost new condition! Good news is that it was only $3.00. Bad news is that it is a plastic point and shoot, not an M4!

Seriously, I know this is a Japanese made point and shoot. I ran a roll of film through it and everything seems to work perfectly. The camera makes a LOT of noise, though, which may or may not be normal, but it seems to work perfectly (so far).

But, are there any comments on the 35-70 "Elmar" zoom? The 4x6 inch prints seem to be excellent but I haven't done a critical examination of the negatives.

One excellent feature about this camera is the red dot! It seems to be identical to that on the M6. And, I bought the dot for about 1/1000 the price of getting a dot by buying an M6.

-- Thomas Herbert (therbert@miami.edu), December 19, 2001

Answers

I had a Minizoom for a year or two. It takes very good photos, the lens and exposure system are excellent for a point and shoot. A friend of mine was so enamored of the photos it took that she begged for it... Oh well, another one lost. {grin}

-- Godfrey (ramarren@bayarea.net), December 19, 2001.

I'd say you got the red dot at cost, the camera was free ;>)

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), December 19, 2001.

I owned a Mini Zoom for three years. The lens was excellent, although I found it could be a little flare-prone with backlit subjects.

Points I didn't like:

* with such a narrow maximum aperture you can forget limited DoF e.g. for portraits

* a bit too big for a P&S

* no manual contol of focus, aperture or shutter speed

* the use of a single button to select various modes, especially since the camera would forget what mode I was using when I switched it off

* having to use the same central spot in the viewfinder for both focus and exposure, then holding the shutter release halfway to lock both while recomposing; what happens if the subject to be in focus is not 18% grey? * it was easy to knock the on/off switch with the camera in its pouch, resulting in the lens straining to extend itself in the confines of the pouch

* keeping the camera in its leather pouch all the time induced fungus in the lens, which meant that the camera had to be junked - a lesson for the future!

-- Ray Moth (ray_moth@yahoo.com), December 19, 2001.

Thomas,

I have owned a MINI ZOOM since Sept.94 and for ages blamed myself for out of focus images interspersed with superb ones. I finally sent it to Leica who replaced the electronics, now every image is sharp and IMO the lens is excellent. March 1994 Australian Camera concluded "You'd have to pay dearly to obtain an SLR package with comparable performance" I can't argue with that.

I mainly use an M6 and occasionally a Nikon F80 (N80 in the US). But for the convenience of point and shoot record shots I use the little MINI a lot now that it's fixed and many of the results are better than the Nikon Zooms (ED variety). I wear it on my belt in its leather pouch and hardly know it's there.

I'll now heed Ray's warning about storing it in the leather pouch even though mine has survived for 7 years without the dreaded mushrooms.

In case you don't have the information, the lens is seven elements (in six groups). It's a traditional design employing conventionally cut an polished glass elements with multi coating.

Use it and the results will speak for themselves.

You have found a bargain and if your experience is anything like mine you have found a new little friend.

-- Tim Gee (twg@optushome.com.au), December 20, 2001.

Lens should be fine, electronics will not last forever.

-- David Killick (Dalex@inet.net.nz), December 20, 2001.

Thanks for all the helpful comments. I agree that the Mini-Zoom is a rather large point and shoot. I've also noticed the annoying single control for options. But, it does seem to take great pictures.

My only two reservations, which have not been mentioned, are: 1) The camera seems to make a lot of noise. I've never heard such an interesting sequence of sounds from any camera. Maybe it is on the verge of dying but for now it works great. 2) I tended to cut off heads of people on the first roll. This isn't a parallax problem, though. It seems that sometimes I get flare in the viewfinder and don't see the white frameline. So, I tend to think that there is a greater field of view than there really is.

-- Tom (therbert@miami.edu), December 20, 2001.

Tom, don't worry because of the terrible sounds your mini zoom produces: that's just the way it is! Especially zooming sounds quite horribly. Nevertheless, sharpness and brilliance of the pictures this camera is able to produce are really astonishing. I also have a Rollei 35S, a Minox 35 GT and I also tried a Yashica T5. None of them can rival the Leica mini zoom, even if it has a zoom lens.

-- Georg Rademacher (georg.rademacher@sfb240.uni-siegen.de), April 19, 2002.