Canada Day 2013-with a Digilux 2

Clarence Boudreau from Vancouver Island in Canada who has featured before on TRR see A Photographers Tale sent me this beautiful photo taken at North Saanich on the southern tip of Vancouver Island on Canada Day (1st July) this year.
It was taken with a Leica Digilux 2  which is a particularly interesting camera.It was a joint Leica/Panasonic product featuring Panasonic electronics and body,a Sony sensor and a quite superb Leica lens.I was once told by a Leica manager that Leica lost a lot of money on this camera because the lens cost more to make than the camera's retail price.There were Leica and Panasonic versions and for all intents and purposes they were identical apart from slightly different processing tweaks which it is generally agreed resulted inthe Leica version producing "nicer" jpeg files.The Digilux 2 has a very early electronic viewfinder,a small sensor,limited sensitivity and only takes 5MP files.It was launched in 2003 so it is now a ten year old design -a lifetime in digital camera terms-and yet despite what sounds today like an antique specification it is still actively used by a number of highly acclaimed pro photographers and any examples which appear on eBay go for silly money.The reason is quite simple-it produces beautiful image quality as you can see below.It is literally a sweetspot camera.
The second photo is also by Clarence and he jokingly captioned it as the last phone box in existence just before it departs to a museum.It's very well shot.