IDSworks Pillar Grip for Leica D-Lux8

IDSworks grip for Leica D-Lux8

Widely referred to as the "mini Q3" D-Lux8 is an interesting model in the Leica camera line up. This little point and shoot camera offer a small form factor while keeping the operation as as a Q3. In the beginning I wasn't interested in creating a grip for it as I think there is not much need for a grip in such a small form factor.

It was later that I was told from many that they wish to have one as in longer zoom range a grip does help and also because the size is so small regular size hand would love to have one.

In the beginning we thought about just simply apply our normal grip pad on it and that should be easy but we quickly found a problem. Since the camera is so small, there is not enough space for your fingers between the grip and the lens. There are two possible ways for us to solve this. One is to resize our grip pad and two is to design a new one. 

We have made mockup for the resizing of the original grip pad but such size is not comfortable because the camera is much thinner than the normal M or Q so we ditch that idea and we design to pay homage to the legendary M9 design instead.

In fact, I like the old M9 grip design much better than the current grip design from Leica as the round pillar shape provides a natural finger set in to hold the grip.

Since we are going down this route, we have redesigned the connection between the grip handle and the grip base. It is now a off centered connection which offers further expansion of this grip idea to different camera models. Allowing apply pillar shap grip with different diameter and height in the future (A similar design for M11 is actually coming up).

Directly integrated with ARCA dove tail to connect ARCA based tripod directly.

Aside from the grip shape, the base of the grip only adds a minimum of 5.5mm to the total height. Visual height of the base is 7mm because the top 1.5mm wrap around the bottom edge of the camera which do not add to total height. Unlike Q3 there is no location anchor at the bottom, we wrap around the edge to prevent the grip from rotation. There is no protruding edges from the camera and are flushed to provide a pleasing look.

Further to that we have also designed the base to connect with PD capture clip so that it can directly attach to the capture clip. 

There is now a hidden anchor to attach PD strip as well. 

Most importantly the battery access is not covered which is pretty much standard these days for grip design.

There are two grip pillar materials to choose from. The pillar are attached to the grip pad with metal to metal connection inside and there is no need to worry about pillar rotation because of internal position limiting pin.

Walnut 

Africian Dark wood

Weight:

Grip base at 21g / Africian black wood grip 22 g / Walnut grip 13 gram