You could argue that I could pick a lighter lens for the Canon or a better lens for the Sony, but this is what I have and what I have carried or intend to carry.
To evaluate the image quality, I took test images with each of my three cameras. These were taken from my porch in Tucson using a tripod. The Canon was used at ISO 400 (which is what I routinely use hand held). The other cameras were used at their lowest ISO setting (100 for the A6000, 80 for the LX3). I shot at f/8 since I commonly carry the camera in the field set this way using aperture priority. I let each camera autofocus, which places focus near the tall cholla cactus in the center of the image.
I used the 18-55 lens on the A6000 with the focal length set to 24. I did my best to achieve a simliar zoom with the LX3, I set the 24-70 lens on the Canon to 36.
I shot raw captures in each case using auto white balance. I converted to JPG using lightroom, the only correction that I made being to set white and black points to perform a contrast adjustment.
Here are the images in order of camera weight; LX3 first, then the a6000, then the 5D.
Note that the LX3 was set to capture a 16x9 aspect ratio image,
the other cameras capture a 3x2 aspect ratio.
I think you will agree that at this size (1024 pixels wide) it is all but
impossible to complain about any of the cameras.
So for "web shooting", use whatever camera provides the best ergonomics.
Here are links to full size JPEG images, as well as the RAW files for those people who want to download them and use their own tools to compare them.
Here is a crop from near the center of each image:
The LX3 image has been upsampled from 477 pixels wide to 670 to match
the other two, which are shown at 1:1
The order is LX3, then A6000, then Canon 5Dii.
And here is a crop from near the left side of each image,
again the LX3 image has been upsampled to be similar to the other two.
The order is LX3, then A6000, then Canon 5Dii.
Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org
