It is now September of 2010, and I have had this camera on 3 big trips, and here are my impressions. The camera is superb. The good images from it are phenomenal and I would say every bit as good as what comes from my Canon 20D digital SLR. I have found it easy to use, and have no qualms about the lens cap that so many gripe about (I have been removing and replacing lens caps on my DSLR for years). Having a camera this light is a wonderfully liberating. There is never a reason not to carry it.
I have discovered one other thing after several years now with the camera. It does a wonderful job shooting in nice bright daylight at ISO 80 (which I think is the lowest ISO it can be set to). I made the mistake of leaving it set at ISO 400 during a week long trip after doing some indoor shooting, and the digital noise was quite bad. This is where a camera like the Canon 20D with the APS-C sized sensor shines. This is even more true with more modern sensors and full frame cameras. This was my mistake though, and an entirely expected limitation of a small sensor point and shoot camera like this. Set at ISO 80 it does exactly what I want it to do very well.
I bought a little Low Pro case for it (a "Rezo 50") that has worked out well.
My biggest complaint is something that cannot be fixed on a point and shoot camera, and that is that composing on an LCD screen really sucks big time! In bright sun, it is simply a guessing game with only the grossest features visible. Judging focus is nearly impossible, and I have been disappointed by macro shots where, once back home, I discovered the camera had focused on some background object. I have closely composed shots to discover later that the top of a mountain or persons head has been cut off. Apart from interchangeable lenses, one of the biggest advantages of a DSLR is the viewfinder. On a DSLR the only thing I use the LCD for is to check the histogram.
But these are my impressions after using the camera for 2 months. My complaint about the LCD focus is the one thing that bugs me the most, and frankly it is nothing bad about the LX3 in particular. The LX3 is a fine camera, and its light weight and my liberation from having to deal with and worry about sensor dust more than make up for any complaints.
First of all, I have Photoshop CS3, which includes Adobe Raw 4.0 as shipped, and the final upgrade of Adobe Raw is 4.6 and does not support the LX3. This is a real bummer, but it is how Adobe does business. Apparently the first version of Raw to support the LX3 was 5.2, which was an upgrade for those who owned CS4. These days CS5 is out, and Raw 6.x does support the LX3. I like Adobes products (very much), but hate how they do business. I am not taking time to complain now about the phone support (in December of 2010) provided by a nice fellow with a thick and all but incomprehensible Indian accent. I thought most companies had given up on this offshore tech support rubbish ....
Apparently there is (or was) a workaround for CS3 users like myself. You can download the Adobe DNG converter, convert the panasonic LX3 raw files to DNG format, then pull them into Camera Raw 4 in CS3. I wonder how the barrel distortion correction sorts out if you do this.
What follows are my notes before and during the purchase:
Along with the camera, I bought two Kingston 8G class 4 SDHC cards. They cost $16.54 each. The class 4 thing is a speed rating, and all I can say is they are working fine for taking single photos, which is all I ever intend to do. If I start shooting video or burst photos, maybe I will wish for something faster. Perhaps I would do just fine with cheaper and slower cards. It does take a couple of seconds to save the RAW + JPEG combination that I always shoot, but this has yet to bother me.
Also also bought two after-market batteries along with the camera. The battery supplied with the camera is a CGA-S005A, rated at 1090 mAh. The batteries I bought were Kinamax BTR-CGAS005-J "Premium Japanese Cells" for $16.99. They were listed as 1500 MaH, but the batteries I received have 1700 mAh printed on them. The Genuine Panasonic costs $34.99 at amazon.com (which was where I purchased the camera and batteries). Reviews claim the Kinamax batteries work as well or better than the Panasonic.
The little camera weighs 8 ounces and can fit into a pants pocket; at least it fits as long as you wear cargo pants with ample pockets, as I usually do. It is an image stabilized point and shoot camera with a 10 megapixel sensor that will capture raw files as well as JPEG images. It also has a very nice Leica lens with a 24-60mm equivalent field of view (a "2.5x zoom") and an f/2.0 aperture.
At this time (August, 2010), Panasonic has almost released the LX5 (they skipped the LX4 model number). As near as I can tell, the main difference is that the lens now has a "3.8 zoom" (24 to 90). Apparently it also has a better sensor, and they have done away with the micro-joystick. Some new features were borrowed from the Panasonic GF1 (including the click wheel that replaces the joystick).
Reviews I have read appreciate the extended zoom range, and the claim is that the sensor is improved in some ways. I read many complaints about unfortunate firmware changes. One example is that while flash compensation was easy with the LX3, it is now buried 6 levels deep in menus in the LX5. Also the LX3 has a focus button which is invaluable for macro (set focus to manual and use the focus button). The LX5 ditched this fine feature, replacing it with a "start video" button..
I was nervous that a lens with a greater zoom range would sacrifice optical quality, but what I read says that the lens on the LX5 is less flare prone and perhaps better in other ways also.
One rumor (which not too many believe) is that the D Lux 4 has different lens coatings than the LX3. In the same vein is the claim that the D Lux 4 are the "pick of the litter" from the production line making the LX3.
This is apparently a hot topic with some people (such as those who paid the premium price for the Leica version). I feel smug because I have a Leica at a bargain price.
One thing though is beyond contradiction. The Leica manual is much much better than the LX3 manual! You can (and should) get it from the Leica website, or right here.
The LX3 lens does produce significant barrel distortion and chromatic aberration. Although this is removed either by the JPEG processor inside the camera or by raw conversion software used in post processing, there are unavoidable losses and degradation of resolution in such processing. Clearly this is a trade-off to allow an f/2.0 lens at a 24mm equivalent focal length. Some people get really worked up over this apparently, and a naive raw converter will provide some real surprises.
I personally very much like the 24-60mm range of focal lengths. This is almost identical to my favorite DSLR setup (the Canon 17-40 L series lens on my 1.6 crop Canon 20D camera, which has a field of view equivalent to 27.2 to 64mm). For landscapes (the main priority in what I shoot), this is wonderful, and the 24mm effective focal length along with the choice of the 16:9 aspect ratio is fantastic.
Note that the 24-60mm range is referred to as a 2.5x zoom. (The 24-90mm range on the LX5 is referred to as a 3.8x zoom.) This is, I suppose, a handy single number that people who don't want to think a lot can use to compare cameras.
The camera is amazingly capable at closeup and macro shooting, which pleases me to no end.
The manual says that I can record 480 full size images (both raw and high quality JPEG) on an 8G card using the 3:2 aspect ratio. I get a few more images with the other aspect ratios.
The Camera ships with "Standard" Film mode and zeros for the various processing settings. I have been encouraged to change the standard settings to "Nostalgic" and to fiddle some settings as follows (1,0,1,-2), i.e.
Contrast +1 Sharpening 0 Color (Saturation) +1 NR (Noise Reduction) -2This is a field ripe for experimentation. Many people have been less than pleased with the JPEG images that the camera produces out of the box. Many of these throw their hands up after fiddling with the settings and resort to using the RAW files to get the results they want. I indeed plan to capture raw images, but would like to get JPEG images that are as good as possible. LX3 Settings
I mistakenly hit the "Memory" button, thinking this was the way to save my settings. It was, but not in the way that I expected. It made these settings my own film mode "MY1". I then had to reselect nostalgic, which kept the above adjustments.
I also adjusted white balance (as instructed) to +2 blue (on the A-B axis) and +1 red (on the M-, G+ axis)
There are reports that the Ricoh LC-1 self retaining lens cap (made for the Ricoh GX200 and Capli GX100 cameras) can be used on the LX3 (with a slight modification to the lens cap) and this makes some people very happy. You can get this at Adorama for about $18.00
One user says that he finds ISO 80 on the LX3 is like ISO 640 on his Canon 40D DSLR noise wise. He also claims that you will not get many usable shots beyond ISO 400, which does not surprise me.
To read images into your computer, you have two options. I always prefer to use some kind of USB card reader rather than connecting the USB cable to the camera. The first cheap unit I bought did not work and I returned it. Then I found a nice little Sony MRW68E-D1 reader for about $15.00 at Office Depot, and despite Office Depots horrible return policy, took a chance on it, and got lucky. It works perfectly. I am using Kingston 8G "Class 4" SDHC cards.
When I use the Sony reader on my Fedora 13 system, I see the following messages in /var/log/messages when I plug the reader in:
Aug 9 12:30:34 cholla kernel: usb 1-8: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7 Aug 9 12:30:35 cholla kernel: usb 1-8: New USB device found, idVendor=054c, idProduct=03cc Aug 9 12:30:35 cholla kernel: usb 1-8: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 Aug 9 12:30:35 cholla kernel: usb 1-8: Product: USB 2.0 Card R/W Aug 9 12:30:35 cholla kernel: usb 1-8: Manufacturer: Sony Aug 9 12:30:35 cholla kernel: usb 1-8: SerialNumber: 1A30C000D8B8 Aug 9 12:30:35 cholla kernel: scsi10 : usb-storage 1-8:1.0 Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access Sony Card_R/W 4.30 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0 CCS Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] 15564800 512-byte logical blocks: (7.96 GB/7.42 GiB) Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is on Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sdc: sdc1 Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Assuming drive cache: write through Aug 9 12:30:40 cholla kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable diskAfter this, I do mount /dev/sdc1 /media/flash and I am good to go.
Connecting the USB cable that is supplied with the camera to the camera itself also works just fine. If you have not set the mode in the camera settings, I will ask you if you want to use PTP or PC mode (I choose PC and it works just fine). Then I later found the setting and locked it to PC mode to make this even simpler, though I do not expect to use it now that I have an SD card reader that works.
Tom's Digital Photography Info / tom@mmto.org