Panasonic LX1 (Leica DLux2) - 9::16

[Kevin Bjorke]

I see that Ben Lifson also uses one -- anyone else using this unusual 16::9 (and occasionally 9::16) camera?



While not nearly as fluid, it's largely replaced my DSLR.

 

[John Hollenberg]

I have one that I haven't used much yet. Main dislike is the amount of noise in the blue channel, for example in the sky.

--John

 

[Kim Fullbrook]

I took one on holiday recently as my only camera. It made a huge change from carrying a large D-DLR, being so small and pocketable. It's a responsive camera and easy to use after you've learned your way round. I always use it in Raw mode, although when set to Raw it always creates a Jpeg anyway.

The lens quality is excellent and the 28mm equivalent wide-angle means it's very versatile. My only complaint is the noise. As John has said it's particularly noisy in the blue channel meaning that seascapes are a bit noisy. Even using grain reduction during raw conversion still leaves some noise. For shots where blue is less prominent the results are excellent. The short focal length lens (in real terms) means depth of field is far better than a typical D-SLR. Also the image stabilisation works very well. Provided you are not shooting fast moving subjects this can avoid the need for higher shutter speeds and higher ISO settings. I made some A4 size prints recently and the results overall were very sharp and the noise wasn't too much of a problem. Put side-by-side with prints from a Canon 20D the difference is noise is obvious very close up, but less of a concern say 6 inches away.

Overall I think it's an excellent camera fitted with a so-so sensor. Some pictures will be excellent quality while some others will be noisy, perhaps comparable to 200 ISO colour print film.
If Panasonic could sort out the sensor they would have a real winner.

 

[Peter Mendelson]

Panasonic is releasing a LX2 camera soon, which they claim has much lower noise. On the other hand, the new Venus III image processor they are using is said to smear a lot of detail, at least in another Pany camera that is using it. I will take noisy detail over smeared clean shots every time, but it's not clear yet how the LX2 will fare in that regard. While the LX-1 has a lot going for it, I sold it and got a Canon S3 instead, for the better zoom range and great video. The lens in the LX-1 is sharper but much noisier than the Canon.

Peter