squirrel$$$bandit
Veteran
Some of you might remember, a few months back I wrote up a little review of the Sigma DP1 here on the forum. I really liked it, in spite of all its much-publicized flaws. There is nothing quite like those Foveon files--the 100% crops are impossibly sharp and lifelike--it almost seems like magic.
However, nice crops are not all that important to me, and as the months went by I really started longing to use my M lenses on a digicam. So I unloaded the DP1 and bought an R-D1. I don't regret it--it's a wonderful camera, and as nice as I thought the DP1 was, it's not 800 dollars nice. Anyway, what with me giving my Fuji F30 to my son, this left me without a compact P&S, so I picked up the LX-3.
I mention the DP1 at all because that's what this camera seems to be trying to trump. In most ways, it succeeds wildly. It's a little smaller, but very sharp looking. The lens is excellent (with a caveat which I'll get to). It powers on fast, writes files fast (including RAW), and has the most beautiful screen that has probably ever been on a compact camera. Really just amazing. The menu system is simple, the mode dial turns with a satisfying click, and the build quality is great. The pop-out flash, while small, feels really solid, and unlike on the Sigma, the lens cap pops on easily and stays there. It feels pretty decent to use, though I am tempted to actually buy, for the first time in my life, a leather half-case, the one that Panasonic makes for it. The camera's ergonomics are aiming for rangefinder quality but the thing is just too small.
Other advantages--there is NO shutter lag. I mean NONE. This is really quite amazing. There is a highly effective manual focus mode--a magnified box appears on the screen and you use the joystick to focus--and when you hit the shutter button, bang, the pic is taken. The AF is actually pretty fast, too, and it's easy to scale focus while walking down the street, which is going to be one of my primary uses for it. The maximum aperture of the lens is 2.0, and it REALLY makes a difference. You will want to keep this thing at low ISO's if possible and the fast lens makes it a cinch.
The lens. It is very nice, though not as nice as Sigma's amazing 28mm DP1 prime. The in-camera JPEG engine renders lovely photos, though I would like to be able to turn the NR all the way off (it goes to -2, but it's still on). The low-ISO JPEGs are very, very good; 400 and 800 are quite nice too, for a compact, with a bit of touching up. Above there, I'd stick to black and white, and in fact I will.
Here's the one bothersome thing though. I want to use RAW. But the supplied SilkyPix SE doesn't get you anything much better than the JPEGs. I don't understand why this should be--in some cases the JPEGs are actually superior to anything I could get out of SilkyPix. So I went online and downloaded dcraw and RawDrop. This gives you ABSOLUTELY UNPROCESSED TIFFs, albeit extremely flat ones. I actually put together a quickie web page illustrating this:
http://inverseroom.creotia.com/lx3
OK, so, the colors and white balance and contrast and gamma and what have you are way off on my hastily processed TIFF. But check out the detail in that (yes, heavily shapened) crop. There really is a ton of it, and you can't get at it in SilkyPix. I have no idea why.
This experiment caused me to realize, as well, that the lens suffers from tremendous barrel distortion--you need to go to +15 in Photoshop to fix it. The JPEG engine does this automatically, and so, interestingly, does SilkyPix. What I'm waiting for, of course, is for Adobe to add the camera to ACR, and I'm hoping the profile will include a lens correction but will NOT obliterate the nice RAW detail. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, this is a really good camera. If you like the Ricohs, you will like this too. If you liked how well the Fujis do in low light, you'll like this too. It looks awesome, feels good, and is generally a big winner. I suspect you can get some nice 8x10 prints out of it, esp. at low ISOs and in B&W. Oh yeah there are a bunch of fun film modes on it, too, though I usually prefer to keep things neutral and mess with 'em later in Lightroom.
Remember, though, IQ remains stridently small-sensor. It's a very good small sensor which the DP1 nevertheless murders in IQ. But at half the price and four times the usability, you might well prefer this camera. And when you want to make giant prints, use your M8, DSLR, or film.
Cheers
John
However, nice crops are not all that important to me, and as the months went by I really started longing to use my M lenses on a digicam. So I unloaded the DP1 and bought an R-D1. I don't regret it--it's a wonderful camera, and as nice as I thought the DP1 was, it's not 800 dollars nice. Anyway, what with me giving my Fuji F30 to my son, this left me without a compact P&S, so I picked up the LX-3.
I mention the DP1 at all because that's what this camera seems to be trying to trump. In most ways, it succeeds wildly. It's a little smaller, but very sharp looking. The lens is excellent (with a caveat which I'll get to). It powers on fast, writes files fast (including RAW), and has the most beautiful screen that has probably ever been on a compact camera. Really just amazing. The menu system is simple, the mode dial turns with a satisfying click, and the build quality is great. The pop-out flash, while small, feels really solid, and unlike on the Sigma, the lens cap pops on easily and stays there. It feels pretty decent to use, though I am tempted to actually buy, for the first time in my life, a leather half-case, the one that Panasonic makes for it. The camera's ergonomics are aiming for rangefinder quality but the thing is just too small.
Other advantages--there is NO shutter lag. I mean NONE. This is really quite amazing. There is a highly effective manual focus mode--a magnified box appears on the screen and you use the joystick to focus--and when you hit the shutter button, bang, the pic is taken. The AF is actually pretty fast, too, and it's easy to scale focus while walking down the street, which is going to be one of my primary uses for it. The maximum aperture of the lens is 2.0, and it REALLY makes a difference. You will want to keep this thing at low ISO's if possible and the fast lens makes it a cinch.
The lens. It is very nice, though not as nice as Sigma's amazing 28mm DP1 prime. The in-camera JPEG engine renders lovely photos, though I would like to be able to turn the NR all the way off (it goes to -2, but it's still on). The low-ISO JPEGs are very, very good; 400 and 800 are quite nice too, for a compact, with a bit of touching up. Above there, I'd stick to black and white, and in fact I will.
Here's the one bothersome thing though. I want to use RAW. But the supplied SilkyPix SE doesn't get you anything much better than the JPEGs. I don't understand why this should be--in some cases the JPEGs are actually superior to anything I could get out of SilkyPix. So I went online and downloaded dcraw and RawDrop. This gives you ABSOLUTELY UNPROCESSED TIFFs, albeit extremely flat ones. I actually put together a quickie web page illustrating this:
http://inverseroom.creotia.com/lx3
OK, so, the colors and white balance and contrast and gamma and what have you are way off on my hastily processed TIFF. But check out the detail in that (yes, heavily shapened) crop. There really is a ton of it, and you can't get at it in SilkyPix. I have no idea why.
This experiment caused me to realize, as well, that the lens suffers from tremendous barrel distortion--you need to go to +15 in Photoshop to fix it. The JPEG engine does this automatically, and so, interestingly, does SilkyPix. What I'm waiting for, of course, is for Adobe to add the camera to ACR, and I'm hoping the profile will include a lens correction but will NOT obliterate the nice RAW detail. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, this is a really good camera. If you like the Ricohs, you will like this too. If you liked how well the Fujis do in low light, you'll like this too. It looks awesome, feels good, and is generally a big winner. I suspect you can get some nice 8x10 prints out of it, esp. at low ISOs and in B&W. Oh yeah there are a bunch of fun film modes on it, too, though I usually prefer to keep things neutral and mess with 'em later in Lightroom.
Remember, though, IQ remains stridently small-sensor. It's a very good small sensor which the DP1 nevertheless murders in IQ. But at half the price and four times the usability, you might well prefer this camera. And when you want to make giant prints, use your M8, DSLR, or film.
Cheers
John
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