Panasonic LX100 preview and review

[ed9119]

Certainly not a small camera compared to LX7 or the Sony RX100 mkIII

Apart from filter button no 'newbie' buttons so my take is that it's aimed as the serious hobbyist's sidearm

Build quality is strong so not light either. Guys will like the feel n the smartphone interface is very "everything also can remote wifi"

No noticeable delays in Evf

It should take a few knocks

 

[ed9119]

Start-up and read-to-shoot from Off to On I must say is lightning fast. ALOT faster than my own Sony RX100 Mk III that I'd bought a couple of months back....(to me thats a HUGE plus point of the LX100)

Although the LX100 comes with a seperately attached flash unit, I wished it had an onboard flash pop up for rapid immediate deployment...... even one with a short GN range is fine for those fill-in flash situations would be great

I'm getting old and still fat.... so its a disappointment that the LX100 did not come with an articulated LCD screen. I love getting odd angles either way over my head or way down near ground level...... so thats a bummer

 

[ed9119]

ok I picked up another LX100 today that is loaded with updated firmware
This part of the preview will focus on the wifi functionality both on camera and on smartphone
I am using an antique iphone4s

Pairing the smartphone to the LX100 was a pretty straightforward affair with either a password or a QR code scan, up to you

Remote shooting page on the smartphone looks like this

all relevant controls are there and quite self explainatory

The Q.Menu is a nice feature .... pressing that will cause this to pop up , more controls

NOTICE the 4 icons at bottom row ?
From left to right they are the Live Control (Shoot/Recording) icon, Playback (View/Transfer Image) icon, the Function (Geotagging/Photo Collage) icon and the Menu icon

 

[ed9119]

when you press the Play icon, the camera will start importing images from camera to smartphone .... you can choose size of imported files

When you touch the Functions icon, a page with geotagging and photo collage shows up

and when you touch the Menu icon, a more settings show up

 

[ed9119]

On the camera these are some of the pages you will see when connecting the LX100 to your smartphone
All quite self-explainatory

Press Menu button on the LX100 and the usual menu listing pops up...... go for the wifi tab

This will be the first thing that will show up when u choose wifi from menu

From there you choose and navigate accordingly

NOTICE - once u choose WIFI, the Blue LED light is lit on top of the LCD and stays lit until you exit wifi

 

[ed9119]

Next part of the review will be to actually shoot with the camera this weekend and check out its image and 4k video output

Later next week I will load up the Cd ROM and try to figure out how to pull out images from 4k video clips

(pray for me, Panasonic did not even show me how to do this)

 

[ed9119]

This part of the review will cover the ISO performance of the LX100

Shot of a typical car park scene at Beach Road Market .... ISOs 200 through 25600 all shot within 2 mins, overhead cloudy so lighting quite constant throughout

ISO200

ISO200 part of scene cropped 100%,excuse the handshake due to low shutter speed (high f stop) so that i can cover the extreme ends of the ISO.... just focus on image noise

ISO400

ISO400 cropped 100%

 

[ed9119]

ISO 800

ISO 800 Cropped 100%

ISO 1600

ISO 1600 Cropped 100%

 

[ed9119]

ISO 3200

ISO 3200 cropped 100%

ISO 6400

ISO 6400 cropped 100%

 

[ed9119]

ISO 12800

ISO 12800 cropped 100%

ISO 25600

ISO 25600 cropped 100%

 

[ed9119]

I did a few grab shots at the food court area just to see how fast the LX100 would react
1. start time from turning it on to 'ready to shoot' is very quick
2. the lack of an articulating LCD screen for the LX series from Day 1 till this latest model is a bit of a drawback for me esp for waist level shooting and lower
3. up to ISO1600 and maybe even ISO 3200, the output file is very useable
4. if you dont want to accidentally trigger the flash unit, leave it off the camera (even when turned off it triggered when in total Auto mode) (where both Shutter speed and F stops were set at Auto)
5. It survived a severe thunderstorm this morning when I was running in the rain with the LX100 in my hands ..... cleaned it dry with some tissue paper later .... its still working good. I dont read anything about the LX100 being weather sealed but its built almost like a tank

Advise to Panasonic.... the flash comes housed in a pretty velvet pouch.... my advise is to ditch the velvet pouch for just a plain flash pouch with a couple of slots cut in so that the camera owner can attach it at least to his/her neck strap and camera. I'm quite certain that in the coming days/weeks I'm going to accidentally leave it somewhere else when I need it most. Right now, the flash is in my jeans pocket at home while the camera is sitting in the trunk of the car.... alot of folks will have issues with this

ISO 200, 1/125sec , f1.8

ISO 800, 1/40sec, f4.0

ISO 25600 , 1/500 sec, f8.0

ISO 800, 1/125 sec, f3.5

 

[ed9119]

will shoot more with it tomorrow Sunday and Monday during the Hari Raya holiday

Oops , the camera's in the car and I'm too lazy to recharge the battery (after about 50 shots and 2 mins worth of videos) .... lets see how long it lasts tomorrow

 

[kel77]

Next part of the review will be to actually shoot with the camera this weekend and check out its image and 4k video output

Later next week I will load up the Cd ROM and try to figure out how to pull out images from 4k video clips

(pray for me, Panasonic did not even show me how to do this)

if it works like the GH4, you just need to playback the video clip on cam. There's an icon on the bottom left to do screen captures and the image file will be generated into the sd card.

 

[ed9119]

hanks so much for the tip bro' Kel77 !!!

Yes I can pull images out of a 4k video clip now ..... shot a short 4k clip to demo how its done
I saved 2 images from that clip and downloading it now to see what kind of output file comes out
Poor Dennis is my hapless model ha ha
[video=youtube_share;GcL6wxvui88]http://youtu.be/GcL6wxvui88?list=UUfOiCnSsQZqON9jM7Clscdw[/video]

From the SD card (both Jpegs) , one images is 2.9mb while the other card is 3.4mb file size. I assume that this is the default ?

saved from 4k video

saved from 4k video

 

[ed9119]

here is the 4k clip where the 2 images above came from......
[video=youtube_share;98ZNBUpTBHc]http://youtu.be/98ZNBUpTBHc[/video]

 

[ed9119]

Dof off a m4/3 sensor of the LX100

Shot at wide end of zoom 1/400sec f5.6 ISO 200

Same scene shot at long end of zoom... 1/500sec, f5.6 ISO200

---------------------

 

[ed9119]

Same scene at different f-stops

1/640sec, f1.7, ISO 3200

1/60sec, f5.6, ISO 3200

1/30sec, f8.0, ISO 3200

1/18sec, f16.0, ISO 3200

 

[ed9119]

Tried a few of the art filters too

Impressive Art mode, 1/4000sec, f1.7 ISO200

Toy Effect

straight Monochrome (there are 4 [FOUR] different types of Monochrome art filters in this camera... Monochrome, Dynamic Monochrome, Rough Monochrome and Silky Monochrome .... and a Sepia to boot)

 

[eleveninth]

I'm sold on this.

 

[zaren]

4k photo is a great feature.

What were the exif data of the 4k photos of Dennis?