I am a professional lifestyle, portrait, and wedding photographer with huge, expensive full-frame Nikon DSLRs and lenses. I love them. And I love to have them on me pretty much constantly since once the photography bug bites, you see beautiful photos everywhere. But it's just plain annoying to carry around a camera bag all the time, especially when traveling for leisure. Thus I went on the search for an alternative camera that would be on me 100% of the time, no matter where I go, and would provide a full manual feature set and great image quality. I've owned, rented, or used lots of camera systems, but they always had interchangeable lenses, which I specifically did not want for this purpose.
After looking at the Fuji X100T, Sony RX100III and IV, Leicas, and even the Sony RX1 Mk2 (in my wildest, most expensive dreams), I found this little camera at the bottom of the price bracket and decided to give it a try.
Here are some thoughts on this camera before discussing image quality:
-It's not as small as the Sony RX100 cameras, and probably won't be comfortable in your pants pocket. But it WILL fit very easily in a purse, backpack, briefcase, or jacket pocket very comfortably. In short, you won't need a camera bag to keep this on you 100% of the time. That's small enough for me, and actually I thought the camera would be larger when I ordered it. One annoying thing is that the lens isn't automatically covered when retracted, so you'll want to keep track of the lens cap, which can be fastened to the camera with an included tether.
-The construction is immaculate. Better, in some ways in fact, than my Nikon D750. It's not weather sealed, but then again neither are it competitors. Very solid clicky buttons and dials that have just the right amount of resistance. The button layout is intuitive and useful.
-The camera is dang comfortable to hold and use for a little camera.
-I like that the manual controls are directly changed rather than chosen in a mode dial. For example, if you wanted aperture priority mode you'd just change the aperture ring to what you want then set ISO and shutter dials to auto. It's the same as Fuji systems basically, and it's a whole lot of fun, though not perhaps as quick as a dual-dial DSLR when shooting in full manual.
-The EVF is small but certainly usable. I thought I'd use it more but I tend to use the screen most of the time. I like that the EVF is on the left of the camera so your nose doesn't have to press into the screen to use it.
-I'll trade a hot-shoe for a built-in flash any day. I never shoot with on-camera flash anyway, and if you really want it the included flash is small and nice enough. I've shot this bad boy with my pocket wizards and off camera flash. But really, whatever. Not having an on-camera flash is one of many tells that this is a camera for photographers not amateurs, as I'll discuss later.
-Not being familiar with Panasonic's menu and language (and hating to read manuals despite my wife's mocking advice) it took me a bit to figure out how to set the camera up as I preferred. This is partially because it's so incredibly customizable, which, again, makes it great for pros/enthusiasts, and not so great for beginners or intermediate photographers. It's a very, very, very customizable shooting experience with 3 custom function buttons that can be assigned a ton of different useful options (WAY more than Nikon lets me assign on my D750). The quick menu is also customizable in a very useful way. But be warned - you'll need to set this camera up before using it, or you're going to get annoyed. For example, the intelligent auto button that so many people complain about being easily hit can be set to need a long-press before activating, thus solving this problem. But you'd have to really set this camera up to know that.
-Speaking of Intelligent Auto, I actually really like it here. It's important that I can just hand this camera to a stranger, set it to auto, and know it'll give me a good picture. It's not as easy to hit as rumored, especially when you choose the long-press option.
-I only have a few beefs with this camera's design/interface/usability, and you've probably already heard them in other reviews. 1) It would be nice if the screen articulated. I like to shoot from interesting angles and I miss the articulating (though incredibly pokey) live view articulating screen of my D750 at times. 2) Choosing a focus point is slower than on my DSLRs. I wish that the wheel/4-way pad could be set to choose the focus point without pressing a button, but even more than the focus points moved more quickly when you're moving them around. It's one downfall of having so many focus points, you have to scroll through all of them to find the one you want. I'd prefer just to be able to choose center or one of the rule-of-thirds points instead. That's just a pet peeve, though, really. 3) The filter button is stupid on this kind of camera and should have been a 4th custom button instead. Really - why? It's kind of a bizarre choice here given the obvious intended market for this camera. 4) I'm sure Panasonic's iA, iDynamic, and multitude of other intelligent modes are great. But there sure are a heck of a lot of them and I kind of wish they were more plainly branded. All in all, these are fairly minor problems.
OKAY! On to image quality.
-It's not a full frame DSLR. There is much more noise and less detail than my D750 gives me, and I sometimes miss those things. But I'd be pretty stupid to expect something else, wouldn't I? Overall, image quality is amazingly good in bright light and quite good in lower light. It's not too far off what I get from my Fujifilm APS-C sensors, which are some of the best APS-C sensors around.
-Depending on your level of perfectionism, ISO is usable up to around 3200. You loose a lot of detail past ISO 1250, but noise is fairly minimal up to 3200. You can push it higher if you don't mind noise and it'll certainly be better than any smartphone. The super-fast aperture and the image stabilization work to make this a very capable camera in low light.
-The low depth of field you can achieve is incredible for something that fits easily in your jacket pocket. And the out-of-focus areas (bokeh) are truly beautiful in many cases. I was surprised by how creamy and smooth it could get. Colors meld together and lights turn into nice circles. It's quite beautiful bokeh, much better than I was expecting. Maybe it's the Leica branding on the lens?
-Holy cow, the macro abilities of this system are better than anything I own. If I need a macro shot for a client, I put down my Nikon and pick up the LX100.
-12 megapixels is plenty unless you want to crop a lot. The variable, no-loss crop factors are nice if that's you're thing.
-The glass, camera, and processor all work together to give you really beautiful contrast and color. It's not Fujifilm-quality strait out of camera, but it's darn good. Very pretty. See my example photos.
-The 4K photo burst mode is really nice for pets and children. Photos look good, not smeared as you'd expect for movie stills.
-VIDEO: I rarely use it, but the 4K is really, really nice. It holds it's own against my D750. And the zebra striping and focus peaking work incredibly well, and are especially nice for smooth video work.
SUMMARY:
This camera produces some brilliant images in almost any situation, and it delivers the artistic capabilities of a DSLR or ILC Mirrorless camera in an always-with-you sized package. It's a fantastic accomplishment and I am very pleased to own this camera. This is not a camera designed for people who either don't know how to manually balance shutter, aperture, and ISO while choosing a focus point and the correct metering mode all at once. Yes, if you stick the camera in auto it will produce much better images than your smartphone. But it's entirely missing the point of why this camera exists - to give knowledgable and experienced photographers a tool that can accomplish the same shots as their interchangeable lens systems with only minor reductions in image quality. It is the ideal travel or walk around camera for a professional or enthusiast photographer.
The Panasonic LX-100 is an extraordinarily customizable, well-balanced, beautifully built compact camera that will please anyone, but especially those understand photography or are willing to learn.
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