PANASONIC LUMIX LX3 - serious plaything

UPDATE

I honestly can't get enough of this camera. I did a posting when I had the camera for under a month. I wanted to share some more pix that I've taken. A lot of the pictures on my blog are done with the Lumix LX3. I just really dig being able to pull this camera out of my purse and start shooting...a luxury I don't have with my DSLR.














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I caught the photography bug VERY early on. My Dad recently sent me this picture that I took when I was 5... at least I kept the shot in focus (this was a manual 35mm camera) and I didn't cut off any heads. Here's that photo circa 1973.



My Dad gave me a one of those little rectangular 110 Kodak cameras when I was probably 8...remember those? Black & silver with a red button to release the shutter? I took photography classes in high school and became the first female head photographer of the yearbook and then I signed on to take on the same role for the school newspaper. I competed in photojournalism that year and won 1st place at nationals. Woohoo! I continued in college and carried this over to studying cinematography....blah blah blah. Great fun, but I got burned out on taking photos and only recently started shooting again. We all need a little bit of creativity in our lives!

I've been having a lot of fun shooting with my Nikon DSLR but I really needed a compact camera that I could control. I did a lot of research (I friggin' loooove doing my research), and I came up with the Panasonic Lumix LX3. I considered the Canon G10 for a while, but wasn't sold on it as it was a bit on the large side for what I wanted. The Lumix fully appealed to me because it's compact, and it's also made in the same factory as the Leica D-Lux 4. Nothing is sexier than a Leica. The LX3 is its twin...the coating on the lens is different, from what I understand, but everything else is supposed to be the same. It has a mean lens - 24mm to 60, and it's fast fast fast at 2.0 to 2.8 at full zoom. This means I can take AMAZING low light photos. This wide angle lens is beautiful. Shooting on it in Dynamic Black & White is phenomenal. I can lock the camera so that it favors the aperture that I set or the shutter speed depending on the situation and the controls are pretty intuitive and easy to use.



This is one of the first photos I took with my LX3...you can see the camera manual on the bed. If you click to see the big version of this pic, you'd see that Monkey's (my chiweenie) head is right underneath Jezebel's (murderous cat of all itty bitty creatures) chin.

This camera is proving to be awesome for photojournalism type stuff...you can turn off the sound like most cameras, but the quality of the photos is amazing.


The detail in this gentleman's face is pretty gorgeous. I took this on the shuttle bus at LAX...first time I had experienced having to take a shuttle from the gate to the terminal.

This was taken in front of a church...two teenagers snogging.


A mom and her kids buying some ice cream from the corner ice cream cart man...I love that wide angle! A lot of people might feel that 24 to 60 might be too short a telefoto. I had to really think about how I shoot. I tend to use a lot of wide angle, macro, and a portrait lens. I don't EVER pull out my long telefoto zoom on my Nikon DSLR. Plus as a snappydo camera, I felt that mostly I'd be taking photojournalistic style pix and pictures of my friends...all things that I'd be up close and personal with. And with a shorter zoom, you get a faster lens...far more important to me as I'm a natural fiend and would rather have that extra stop of light than the ability to get closer. Plus the longer the zoom, the more compromised the quality of the lens. Bleh!

Even though I prefer to shoot in natural light, there are times when a flash is needed. This flash in black & white, I really don't mind. And this camera is able to focus pretty well in the dark which is another requirement that I had.

And finally...a macro shot. This camera is fully automatic, and fully manual. You can even set it to manual focus if you want, which I haven't tried out yet. What I normally do is set it up for spotmeter light reading (so that I can isolate what I want the camera to expose for in the small center dot, then I recompose the shot) and I do the same with the autofocus so that I can tell the camera what I want to focus on.

Okay I'll stop geeking out now. Bottom line, I REALLY dig this camera...like REALLY. I <3 it.