Panasonic LX3 Street Shots
Part of the reason I bought the LX3 was to have a good compact camera for street shooting. I've been using a Canonet and an Olympus XA for those duties, but I'm sick of spending hours scanning 35mm film. So how did the Panasonic stack up?
I'll be the first to admit that I'm no great street photographer. I do enjoy it though, and the LX3 makes it even more enjoyable. For one, it's almost totally silent once you turn off the idiot beeping. It's also easy to hold it down at near-waist level, thanks to a wide viewing angle LCD. And it has a really cool function that I didn't expect - in manual focus mode, it has a little yellow bar on the distance scale to show you the range of focus, not just the point you've set it at! In other words, as you zoom in or open the aperture, you'll see the yellow DOF indicator shrink, telling you you're going to have shallower depth of field. This is really cool - it makes it super easy to set the hyperfocal distance. Just rack the focus in until infinity is no longer within the yellow bar, then move it back in a bit.
The way I've been shooting, none of the people on the street have even been aware I was taking pictures. This is quite novel after years of using only bulky DSLRs... I think Henri Cartier-Bresson would have loved this thing!
