Toby Keller - Night Photography Blog

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!

Labels: lx3, street

Panasonic LX3 Review

Ok, I've spent a day with the LX3, and have a few example photos to share. Let me say up front that I am very happy with the results - with a couple caveats. All in all, the LX3 is light years beyond the last compact cameras I've used (waaaay back in '05). Also, I've only shot jpeg so far, as I don't feel like installing the RAW software that came with the LX3, and Adobe doesn't yet support the LX3 RAW files. On to the good stuff:

I took the camera out to the beach for a sunset walkabout. It wasn't a very strenuous test - light was good, no need for high ISOs, etc. But I was able to get a sense of the handling and responsiveness of the camera after taking about 100 shots. I bought a Sandisk 4GB SDHC card at Costco for 17.99 (after some sort of discount at the register), as I had already filled up the meager internal memory playing around.

I was impressed by the LX3's dynamic range. It didn't seem that far off from my D70 and D300 DSLRs - not as good, obviously, but not night-and-day, either. The image above is a .jpg straight out of the camera, no adjustments at all. You can see some purple flare in the bottom left corner, and the area around the sun is blown out. But overall, the dynamic range is very good, and far beyond that of any compacts I've used to date.

Here's a photo taken using the "Dynamic B&W" film mode. Very nice even tonal gradation in the sky, and good tonal range within the image. No detail is lost in the rocks in the foreground, and at the same time there is good detail in the shrubs beneath the deck. This photo also is an unaltered .jpg from the camera, with the exception of a platinum tone added in Lightroom.

One of the benefits of a compact camera is good native macro capability. I have a 55mm macro lens for my D300, but it's a bit of a hassle to dig it out every time I want to do a quick detail shot. It's not a lens I bring with me very often, so it doesn't get used much. The LX3 at 24mm can focus just a couple centimeters in front of the lens, yielding amazingly sharp and detailed close-ups like the one above of my wife's eye. The image is a 100% crop from a shot at ISO 100, f/5.6 at 24mm.

This shot is the nearest thing I have to an illustration of how shallow the DOF gets at 60mm f/2.8. Not very, I'm afraid, compared to a larger-sensor DSLR, but still aesthetically pleasing, I think.

Finally, the image above is a crop from a shot at ISO 800 at f/2.8. It is about 1/4 of the total image, just to give a sense of what the noise looks like. I was very impressed - I was prepared for everything over ISO 400 to be unusable, but it turns out ISO 800 looks just fine for my purposes. I'm not intending to print these large, so I don't see it even being a factor in a printed image, really. Below is a 100% crop showing a shadow area - pretty much the worst case scenario in this image:

So, what's not to like about the camera? Mainly, I'm trying to get used to the ergonomics. It's a really small camera! My D300 fits my hand like an extension of my body. The LX3 crams too many controls into too small a place. That's not really its fault, though - that would be the same for any compact. Besides the size, I had some issues with the "Dynamic" and "Vibrant" film styles - these tend to render skin tones with too much red/orange to them. People just look unnatural with these modes. It's much better in "Standard" mode, but still, the color rendition is nowhere near as good as my D300. I can live with that, though, as I plan to shoot mostly B&W with this camera. The "Dynamic B&W" mode is quite nice, giving good contrast while preserving a wide tonal range.

Other than those two minor points, I'm a pretty satisfied customer... I think the LX3 will work out just fine for my purposes, and I can give it a solid recommendation for those looking to supplement a DSLR or for anyone who just wants a good solid compact camera.

Labels: lx3, review

New camera - Panasonic LX3

The UPS man just brought me a new toy: the Panasonic Lumix LX3 compact digital camera. Now, I'm primarily a landscape shooter, and happily use my D300 for that. In fact it's not even possible to take the sort of night shots I specialize in using my new toy. So why get it? Well, there's a few reasons. One, I enjoy carrying a camera with me daily just in case I come across something worth shooting. I ride a motorcycle, and have wanted a small camera to bring on riding trips - the D300 takes up almost my entire tank bag. I've wanted to rig up a bracket that I could use to attach the camera to the bike to take pictures while riding - of myself and of the scenery. This is way easier with a compact camera than a bulky DSLR (and probably safer too). Recently, my wife Jade and I got back from our honeymoon in Costa Rica. I brought along a "basic" kit of the D300 and three lenses. It took up the better part of half my backpack, and was a constant source of apprehension whenever I had to leave it somewhere. All my gear is insured, but I still didn't want to lose any of the photos I had taken. Not to mention, the D300 is no pocket camera. It is a heavy beast, and requires a certain level of commitment to haul it around all the time.

So I was hankering for something small and light that would still produce good images. I wanted something with a bright wide angle lens - most of my photos are shot as wide as I can get. I also didn't want anything made of flimsy plastic - I've been spoiled silly by the tank that is the D300 (not to mention all my film cameras), and "feel" has always been important to me when it comes to my tools.

Enter the Panasonic LX3. I read about it a couple months ago, and from the specs it sounded like it would do the trick. Solid metal body, bright (f/2!) wide lens, and touting very high quality images for a compact. I waited around to read the first reviews, which seemed rather positive... then J&R camera offered a $100 discount for pre-orders, so I went ahead and ordered mine.

Well, as I just received it, I haven't been able to test it out yet, but it definitely feels like a quality tool. There's a good heft to it, thanks to the metal body. It's really really small, too - smaller than I thought. It makes a Leica rangefinder seem enormous in comparison. I'll be doing some shooting later today, and I'll report back with my impressions of image quality. So far, it seems like exactly what I wanted!

Offshore Delusion

[image courtesy Architecture 2030]

To those of you who visit my blog for the photography, and who are offended/bored/confused by my political postings, I can only say this is democratic discourse! A democracy is totally reliant on open discussion of issues between its citizens - otherwise it becomes an oligarchy, a select few who tell the rest how things are gonna be. As it stands now, the level of true open political discourse between citizens is so low that it's considered impolite or improper to even raise such topics in mixed company.

But that's exactly how we end up with lies and distortions of the truth served up to us as gospel. That's how we end up believing that offshore drilling might really be the solution to our current gas crunch. This is nothing more or less than delusion.

The graph above is fact, and should by its very existence put the argument over whether or not to drill anywhere and everywhere we can in America as a solution to our gas woes to pasture. The rabid cries of Republicans to "Drill here, drill now" reveal a staggering ignorance of reality, an ignorance happily nurtured by McCain/Bush style politicians who would otherwise have no arguments in their favor. The facts, as has been pointed out, have a distressing liberal bias.

The reality, folks, is that the US uses 25% of the world's oil supply. We sit on perhaps 3% of the world's reserves, give or take. The core argument of the "Drill here, drill now" crowd seems to be that we can and should rely solely on US oil and that will solve our problems. Pure fantasy! This should be obvious. There is simply not enough oil beneath our feet to do it. Here's more from Architecture 3030:

According to the US Energy Information Administration, oil production from drilling offshore in the outer continental shelf wouldn't begin until around the year 2017. Once begun, it wouldn't reach peak production until about 2030 when it would produce only 200,000 barrels of oil per day (in yellow above). This would supply a meager 1.2% of total US annual oil consumption (just 0.6% of total US energy consumption). And, the offshore oil would be sold back to the US at the international rate, which today is $106 a barrel. So, the oil produced by offshore drilling would not only be a "drop in the bucket", it would be expensive, which translates to "no relief at the pump".

What part of that is so hard to understand?

Labels: politics

Vote for Change

Seriously, folks, if you can't see through the lies and hate-fueled rhetoric the Grand Oil Party is desperately pitching at you, you deserve 4 more years of disastrous mismanagement. Now is the time, as Americans, to stand up and say "ENOUGH!" to those who have proven over the last eight years that they seek nothing less than the wholesale transfer of the American Dream from its citizens to a greed-crazed few perched at the pinnacles of power and wealth.

A vote for McCain is a vote for more lies, more warrantless spying on American citizens, more unchecked police brutality, more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations (and less tax relief for YOU), more disdain for truth and intellectual curiosity, more hate-filled vitriol thrown at those in the world who would otherwise be our allies, and more ignorant, dumb swagger at the expense of our country's future.

Wake up, America! Wake the fuck up and look through the media narratives that cloud the facts of the last eight years! Are we better off? Or have we as a country sunk to a level no one would have believed eight years ago? Do you really, honestly believe in your heart that McCain, the man who has voted with Bush 90% of the time, has the slightest desire to change any of Bush's hideously failed policies? If you're that deep into the kool-aid, I pity you.

I've whipped up a few poster designs, which I am releasing into the public domain. Take them, reproduce them, pass them around, post them to blogs or Flickr or Myspace. Better yet, go read about how only Obama will bring about the change this country will shrivel up and die without.

Right click this link and select "save target as" to download a vector PDF file with all three designs.

Labels: obama, politics