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!
Nice shots! It seems like the LX3 is really working out for you. I’m an LX2 owner, and I’ve really been looking forward to the LX3 for the improvements it offered in image quality, as well as a few other improvements. The LX2 has the same "focus range" indicator you mention. I went on a bit of a street shooting spree last spring in which I set the camera on manual and just went around shooting from the hip. You throw away 80% of those images, but the other 20% can be pretty decent if you know what to point at and your camera is able to work with you instead of against you (as most P&S cameras do). A few results: http://www.blork.org/mondaymorning/index.php?showimage=230 http://www.blork.org/mondaymorning/index.php?showimage=231 http://www.blork.org/mondaymorning/index.php?showimage=244 A question: what’s that border effect you have on your images? Is that just an overlay you added in Photoshop?
Martyn on Sep 21 at 06:46 PM
I haven’t done any street shooting but the manual modes have been useful nevertheless. And the focus range indicator is a really useful thing to have in a serious compact camera.
Martyn on Sep 22 at 09:44 AM
nice shots! The border I found here: http://www.640pixels.com/articles/free-photoshop-grunge-borders.aspx I vectorized it in Illustrator and customized it a bit so I could use it for any size photo. @juha - yeah, it’s one thing that even my DSLRs can’t offer…
blork on Sep 22 at 10:08 AM
I just got my lx3 yesterday, so I didn’t have time to play with it yet, but I was looking for a black and white picture mode in the manual and on the camera and couldn’t find it. Could you tell me how to set the camera to black and white or sepia mode?
Katie on Dec 22 at 02:17 PM
Hey Katie, There’s a joystick thingie on the back of the camera - press it in and hold it for a sec, and you should get a menu across the top of the screen. The first icon on the left is “film mode” - there are a couple black & white modes to choose from.
Toby on Jan 10 at 02:53 AM