Life & Style | Gadgets & Tech
Shoot for the stars
This month sees the launch of the Lumix LX3 in the UAE, the newest compact digital camera to join the Panasonic family. Find out why it's more than just a pretty case.
- By Caithlin Mercer, Senior Copy Editor
- Published: 16:32 October 3, 2008
- Intelligent Scene Selector, Intelligent ISO Control and Intelligent Exposure take all the guess work out of lighting and focusing, meaning your simply point-and-shoot snap comes out clear and brilliant.
- Image Credit: Supplied Picture
One should never judge a book by its cover. But the latest addition to the Panasonic compact digital camera range is so well presented that you may find it difficult to reserve judgment.
It's lucky then that this beauty captures images that are as beautiful as its design. In the two years since Panasonic released the LX2, a design team of 10 artists and engineers, led by Nakamura Makoto has been hard at work on the new and improved Lumix LX3. "The LX3 is a product we are immensely proud of," says Nakamura.
And it's easy to see why. The finished product is reminiscent of a Leica II from the 1930s, with its restrained lines and an imposing Leica lens. It's a design that, in the words of the Panasonic design team, "pays tribute to the classic 35mm camera form".
The attention to detail in design is phenomenal – all carefully balanced with a digital camera user's needs for
a truly functional work of art.
A faux leather strip on the front of the camera drew comment from journalists at the Hong Kong press launch earlier this year. Some thought the strip was the perfect finishing touch, while others felt it was an unnecessary detail that ruined
the aesthetic. In fact, the faux leather was placed exactly there to allow better grip for one-handed operation.
Other carefully thought-out elements include a pop-up flash and a host of accessories, which Panasonic included in order "to help users expand their creative horizons". The most noticeable accessory is the detachable optical viewfinder, heavily influenced by 35mm Leica viewfinders, which are collected by photo enthusiasts around the world.
Additional accessories include a lens adapter for additional filters (including an MC filter to protect the lens, PL filter for beautiful skies and reducing reflections and an ND filter for slower shutter speeds during the day) and the wide-angle conversion lens for 18mm photography.
Rounding off the LX3's chic image is a retro-design leather camera case that also serves to protect the camera from scratches. From the front, the LX3 has such vintage appeal that it's almost surprising to turn the camera around and find the imposing 3.0-inch LCD screen. The screen itself is one of the major improvements to the LX series.
With 460,000-dot resolution and self-adjusting Intelligent LCD function, users can view their images under almost any lighting conditions. And the screen is only the first of many technological improvements that make the Lumix LX3 so much more than a pretty case.
Photography for dummies
"We think LX3 is the solution for those who are keen to take high-quality images without too much technical complexity," says Nakamura. "As for those who want to develop their technical skills in photography, there is also a manual option available." If you're not up to the task of operating the LX3 in full manual mode, Intelligent Auto (iA) Mode allows trigger-happy amateur photographers to achieve fantastic results too.
One of the most impressive aspects of camera's technical capabilities, iA Mode takes care of all sorts of photography problems. Take the issue of focusing for example: iA Mode has several solutions to your blurry problem.
For starters, you could switch on Mega Optical Image Stabilizer (OIS), which compensates for your trembling hands should you ever be nervously capturing a portrait of yourself and, say, a very important celebrity.The "Face Detection" function in iA detects faces in a picture by mapping and recognising the pattern formed by a mouth, eyes and nose. Within a matter of nano-seconds, the camera recognises and locks onto faces, bringing them into sharp focus.
Intelligent Scene Selector, Intelligent ISO Control and Intelligent Exposure take all the guess work out
of lighting and focusing, meaning your simply point-and-shoot snap comes out clear and brilliant.
One of the most innovative functions, AF Tracking, allows you to lock onto a moving object – a dhow navigating the Creek perhaps – and capture it without losing focus. If you've ever tried to get a shot of your loved one zooming across the dunes on a quad bike, you can imagine what
a handy feature that is to have! If not, may we be the first to recommend both Big Red (aka Al-Hamar dunes) and the Lumix LX3.
Multiple modes
Choose from different shooting modes for a unique result – gone are the days of picking between colour, black and white and sepia. The LX3 lets you choose between Standard, Dynamic, Natural, Smooth, Vibrant, Nostalgic and more. There are six colour types and three monochrome modes to choose from in all. We have a hunch that Pin Hole and Film Grain modes will prove popular among users who want to capture images with a uniquely creative feel.
Yet another excellent programming feature allows you to take and store the same picture in different modes. So you would snap one picture of the Burj Al Arab, but your camera would take three shots, according to your preference: Vibrant, Sepia and Dynamic, for example.
If taking three pictures with one click isn't enough for you, try Burst Shooting mode (which captures two and a half frames per second in high resolution, or six frames per second at a lower resolution) and you'll capture that special moment many times over – great for action shots.
With all the more reason to snap away, you can imagine the need for a pretty feisty battery. And Panasonic has delivered. Battery life of the LX3 is officially listed as 380 pictures. That's an impressive number by any standard, which is why we were impressed when the LX3 we tested for two days lasted even longer than that!
The technical stuff
The really big news about the LX3 is not the design or the special features. The Panasonic press release trumpeted the arrival of the LX3, "featuring a F2.0 24mm LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMICRON lens, 10.1 megapixels and an ultra-sensitive 1/1.63-inch CCD developed specifically for this model".
Of course, that doesn't mean much when all you want to do is take a few nice pictures of Dubai to send home to your mum. Except that it does mean a lot once you break it down.
Let's start with the 24mm lens: what that means for the average user is the use of an ultra-wide angle lens (almost unheard of on a compact digital camera) that allows you to cram more stuff into one frame. So instead of taking two pictures of Business Bay Bridge and then stitching them together, you can take one picture and get most of it in the shot. There's also 18x zoom which means you can get pretty close to your subject without being too close.
You may not be able to pull off paparazzi-style exposes with that zoom, but it's nothing to sniff at in a compact digital.
Then there's the F2.0 LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMICRON lens – quite
a mouthful! In a nutshell, that means you get a camera with a lens made by industry leaders in lens development (Leica) and you get to capture sharper, brighter images as a result. As Panasonic puts it: "The LX3 can shoot at higher shutter speeds and capture stunningly clear, sharp, blur-free images even in lower lighting conditions." That's thanks, largely, to the lens.
By now, most of us understand megapixels and the role they have to play in picture size and quality. What you might not have heard is that more pixels aren't always better. This is where the "ultra-sensitive 1/1.63-inch CCD" comes in. You'll need to pay attention here: a CCD (charge coupled device) is the image sensor that converts light to electrons in a digital camera. If you need that put into old school terms, think of the CCD as the equivalent of the film in your old camera.
Let's go back to pixel count now: we used to think that more pixels meant better picture quality. In reality, more pixels often mean more "noise". By noise, we're not referring to the racket made by your neighbour's kids on
a Friday morning; noise is the term used for unwanted grain, pixilation or colour speckles on your digital images. These are caused by hiccups in the process of converting light to electrons.
The LX3 CCD promises fewer hiccups, which means you won't need as many pixels to produce clear, brilliant images. That's why the LX3 stops at a fairly respectable 10.1 megapixels – fewer pixels equals vastly superior image quality.
A great buy
Technical mumbo jumbo aside, the lure of the LX3 is simple: it looks great and it takes great pictures. It's small enough to be a convenient digital camera, but impressive-looking enough to let others know that you know what you're doing when it comes to photography. And even if you don't, the camera will do all the work for you.
Would Nakamura advise UAE residents to buy the LX3? "Yes, I would," he says. "As consumers in the Middle East are becoming more technically-savvy, there is an increasing demand for cameras that are capable of producing excellent pictures and are easy to use." And the Lumix LX3 sure fits that bill.
The Lumix LX3 will be available at Sharaf DG, Jumbo Electronics, Plug-ins and Panasonic showrooms across the UAE. The camera retails for Dh2,099.
Caithlin Mercer is Senior Copy Editor, Friday
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