Just ordered a Panasonic LX7

[CuriousMike]

Showed up at work a couple hours ago.

Yeah boiiii....

 

[Throckmorton]

Showed up at work a couple hours ago.

Yeah boiiii....

Now buy the JJC automatic lens cap! The stock one is annoying. The first time I turned mine on, I forgot to remove the cap and rather than give me the warning the lens just forced the cap off.

 

[Throckmorton]

I got my replacement and I'm trying to compare the two. I expected it to be identical so I was planning to just send back the new one.

What do you guys think?
http://imgur.com/a/GRSLw

 

[iGas]

Image look very soft, and is under exposed.

 

[CuriousMike]

The new one doesn't have the issue as bad.
Keep the new one.

 

[CuriousMike]

FYI, the path for movies is:
\PRIVATE\AVCHD\BDMV\STREAM

 

[Throckmorton]

I'm going to test both some more tomorrow because I'm curious whether there are any sharpness differences. The RAW does seem soft. Underexposure is intentional, I set the cameras to -0.7 because I prefer to underexpose then increase it in post

 

[CuriousMike]

I took a bike ride with the newly charged LX7 in tow.

No masterpiece button.
Handling the camera seemed straight forward.
It's really fast to turn on and take a shot.

I shot in RAW and imported into LR4; I used a few of LR4's preset filters ( medium contrast curve, sharpen - scenic and a couple of the photos I used "punch." )

There is noise in the photos where there wouldn't be with the D5000 -- but it isn't bothersome.

This camera is a freaking winner in my book.

 

[Throckmorton]

I think the new one may look better because it's not as sharp... at least I'm getting more chromatic aberration at the crosshair in the test shot. I will have to look at the raw files when I get home and do some more testing.

Edit: I added two pics from testing on my work monitors which are brighter. The crosshairs look the same, I think the blurriness I saw was because of the white balance being different but with raw the only difference is the flare. http://imgur.com/a/GRSLw

 

[Throckmorton]

I've taken a bunch of test pics and I'm pretty sure the old one is sharper at f2.8 and f4.0 which are the f stops I've been using for landscape photos and therefore the most important!

I added 100% crops of test pics to the album. The P101 files are the old camera, and the others are the new one.

http://imgur.com/a/GRSLw

 

[CuriousMike]

I will say the coconut water photo is marginally sharper with the old/first camera.

 

[Throckmorton]

I just realized the new one has Quick AF turned on, which I turned off on the old one. I wonder if that matters. Apparently it's a kind of continuous autofocus http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/2790044?page=3#forum-post-35110820

 

[Throckmorton]

I took outdoors f4.0 pics. I focused on the house across the street. No quick AF, no stabilization, 2 sec delay. The pics aren't identical because the clouds were moving. But also I think one of the cameras is brighter than the other

Crops because Imgur resizes full res ones:

 

[CuriousMike]

No exif data ?

The photo on the bottom looks a teeny bit brighter- in particular the house on the right, i'm comparing its left side.

I dunno - seems like a wash to me.

 

[Throckmorton]

OK I think I have definitive proof that the old one is very slightly sharper at he center at least. I made sure to focus on the house and no the front steps, f4, iso 80, no noise reduction, no sharpening,
old:

new:

 

[blastingcap]

Measurebating at its worst.

 

[Throckmorton]

Measurebating at its worst.

I would be satisfied with either camera, but since I have both I must test!

Anyway, now that it's decided, I put the auto lens cap and filter adapter on the old one. But the filter is too thick for the cap to close. I need to find a low profile one... but it would have to be pretty low profile. The alternative is to just remove the auto cap when I'm using the polarizer

 

[Throckmorton]

Edit: Oops, the other cat pic was with my A35

 

[Throckmorton]

Here's a bumblebee macro shot. ISO 80 f2.8 17.7mm 1/500
As you can see the raw pics from the camera are really dull. You have to turn saturation up quite a bit in postprocessing

 

[CuriousMike]

RAW are dull from my D5000 as well.

Nice shot of the bumble bee.

 

[CuriousMike]

Yesterday I took the camera to my child's school play held in their classroom.
The D5000 stayed in the bag.
I'd have to say the LX7 did fine for these snapshots - not DSLR-blow-me-away cleanliness, but absolutely reasonable... considering it's pocket-able-ish and I didn't use flash.

Outside his class, my boys climbed a tree and gave me the worst possible scenario for a camera - backlit with loads of tree limbs. Purple fringe much? The LX7 seemed to keep that in check.

Today I put the camera in macro mode and snapped this poppy in our front yard - i could have gotten closer but the camera was casting a shadow.

Snapshot of my kids after the play

I played some more with the video. I'm not sure the video quality is necessarily better the Sony HX9V - it's comparable?

The slow-mo mode is pretty fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4citSmm1I_0

 

[blastingcap]

Nice shot.

With most cams you can set the JPEG defaults to something with more saturation if you like that. I'd rather the RAW be as untampered with as possible so I can do that manually if so desired.

Here's a bumblebee macro shot. ISO 80 f2.8 17.7mm 1/500
As you can see the raw pics from the camera are really dull. You have to turn saturation up quite a bit in postprocessing

 

[Throckmorton]

Nice shot.

With most cams you can set the JPEG defaults to something with more saturation if you like that. I'd rather the RAW be as untampered with as possible so I can do that manually if so desired.

Well the better the raw image that comes straight from the sensor, the better. My Sony only requires a little saturation boost to look accurate.

 

[CuriousMike]

More from today

 

[Syborg1211]

More from today

Wow, that ladybug macro is pretty sharp! Was that handheld?