XZ-1 First Impressions

Received it Friday afternoon, been playing with it and will post some sample images tomorrow, in the meantime here are my initial impressions in no particular order

- Very sharp lens

- AF is reliable at normal distances, at closer distances I have to switch to between normal AF and macro, - annoying

- Auto WB is generally OK hits it with-in 85% accuracy, for better precision the image has to be tweaked in post - acceptable

- Exposure is generally OK with some slight under exposure of 1/3 ev easy to fix

-  Low light ISO is great up to ISO 400, usable with some tweaking at ISO 800 and emergency use only at ISO 1600

- When the fast lens is taken into account, the ISO comparisons with Mirrorless systems have to be done at a 2 ISO stop difference (XZ-1 ISO 400 Oly/Sony/Nikon ISO 1600) since their kit lenses are F/3.5 ~ 5.6 vs F/1.8~2.5

- At ISO 400 the IQ of the XZ-1 is better than a Mirrorless system + kit lens is at ISO 1600

- Tweaking the raw images in Oly's software sucks, not very user friendly, can't seem to get the output put colors right -

- Micro performance is awesome

- Self timer turns off after each shot, cant set-it-n-forget-it, - very annoying (yes I can buy the shutter release cable, but carrying more junk kills the purpose of having a small compact P&S doesn't it?)

- Camera seems very prone to flare

- Auto ISO very conservative, keeps the ISO's very low risk of motion blur, this along with A-WB might be a serious issue if you use it for travel and are shooting inside a museum with mud lighting, unless you want to spend time tweaking each image

- For $200 bucks this camera is a really good deal, not a smoking deal, but a a really good one.

- I could pick up a mirror less system for $300 - $400, but I don't want to deal with the extra bulk especially if it's a slow F/3.5 ~5.6 lens