thinking about getting the LX3....

I thought I was going to get my first DSLR this month - am finally ready to step up from my combo of old film SLR and compact digital. I will always love film but I'm a working mom and only photograph for my own personal enjoyment & let's face it digital is much easier to use these days. Anyway, I thought I would find a good entry level DSLR that would offer me all the manual options of my old SLR and not be too bulky.

But so far I have been more impressed with the photos taken with the LX3 vs those with the Olympus evolt or the entry level canon eos. I have a decidedly point-and-shoot kind of style, shoot indoors a lot and hate to use flash, love wide angle, love super-saturated colors & high contrast.... am I right to think I should go for the LX3 instead of a DSLR??

The major drawback for me is the lack of viewfinder. I really miss looking through that viewfinder. and yes I know there is one you can add but it costs a lot of money for a rangefinder! and makes the whole 'package' quite different.

What else am I not thinking about? advice please!

Christy

Buy the LX3. Great camera. You will love it.

Christy,

There are inexpensive alternatives to the Panny view finder. A few searches here will turn up a number of possibilities. I picked up a Petri wide-tele view finder sold as part of a kit with aux lenses for the old Petri 7S. They can be found for $20 to $30 and make an excellent inexpensive alternative. The full frame gives you essentially a 28mm view; where as the wide marker roughly equates to 37mm and tele frame to 58mm.

There are quite a few threads here and on Flickr about this viewfinder which was also marketed as Yashica, Soligor, and others. See this thread for Ken Smith's picture shown here and more discussion:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=29725873



--Bob



LX3, FX01, S414, RDC-2, OM2n

If you really are wanting to take the best low light/ non flash pictures, especially of your kids or any kids, a DSLR will be leaps and bounds better than the LX3.

Don't get me wrong, the LX3 is a fantastic P&S, but I would never, ever give up my DSLR.

ISO 400+ is noisy on the LX3 and any of the current crop of DSLRs will get you ISO 1600 equal to 400 on the LX3.

Pick up a Nikon D40 kit... fantastic little camera and it produces those punchy/contrasty images straight out of the camera.

--
D300
50 1.8
SB 900
Panasonic LX3 - with UPS currently...

d3oo said:

ISO 400+ is noisy on the LX3 and any of the current crop of DSLRs
will get you ISO 1600 equal to 400 on the LX3.

Pick up a Nikon D40 kit... fantastic little camera and it produces
those punchy/contrasty images straight out of the camera.

Click to expand...

hm. I admit to not knowing what I am talking about in terms of the digital options, but I was thinking that the f2.0 lens would be more useful. The Nikon D40 I looked at in the store only went to f5.0 I think? I know it is the lens that is the issue not the camera, but that was the lens it comes with. And I'm not really interested in going much past $500 at this point.

does Nikon make a small lens like that olympus wide angle pancake lens? otherwise those cameras get sooo bulky.

thanks!

Yes, the LX3 has a F2-2.8 lens, but again, it's on the tiny sensor and even at f2 the depth of field will still be great and anything at 400+ will be a tad noisy (not that that is a big deal to me).

The D40 does not have an internal focus motor, so any of the primes except the new 50 AFS or the sigmas will AF on it.

Regardless of what you decide, I'd take a very close look at the entry level DSLRs if this is going to be your first digital camera purchase. The noise, focusing, shooting speed, lack of shutter lag are all superior on any of the DSLRs...

The Oly 420 with 25 pancake is a very small, lightweight, very good beginner DSLR...

Good luck with whatever you decide.

cdenes said:

cdenes said:

ISO 400+ is noisy on the LX3 and any of the current crop of DSLRs
will get you ISO 1600 equal to 400 on the LX3.

Pick up a Nikon D40 kit... fantastic little camera and it produces
those punchy/contrasty images straight out of the camera.

Click to expand...

hm. I admit to not knowing what I am talking about in terms of the
digital options, but I was thinking that the f2.0 lens would be more
useful. The Nikon D40 I looked at in the store only went to f5.0 I
think? I know it is the lens that is the issue not the camera, but
that was the lens it comes with. And I'm not really interested in
going much past $500 at this point.

does Nikon make a small lens like that olympus wide angle pancake
lens? otherwise those cameras get sooo bulky.

thanks!

Click to expand...

--
D300
50 1.8
SB 900
Panasonic LX3

What ever you buy, make sure it has shake reduction function. D40 or E420 dont have SR. DSLR and LX3 are two extremely different camera. You need to hold it in you hand to help you decide really. Lx3 is good but no match for even the entry level DSLR but you carry it with you more often than you would with SLR, hence more pictures taking!

K10D,14f2.8,Tamron 18-250,35f2.Panasonic LC1,DMC-L1,Nikon FE2/50f1.4,Olympus C5060.

The LX3 may seem like an overpriced and underachiever, when compared to today's DSLR's. But the convenience and portability is priceless.

I paid $700 for my LX1, only to find out that it was ISO crippled. The LX3 is all I need for a true carry everywhere pocket camera. The F2 ISO 400 combination is a match to any DSLR with a kit lens. And 24mm to boot.
Just go for it.
--



Jeff.

The f2 does take the SLR's advantage down one or two stops, which is to say, reduces it to one or two stops.

I think you would still get better results with the SLR, but then convenience is a big factor. I love my SLR but I hate its bulk, so I rarely use it, especially now I have the LX-3.

LX-3 also offers decent little movies, which an entry level SLR (D40) won't right now.

It's not a cut-and-dried issue either way. You could probably speak to a camera shop and try before you buy?

If I was to only have one camera, it would be the LX-3. I'm also glad to have two.

jimmyfergus said:

The f2 does take the SLR's advantage down one or two stops, which is
to say, reduces it to one or two stops.

Click to expand...

... in terms of sensitivity only. Another factor is you have an option of short DoF with the SLR which is almost absent in the LX3.

jimmyfergus said:

jimmyfergus said:

The f2 does take the SLR's advantage down one or two stops, which is
to say, reduces it to one or two stops.

Click to expand...

... in terms of sensitivity only. Another factor is you have an
option of short DoF with the SLR which is almost absent in the LX3.

Click to expand...

I agree completely with your first point and said something similar on another thread a few days ago. As for the second point... well, it's all a matter of what you want. Many dSLR lenses that offer the same 24mm equivalent FoV as the LX3 are a bit suspect wide-open which is sometimes only around f/4, rarely (never?) faster than about f/2.8. So realistically they probably need to be stopped down a little to match the performance of the LX3 at f/2, giving not that much shallow DoF advantage anyway if you're already at f/5.6 on a 16mm lens.

At the other end of the LX3's range it's a whole different game, but I suspect that most low-light LX3 uses are at wider angles anyway.

Given that a typical consumer dSLR has probably a 2-stop (ISO1600 vs ISO400) noise advantage but the LX3 has at the very least a 1-stop (but more likely 2 or 3) lens speed advantage the comparison isn't as clear cut as it may appear at first sight.

Finally if you actually need the additional DoF in low light the LX3 will have a real noise advantage over most any consumer dSLR. I'd certainly rather use my LX3 at ISO400 than my Pentax DL at ISO3200 that's for sure, and the DL is a better performer than most at that ISO.

--
John Bean [GMT]

Thanks all.

I'm leaning more and more toward the LX3.... do any of you that use it also use an external viewfinder?

If so, does that make it annoying to put away in your pocket or whatever, since it sticks out from the camera so much?

If not, is it hard to compose pictures in low light?

I did go to B&H yesterday to handle all the cameras. The lack of viewfinder is what annoyed me about the LX3. Otherwise, I found it very intuitive, and in some ways easier to set manually than some of the DSLR's I looked at! On the Olympus evolt for example, you have to hold down a button WHILE turning a wheel in order to set f-stop. (That said, the olympus was my favorite - I found its design and size more appealing than the Nikon or the Canon entry-level DSLR's. It reminded me most of my old Canon AE-1.)

I also looked at the Canon G10 but found its viewfinder annoying. And it didn't seem that easy to set it manually.

Can someone explain to me again why the LX3 is able to have an f2.0 lens but the SLR's are not? I didn't quite understand.

Christy

SLR's have removable/interchangeable lenses.

You can most certainly buy a lens that opens up to f/2.0. In fact, you can buy a lens that opens up to f/1.4, which allows even MORE light onto the sensor.

cdenes wrote:
Snip:

cdenes said:

Can someone explain to me again why the LX3 is able to have an f2.0
lens but the SLR's are not? I didn't quite understand.

Christy

Click to expand...

--

Steph Kimball said:

SLR's have removable/interchangeable lenses.

You can most certainly buy a lens that opens up to f/2.0. In fact,
you can buy a lens that opens up to f/1.4, which allows even MORE
light onto the sensor.

Click to expand...

Ah. one of the earlier responses confused me. Thank you.

Interchangeable lenses, of course. Getting expensive though.

Steph Kimball said:

SLR's have removable/interchangeable lenses.

You can most certainly buy a lens that opens up to f/2.0. In fact,
you can buy a lens that opens up to f/1.4, which allows even MORE
light onto the sensor.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately there aren't too many with the same FOV that will open up to f2. In full frame you have a few choices (costly). In 4:3 format the 11-22 or 12-60 are expensive and only f2.8 maximum aperture. In APS-C, there's no 16mm f2 that I can recall.
Panasonic has a killer camera with the LX3.
--



Jeff.

The depth-of-field you get with the LX3, even at f2.0, is many times a BIG plus. Sure, you can get backgrounds out of focus easier with a DSLR. But, the opposite of that (huge DOF) is very useful.

I took some photos of a stage production last month with my Nikon D300 DSLR. The following night, I used the LX3 at the same show. The extreme depth-of-field was VERY useful and the LX3 photos were actually better than those taken with the D300.

A couple of examples:

f2.8 (ISO 800):



f2.5 (ISO 800):



F2.8 (ISO 800):



--
Bill McClung (a.k.a. 'NC BILL')
Image galleries at http://www.pbase.com/nc_bill

'Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper.....the photographer begins with the finished product.' --- Edward Steichen

I actually had to look at the exif. I couldn't believe these were shot at 800 ISO.
Nice!
--



Jeff.

Thanks.

I have been amazed at the ISO 400 and ISO 800 results I have been getting. Definitely the best from a non-SLR I have ever seen.

The LX3 has impressed me so much, I just bought another one to put up for future use. It's THAT good!

--
Bill McClung (a.k.a. 'NC BILL')
Image galleries at http://www.pbase.com/nc_bill

'Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper.....the photographer begins with the finished product.' --- Edward Steichen

Steph Kimball said:

SLR's have removable/interchangeable lenses.

You can most certainly buy a lens that opens up to f/2.0. In fact,
you can buy a lens that opens up to f/1.4, which allows even MORE
light onto the sensor.

Click to expand...

Not at 24mm equivalent Steph, that's what we're considering when comparing with the LX3. If you want to allow any focal length in the comparison then why stop at f/1.4? There are much faster lenses available at other focal lengths.

--
John Bean [GMT]

P&S. I use an LX3 and a couple of dSLRs...the LX3 is great but it is not as flexible. If you can handle that drawback, get the Panny.

For portraits and other photos, nothing can compare to a dSLR with a good (even cheap, used) prime lens, such as a 50mm 1.4.