Good luck to Canon aficionados!

@james

I have participated in pretty much every thread on S90. I have also looked at most of the images/links posted on this forum.

I will refrain myself from making any comment on S90/G11/LX3/F200EXR unless the official reviews are out.

Only the reviews will tell which is the uber camera.

If IQ difference is not noticeable, S90 is my pick.

Again, have fun with the LX3. It is a very good camera.

Image quality is of no concern to you.

Maybe you should just get away from photography and get into something like music. I suppose that, after awhile, you would convince yourself sound quality was really not very important.

--

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” Ernst Haas

http://garyp.zenfolio.com/p518883873/

I noticed many of you replied as if this was the usual "Canon vs. Panasonic/Nikon/Etc." thread to decide what's better.

I think the OP made a good point: until one year ago, there was only Sigma who was making a compact camera with large sensor. All other cameras where either DSLRs or compact/bridge cameras with small sensors.

But then something has happened: we have two major manufacturers (Oly and Panasonic) who now build compact cameras with large sensors and interchangeable lenses, and two (Leica and Sigma) who build compact cameras with large sensors and high-quality fixed lenses.

This means that prosumer compact cameras can be made with large sensors, whether you use interchangeable lenses or not. There has been an evolution in camera design, with new ideas. New compact cameras that can take high quality pictures due to their large sensor have been built. Some of them also have interchangeable lenses. But who's making all these interesting products? Not Canon.

Canon once used to be always one step ahead, now it appears to be fairly conservative in its choices and design.

Consider the prosumer compact camera sector, the Canon G11 is the only camera with a small sensor and it will have to compete with a bunch of products that are very appealing for the advanced user or photo enthusiast and have a much bigger sensor. Will it succeed?

Flash exposures can be hit or miss. Auto WB is pretty crappy and skin tones really suffer. RAW files look good and now that's the only way I shoot.

I do really like the LX3 now that I've figured it out a bit.

But, Canon gets color right, especially skin tones. I shoot Nikon D700 so I'm not biased. (I have owned Canon S400, SD1200, and have a SD940 on order.)

It will succeed for me. Why?

It offers much that the Sigma, Leica, Oly and Panasonic offerings do not . . .

Yes, those offerings are compact, but once you add additional lenses, you now have a "luggable." And you also have a camera that's no longer pocketable. That eliminates the Oly and Panny for me.

The Sigma and Leica are nice, but I don't want a fixed lens. I want the ability to zoom in and out. 28 to 140mm seems quite usable to me . . . and it's something you can't get in those other offerings.

Additionally, and this is an extra, granted, but having video capabilities is quite nice. HD would be even nicer, yes, but the quality of the video is something I can't complain about. I have tons of beautiful videos of my daughter from my G9 that I love.

Lastly, the price is vastly different from the offerings you've mentioned.

Then, of course, there are other "prosumer" cameras out there like the G11, but none (in my opinion) can touch it.

The fact that it's even compared to those cameras you mentioned that have much larger sensors says much about the quality of this camera.

And for someone without a DSLR (me) this camera meets my needs nearly perfectly. Add a bit more zoom, an intervalometer, time-lapse, a remote and HD video and I wouldn't even think of getting anything else.

Actually, I'm NOT thinking of getting anything else. I've been calling my Best Buy every day. In fact, I just got off the phone with them and they say the camera will be there for sure by the 11th but could be there any day.

Initially I intend to shoot jpeg in good light and RAW in low light as DezM said in the following thread. I will experiment with LX3 of course. Thank you for your suggestion.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=33174645

Brooks Lester said:

Flash exposures can be hit or miss. Auto WB is pretty crappy and skin tones really suffer. RAW files look good and now that's the only way I shoot.

I do really like the LX3 now that I've figured it out a bit.

But, Canon gets color right, especially skin tones. I shoot Nikon D700 so I'm not biased. (I have owned Canon S400, SD1200, and have a SD940 on order.)

Click to expand...

--

In Manchester in the 1840s, men and women were treated like animals. Why then should we be surprised that the utopian dreams of early communists were so appealing, or be so certain that they never will be again? -- Michael Elliott

There's a lot of processing in every camera manufacturer's jpeg files. They're like slide film and the RAW image is more like negative film where you can manipulate color and tone curve to a a greater effect. Weird color derived from the jpeg engine is a lot harder to correct than sliding a WB Kelvin adjustment and a tint slider while you're still in RAW. Trust me, I've spent hours trying to get accurate and pleasing colors out of LX3 images. Shooting RAW makes it much easier as you're not trying to undo damage rather than simply calibrating the values before you "set" them by saving to .tiff or .jpeg, etc. There's also an impressive amount of DR in the RAW files that can be extracted in post.

This is LX3 jpeg, colors still not where they need to be after rudimentary edit.(I could get it a little better but it's way off:



This is LX3 RAW after simple RAW develop - set Kelvin to 6000 and Tint to 0. That was all I did for color. Pretty happy with the skin tones:



Lots of green in the ambient light here, but the RAW file was "good". Again, set WB Kelvin to a neutral looking value and tint to 0. Happy with the skin tones.



This one was underexposed because I wasn't paying attention to metering. Pulled it back up about 1.5 EV (a ton), set Kelvin value to what looked good, and tint to 0. Darn good skin tones considering weird light and bad underexposure. Shoot RAW - it's worth it.



Low light at dusk. Set WB to either Shade or Cloudy and tweaked in RAW from there. Just moved Kelvin a few hundred degrees and tint to 0. Again, the RAW data is good; it's the jpeg engine that screws up white balance. I'm going to go back to the original RAW file and pull down the surf about 1 EV to get a more balanced exposure, though I don't mind the blown out effect here. RAW gives you so much ability to maximize DR without having to use HDR if the original file (and camera sensor) has good originating DR. The LX3 is pretty good for a pocketable camera.

It's a good tool once you get used to it.

Because if it was, you obviously haven't been paying attention to the trolling going on around here. BTW, none of your examples qualify as "compact." They most certainly go far over the "compact" category when attaching lenses with the G11's zoom focal length (much less the comparatively tiny S90). It's just frankly impossible to have it all... meaning compact size, decent zoom, and a large sensor. Physics are physics. IMHO the OP point had nothing to do with this at all since he's gone for the LX3 (no large sensor and not pocketable either).

tompabes2 said:

I noticed many of you replied as if this was the usual "Canon vs. Panasonic/Nikon/Etc." thread to decide what's better.

I think the OP made a good point: until one year ago, there was only Sigma who was making a compact camera with large sensor. All other cameras where either DSLRs or compact/bridge cameras with small sensors.

But then something has happened: we have two major manufacturers (Oly and Panasonic) who now build compact cameras with large sensors and interchangeable lenses, and two (Leica and Sigma) who build compact cameras with large sensors and high-quality fixed lenses.

This means that prosumer compact cameras can be made with large sensors, whether you use interchangeable lenses or not. There has been an evolution in camera design, with new ideas. New compact cameras that can take high quality pictures due to their large sensor have been built. Some of them also have interchangeable lenses. But who's making all these interesting products? Not Canon.

Canon once used to be always one step ahead, now it appears to be fairly conservative in its choices and design.

Consider the prosumer compact camera sector, the Canon G11 is the only camera with a small sensor and it will have to compete with a bunch of products that are very appealing for the advanced user or photo enthusiast and have a much bigger sensor. Will it succeed?

Click to expand...

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Nice work, I shoot RAW with my D700, and did short mostly JPG with my G10. After looking at your LX3 shots, I'm going to shoot more RAW with my G11 if it ever gets here.

With the LX3, how far can you over expose a shot and still recover the high lights? Thats one of the best things I like about the D700.

Jim,

I can't fault anyone for buying a Panasonic because they make very good cameras and about 2 years ago I said that if Panasonic could get their noise problems under control, they would give Canon or anyone else a "run for their money".

The LX3 is a great camera and Panasonic has done a good job controlling noise but the LX3 is over a year old and I think Canon may have caught up or even surpassed Panasonic in the IQ department. Naturally, we'll have to wait for some good reviews of the G11 and S90 before we know anything for certain.

With that said, I don't think now is a good time to buy the LX3 and I think you may regret your decision. Nothing really wrong with the LX3 but it's a long ways from being perfect and some of the complaints and sample pictures on the Panasonic forum proves that.

Ed B said:

With that said, I don't think now is a good time to buy the LX3 and I think you may regret your decision. Nothing really wrong with the LX3 but it's a long ways from being perfect and some of the complaints and sample pictures on the Panasonic forum proves that.

Click to expand...

Sorry but that is just a ridiculous statement. The LX3 is unarguably one of the best compacts out there. Is it perfect? No.

Check out this review: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q408enthusiastgroup/

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http://www.pbase.com/hb1840

but it's the best small sensor digital camera I've used. The D700 and D3 have industry-leading levels of dynamic range and highlight recoverability - among DSLRs, not to mention digital cameras as a whole. Don't expect anywhere near that level of performance from the LX3. But, expect that it will do RAW very well for a small sensor camera. I think I'm getting at least a stop or stop and a half of leeway with most of my shots to play with. That's a pretty good range and I only recently discovered that you can create adjustment layers in ACR RAW, which is fantastic and allows you to use the sensor's dynamic range to its fullest in RAW, before you convert. It's great technology.

Brooks Lester said:

There's a lot of processing in every camera manufacturer's jpeg files. They're like slide film and the RAW image is more like negative film where you can manipulate color and tone curve to a a greater effect.

Click to expand...

With LR2 and Photoshop Elements (photoshop too) can make WB adjustments to a JPG. Though you only get + or - adjustments of the WB temperature instead of being able to set definitive values such as 5500.

I've done it many times before and adjusting WB of a JPG is fairly quick.

Sure, you can even adjust WB in iPhoto. You can also do it in Levels and Curves by selecting a midtone value with the gray eye dropper, but it doesn't produce the same type of result as adjusting color temperature in RAW.

Nothing ridiculous about my comments.

I said the LX3 is a good camera but someone who buys an LX3 now may regret their decision within the next few weeks.

The LX3 costs about the same as a G11

The LX3 is more than a year old

The S90 is cheaper than the LX3

The G11 and S90 may prove to be slightly better cameras than the LX3

The LX4 may be announced very soon

The LX4 would be priced about the same as the current LX3 price.

These are all good reasons to wait awhile and not be in a rush to spend $500.00 on an LX3.

Naturally, if someone wants an LX3 and is not interested in the G11, S90 or the possibility of an LX4, then they should spend their money on what they want.