Is it crazy to take LX3 AND ZS7 to Yellowstone?

Guy Parsons said:

Thinking back to when I went to Yellowstone last century, yes the LX3 will do a lot of the work. Particularly in cases where some big lump of an animal (a huge bison) was crossing the road and literally stuck its face right near the car window, 24mm very handy.

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Right. I have had some close encounters of the wildlife kind myself.

Guy Parsons said:

Next corner of course was a group of people saying "look at the moose" and that creature was a dot in the distance, then even 300mm would not be enough but way better than 60mm.

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That's an experience I too have had, all too frequently. Couple of years ago I took some shots of a litter of coyote pups frolicking on the far edge of a meadow in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was either zoomed all the way out with my Tamron lens to a full-frame effective focal length of 450mm, or perhaps I even had the 1.4x teleconverter on, giving me whatever that math works out to (over 600). I cropped pretty hard and the pups were identifiable as pups. But it wasn't a shot that was going to make the front cover of National Geographic even in a slow month. Since then, I've raised my standards a bit and I've stopped trying to take photos that I know aren't going to work.

Guy Parsons said:

I went out south of Yellowstone past the Grand Tetons, Jenny Lake and went east over the Togwotee Pass and on through great Wyoming countryside on US 287. Plenty of LX3 scenes there.

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We're going by Mount Rushmore on the way home, as well as the Tetons. So I think the LX3 will get its share of use.

Will

my reason for thinking of leaving my g1,gf1,20mm,14-45mm,45-200mm,&7-14mm lenses behind on my 5 month trips to se asia are simply that they are too heavy to have with my at all times, so i can catch things i see.

the promise of a lightweight dslr that panasonic was advertizing caught me. and once i got the first camera, i had to buy the other lenses to equal what i was using with my lx3 and tz5.

but now my bag weighs 4 pounds, which makes my back and ankles hurt after a day of carrying, and it is no longer stealth-like in looks. i ended up with a cadillac when i wanted an mg!
alas, there is no one solution.

Hi,

Have just returned from a trip to Canada / US using an LX3 with DMW-LW46 wide-angle lens and TZ10.

Mostly the LX3 worked brilliantly having both wide-angle and low light benefits alongside general shots for medium distance using zoom mode. For landscapes, city architecture, night time and interior use the LX3 performed best.

Where the TZ10 came into its own was for distance subjects, birds, animals, buildings etc. Having both cameras covered everything I needed with one exception, plus having two cameras, they lasted as desired, without carrying extra batteries. The LX3 lasted best, although the TZ10 was as good if GPS was turned off. Overall a very good weight saving combo which I would be happy with for any normal vacation, instead of taking a heavier and less incognito SLR, as I used to do.

The one purpose for taking a digital SLR with 70/300mm lens was for F1 at Montreal. The eyepiece viewfinder makes framing / catching the cars more successful. Its very difficult to use a compact camera screen this way, though I caught some acceptable shots by luck.

Unless requiring any similar purpose, I would say go for the LX3 / TZ10 combo, and save weight.

By the way, the video performance is also good with both cameras, I left my camcorder at home this trip and didn't regret it.

( For info, I print 7x5, but mostly view on 42" TV ).

Barrie Davis said:

That's what I'm thinking. I mean, if you didn't buy it for Yellowstone, what DID you buy it for?

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Baz,

Of course, I know my DSLR gear is technically superior even to an LX3. I've taken it with me on all of our vacations in the last five years and gotten some good shots. But I did NOT buy my expensive DSLR gear for Yellowstone. My current kit (several bodies and a good collection of terrific prime lenses) was acquired for my portrait and wedding/event practice.

And I'm by no means abandoning my DSLR equipment! Not at all.

So I think some of your premises are mistaken. Nevertheless, I do understand your question, so let me try to give my answer.

*

My starting point is that the photos I've taken with my LX3 so far persuade me that the image quality is GOOD ENOUGH for my own personal needs, that the LX3 is good enough as a vacation camera. The DSLR provides a slew of advantages that I'm simply not going to forego when somebody else is paying me for the work. But if I ruin a few shots on vacation, nobody sues me. If the photos from the LX3 weren't good enough, then I would not be considering using it for much of anything.

That said, my DSLR kit brings with it a number of problems. I know these problems well, as I've taken my DSLRs on vacation for years. Those problems can be summarized as: bulk (= size and weight), potential expense (i.e. the cost of the equipment that I'm putting at risk when I take it on vacation), and inconvenience or extra work (especially in post-processing). The biggest problems are bulk and inconvenience.

*

First, bulk. Now that I shoot almost exclusively with primes, I either have to resign myself to carrying a fairly large bag (awkward especially when camping, which I'll be doing in Yellowstone), or I have to resign myself to missing a lot of shots because I didn't bring the necessary lens. The latter would be easier for me, and it's what I've done in the past. I could for example take one DSLR body and my Pentax 21mm limited (= 32mm in full-frame terms). I could live with that. The Pentax 21mm is a pancake lens, or nearly, and if I removed the battery grip, the gear would be a lot more compact than, oh, taking body with grip plus a 70-300 or almost any other zoom lens.

But having a single prime lens with me on vacation is pretty limiting. I'm well aware that the great landscape photographers of the distant past often had a single focal length to work with, and their equipment was usually much bulkier than mine, indeed, almost inconceivably bulkier, as some of the early greats had to carry their darkrooms into the field with them as well as their cameras. (Boggles the mind.) But I am simply not that serious, not when I'm on vacation. I am largely an opportunistic shooter. I like to spend time with my family. So I don't leave them on their own for a day while I climb yonder hill to get the vantage point my 21mm lens requires for the shot. My wife and daughters are patient, and I will ask them to wait for me for a few minutes; but that's about it. So when I'm on vacation, I appreciate having a little flexibility about focal lengths and vantage points.

*

For some time now, I've been wanting to buy a truly compact camera that I could basically carry everywhere with me. I found the LX3 at the end of a longish search. So now, I have a really compact camera, more compact even than my Pentax K20D with the 21mm pancake attached. I didn't purchase the LX3 for vacation use. I purchased it for daily use at home, for walking-around use. But now that I've got this wonderful LITTLE camera, well, it's blindingly obvious that it would be a nice thing to take on vacation.

*

I might add at this point that, while size and weight are the principal problems with my DSLRs, another problem is that the photos I take with my DSLRs—always in raw—require processing on the computer afterwards. And I have discovered that the LX3's jpeg output is remarkably good. So another mark in the LX3's favor, at the moment, is the promise of taking really nice photos on vacation that do NOT require a lot of processing time on the computer when I get back home.

*

When I'm on vacation and shooting landscapes or wildlife, I'm not competing with my work in the studio or at a wedding. I'm also not competing with the aces at National Geographic. Working with the compact cameras is a different kind of photography, with a different set of challenges. And to be honest, I'm excited about these new challenges.

I started taking photographs in the 1960s. I have reached the point where I'm pretty unromantic about equipment. I am not immune to the temptations of marketing—how I wish I were!—but I just don't look to my equipment for happiness. I look to the pictures.

And here, at the risk of patting myself on the back, I have never been especially romantic, or rather, I've never been especially technical in my demands. The LX3 will take photos more than good enough for my purposes.

Will

You state the LX3 jpg quality is "Good", so you don't need raw. I really disagree. The residual NR in the JPGs drives me crazy, especially distant vistas, where the LX3 just smudges out the subtle details of clouds, forest and mountainsides (even at ISO 80). I leave mine on jgp+Raw all the time. This also better corrects for color balance issues.

This is similar problem with the ZS7, except that there is no Raw fall back. Even with NR set to -2 (minimum), the smudging is still a bother.

Though I have bought the LX3/ZS7 combo for reasons similar to yours, I still sometimes get regrets for not bringing the D300 when reviewing a really great shot. Especially in telephotos, the difference is very obvious. As you will be doing long shots of animals, a DSLR and 300-400mm zoom will give much better results than the 12X zoom on the ZS7.

It's not a crazy idea, but you want a lot of reach for wildlife photos. The 300mm is good; 450 is better. I took my LX3 and my DSLR (w/70-300mm lens) to Yellowstone. It was not inconvenient to carry the DSLR because I didn't do a lot of hiking with it. Your situation may be different.

DW
pbase.com/coaster.

I think the LX3 does an excellent job with jpegs. They look great on my 24" monitor. I'm sure that there may be some loss of detail compared to RAW, but not that's not easily seen at normal viewing sizes.

DW
pbase.com/coaster

breivogel said:

You state the LX3 jpg quality is "Good", so you don't need raw. I really disagree.

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Thanks for your take. I have to admit that I have not yet made a print from an LX3 jpeg file. I should order a print or two and see what I think. For me, prints tell the story than any amount of pixel peeping.

One thing I like about the LX3—and I think the ZS7 has this, too, although I'm not sure—is the intelligent exposure feature. As I understand it, one of the things this does is provide a somewhat different exposure value for different parts of the shot, in order to get increase dynamic range. If I'm understanding that right, well, that's brilliant. And unfortunately it doesn't work (couldn't work) for raw capture. Doesn't work therefore for raw + jpeg, either.

I know that I can use the adjustment brush in Lightroom 3 to bring detail out of shadows, or tone down highlights, and I know that these edits work better on raw files. What I'd LIKE to do (in theory, that is) is do as little post-processing on my personal photos as possible. I'm not expecting to make my inner Ansel happy with shots from the LX3 or the ZS7.

Nevertheless, my prejudice in favor of raw capture is so profound that shooting jpeg only really does feel like a religious betrayal, still, and I think it's entirely possible that, when I get to Yellowstone, I'll chicken out, and switch back to raw. I won't know for sure until I'm there.

breivogel said:

Though I have bought the LX3/ZS7 combo for reasons similar to yours, I still sometimes get regrets for not bringing the D300 when reviewing a really great shot. Especially in telephotos, the difference is very obvious. As you will be doing long shots of animals, a DSLR and 300-400mm zoom will give much better results than the 12X zoom on the ZS7.

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Yeah, I'm thinking hard about that. If I were packing the van today, I would certainly toss in a dslr body + the Tamron 70-300 (= 105-450 in full-frame terms), just to hedge my bets.

But the other side of the issue is that I have seldom been truly happy with my wildlife photography unless I was able to get close. The Tamron zoom isn't a bad lens—actually, for a consumer lens that's very reasonably priced it's surprisingly good. But 300mm seems a desperation focal length. If I were serious about photographing, say, condor nests or whatever, I ought to invest in a Bigma or something else.

I also received delivery today of a new pair of Pentax binoculars. I'll just look at the wolves through the binoculars, from a safe distance, and use the cameras to photograph bears when they start climbing on the minivan.

Thanks,

Will

The LX3 jpeg quality, once tuned to get rid of problems, is little different to RAW developments for all normal purposes.

If insisting on constant extreme pixel peeping then there may be problems to discover. But who in their right mind examines 5 foot wide prints from 6" to find faults?

The residual noise does not appear in any normal print or slide show and yes the noise is different between RAW and jpeg, but only for pixel peepers.

Maybe my view is modified a bit by the fact that I am currently scanning thousands of old 35mm and medium format slides for posterity. Have you ever pixel peeped film? What muck that is, no sharp edges anywhere and noise all over the place.

The whole issue in this thread is that the LX3 quality is good enough to satisfy a professional photographer with high standards who just wants to have a holiday with his family and not be burdened by a big bag of DSLR. Plus of course there needs to be a 10x zoom pocket camera handy for some more distant details.

I'm not a pro but care about quality and I have dumped DSLR for LX3. Maybe later when DSLR sized sensor cameras get sensible with no mirror and no focal plane shutter I will get back to carrying a bag occasionally.

You see, the silent and inconspicuous operation of the LX3 is one on its major charms.

Of course everyone likes to use their equipment differently, so RAW is necessary for you but not for me.

Regards............ Guy

breivogel said:

You state the LX3 jpg quality is "Good", so you don't need raw. I really disagree. The residual NR in the JPGs drives me crazy, especially distant vistas, where the LX3 just smudges out the subtle details of clouds, forest and mountainsides (even at ISO 80). I leave mine on jgp+Raw all the time. This also better corrects for color balance issues.

This is similar problem with the ZS7, except that there is no Raw fall back. Even with NR set to -2 (minimum), the smudging is still a bother.

Though I have bought the LX3/ZS7 combo for reasons similar to yours, I still sometimes get regrets for not bringing the D300 when reviewing a really great shot. Especially in telephotos, the difference is very obvious. As you will be doing long shots of animals, a DSLR and 300-400mm zoom will give much better results than the 12X zoom on the ZS7.

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William Porter said:

Thanks for your take. I have to admit that I have not yet made a print from an LX3 jpeg file. I should order a print or two and see what I think. For me, prints tell the story than any amount of pixel peeping.

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That's how I tuned my jpegs. In my case (to save paper and ink) I used an old pigment Epson PictureMate printer (better result than any lab I've seen) for postcard sized prints. First at full frame, next at various degrees of crop to simulate more print size (and more zoom) and see where the problems may lie. Qimage for all printing.

That's when I really saw the smearing due to Noise Reduction and the edge halos caused by Sharpening - both then reduced to minus 2 to avoid that. And of course stick in the ISO 80 to 200 range.

The faults showed on my 201 dpi print which in this case would have been about a 12" x 21" print (16:9 image). Once my jpeg settings were fixed and then a little bit of post process sharpening and then auto sharpening to suit size within Qimage and all looks good now. It also means that cropping can be used if printing postcards for the family album and the 60mm now becomes nearly 180mm. Not so much a handicap with that short zoom.

William Porter said:

One thing I like about the LX3—and I think the ZS7 has this, too, although I'm not sure—is the intelligent exposure feature. As I understand it, one of the things this does is provide a somewhat different exposure value for different parts of the shot, in order to get increase dynamic range. If I'm understanding that right, well, that's brilliant. And unfortunately it doesn't work (couldn't work) for raw capture. Doesn't work therefore for raw + jpeg, either.

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Make sure that you don't mix up Intelligent Exposure and Intelligent ISO. I use Intelligent Exposure set to Low as it sometimes seems to work (icon goes yellow when it kicks in) and certainly doesn't do any damage. All it does (I assume) is to alter the curve slightly to favour shadow detail when creating the jpeg. The RAW is still the same RAW with no fiddles.

Intelligent ISO mucks about with the ISO settings and can get noisy. I never use it.

William Porter said:

I know that I can use the adjustment brush in Lightroom 3 to bring detail out of shadows, or tone down highlights, and I know that these edits work better on raw files. What I'd LIKE to do (in theory, that is) is do as little post-processing on my personal photos as possible. I'm not expecting to make my inner Ansel happy with shots from the LX3 or the ZS7.

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I'm an old time user of Paint Shop Pro and am currently battling the buggy X3 version. I use its Express Lab photo fix where it suggests settings for the image being examined and maybe 90% of the time it does very well indeed. The other 10% need a few little slider adjusts before accepting. All images, no matter how good they look, seem to improve a little with that auto tickle. Maybe the same sort of thing that happens when you tick the "auto fix" button in the photo lab booth.

That method of working is very fast indeed and can get through the holiday in very quick time with very acceptable results. (Must get back to fixing my Japan holiday from last year, sigh, there's always too many things to do).

William Porter said:

Nevertheless, my prejudice in favor of raw capture is so profound that shooting jpeg only really does feel like a religious betrayal, still, and I think it's entirely possible that, when I get to Yellowstone, I'll chicken out, and switch back to raw. I won't know for sure until I'm there.

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If you have the storage then by all means shoot RAW + jpeg and separate the two when home. Try to work with the jpegs and see how it goes, if doubts, then dip back into the RAW to see if things can be improved much. I did some of the Japan trip that way and found that I never really needed the RAWs, the jpegs worked well all the time.

William Porter said:

I also received delivery today of a new pair of Pentax binoculars. I'll just look at the wolves through the binoculars, from a safe distance, and use the cameras to photograph bears when they start climbing on the minivan.

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We have a thing with binoculars, whenever we travel with them we never seem to use them, when we leave them at home it's a case of "curses, why didn't we bring them". And they are those tiny 8x Olympus ones, good for daylight viewing.

It is a revelation to travel simply and finally see your holiday instead of always peering at it through a viewfinder. That's where a camera with an LCD is way better than a viewfinder. You get to see the whole scene and not just the tiddly bit the viewfinder is letting you see. Oh, by the way, you do need a BoxWave anti-glare filter or Gary's ClearViewer (to the eyeball again) to see that LX3 LCD more clearly.

Regards......... Guy

Answering my own question, it seems that connecting to binoculars is certainly possible in theory, but perhaps not so common in practice...eg

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-swarovski-snapshot-adapter-s1-8/p1032958

I'm tempted to look into this in more detail as we are considering buying binoculars anyway...

James

Not a crazy idea, but why not consider an FZ35/LX3 combo. The FZ35 isn't pocketable and it's too big to put on a belt, but it IS light and it provides f/4.4 at 486mm plus the one thing that you may find you wish you had when shooting wildlife in Yellowstone --- a view finder.

I vacationed in Yellowstone last summer and only had a camera with me that had a short zoom. I got some very decent shots, but wish I had something with a longer reach. I think the LX3/ZS7 combo would be great for most travel situations, however if I knew I would be going somewhere and shooting wildlife, I think I might opt for something that is still convenient (albeit a little less so) with a little longer reach and a view finder.
Just my two cents.

I have used the LX3 and FZ35 combo on my two trips this year. In the Galapagos, where wildlife is abundant, most of my photographs were taken with the FZ35. Another consideration was the lack of a viewfinder in the LX3, which is a serious disadvantage in strong sunlight. In the Balkan (Croatia and Montenegro), the vast majority of my photos were landscapes and street shots, and I used the LX3 almost exclusively. This combo provides a lot of flexibility for almost all situations one could encounter.
Theo

You will find that you are going to use both of them. I downloaded the travelphotoguides.com iPhone app and looked at many of the photos. With the exception of some wildlife shots, most were taken with 80mm or less focal length. You can try the app yourself for free to get an idea (and it works on the iPod Touch too)

Can only say if it was me the DSLR would get priority and the LX3 would be in a pocket. YMMV

--
Busch

Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.

http://www.pbase.com/busch

Great combo, Will. I have both the LX and ZS3 (and the FZ50). For me, I need to look through a view finder for wildlife, however, so I would consider buying a Hoodman loupe ( http://www.hoodmanusa.com/prodinfo.asp?number=H-LPP3 ) for the ZS to make sure the composition is spot on. Have a wonderful trip. My wife and daughter were there and got some great shots of wildlife.
Daniel
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Theo in SWPA said:

I have used the LX3 and FZ35 combo on my two trips this year. In the Galapagos, where wildlife is abundant, most of my photographs were taken with the FZ35. Another consideration was the lack of a viewfinder in the LX3, which is a serious disadvantage in strong sunlight. In the Balkan (Croatia and Montenegro), the vast majority of my photos were landscapes and street shots, and I used the LX3 almost exclusively. This combo provides a lot of flexibility for almost all situations one could encounter.

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I tried out the LX3 and ZS3 combination on a trip to Yosemite a while back...leaving my FZ50 back at camp, partly because the ZS3 was new, and partly because I wanted to see what sort of an FZ50 substitute the nice pocketable ZS3 would be.

It did serve the purpose of getting the extra reach, and was certainly convenient, but the photo quality wasn't comparable to the FZ50 in most cases.

The lack of viewfinder wasn't an issue in my case, since I have Clearviewers on both the LX3 and ZS3...but it certainly would be a problem without that, and I wouldn't have gone without the FZ50 and its electronic viewfinder. Trying to follow moving wildlife, catch a bird at full telephoto, or compose what you're shooting in tough lighting with a bare LCD is awkward to impossible, depending on who you ask.

So it's a workable combination, but I'd use the LX3 as much as possible, and the ZS7 only when you really need the zoom. Or, as others suggested, a combination of FZ35/LX3 is more versatile if you don't mind the size.

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Gary
Photo albums: http://www.pbase.com/roberthouse

First time in many, many years that I didn't take a "serious" camera.

My husband had a Clearviewer on his ZS3 and I had a "naked" LX3 with a GGS screen protector on it. Should have been a boxwave antiglare filter. Might have done better.

I had a terrible time seeing the lcd in the sun and had to do a lot of guessing.

My husband did much better with the Clearviewer.

It was very, very nice going lightweight for a change instead of being weighted down with a dslr and a couple of lenses.

Isabel
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Isabel
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retiredbutcycling said:

i'll be taking those two back to se asia this year, leaving my heavy g1 and gf1 at home.

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It is really a matter of perspective. When I went to Yellowstone, I carried a Nikon DSLR with the 80-400 VR on it and the Oly C7070 for my non-telephoto shots. Carrying the 80-400 around all day seemed heavy to me, but it paled in comparison to the serious wildlife shooters w/ 300 f/2.8's or the longer telephoto primes. The G series seems like an ultralight setup, even with the 45-200, in comparison to what I'm used to carrying.

I think carrying an ultra zoom with an LX3 is an excellent approach.

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Good shooting,

GR
North Carolina