I...think I disagree with everything you wrote, lol.
On the other hand, the LX5 was noted as having poor white balance in more than one review. It would be nice if the S95 lens progressed like the LX5 along the range but each has their pros and cons.
Well ok, I agree with the lens comment that it would be nice.
Poor white balance is a mickey mouse affair and easily corrected without even having to shoot raw.
White balance is easily "changed" with RAW, but it is not necessarily easy "corrected". Sometimes it's a giant pita to fine-tune the white balance until you get it right, and it's way easier if the camera just does an acceptable job in the first place.
Of course the s95 is not perfect in this regard either. But we're talking about compact cameras here where most shots are not done in studio lighting where you're going to apply the identical white balance across all your pictures or something.
But if one is serious about the LX5....then the WB is even more of a non-event. Most users who go to the trouble (and expense) of getting a serious compact like the LX5.... will shoot raw. But the difference in ISO400 to 800 even on the same camera is more than a mickey mouse affair.
Well actually...I misread this the first time and now I'm to lazy to scroll up and correct what I wrote, lol - guess I do agree with a lot of what you wrote!
The difference between iso400 and iso800, unlike white balance, is not correctable afterwards like you say. However, that's only the case after you started zooming in low light. Think of the places where you'd be taking low light shots - a bar, family Christmas gathering, friends posing for a shot - mostly places where there's not a lot of need to zoom, and if you do you can often simply "foot zoom" - just move closer to the people you're taking a picture of.
To be fair, the one common exception I know of is concerts/plays where you're forced to sit back from the event and so you pretty much have to zoom. Sometimes they put quite a bit of light on the stage - sometimes they don't. But that's like - 1% of my low light pictures.
I mean all cameras are tradeoffs. If size wasn't important you could just bring a dslr. If the tradeoff between the s95 and the lx5 was that the lx5 had 1 stop better iso performance everywhere, that would be a tough decision. But since it's only 1 stop
after you've zoomed in a lot ...eh, that's something I can definitely live with in exchange for the smaller size. The vast majority of my low light pictures aren't in situations where I needed zoom anyways.
The people who are
serious about photography use a dslr. They don't use a compact camera for their
serious work. For them, both the lx5 and s95 are for "less serious" photos, and you might as well go with the one that's more convenient to bring with you.
