wiryawan
Well-known member
I shoot MFT cameras for two years now. Knowing what works and what doesn't, I grew pretty comfortable with MFT and it became my only cameras system after my switch from Canon APS-C DSLRs and EOS-M system.
However, as time goes, I started to do more and more off camera flash/strobist technique when I shoot, especially for environmental portraits during harsh, bright daylight under no shade, using speedlight(s). The MFT system, while is perfectly capable of performing such technique, is often times a bit limited due to the focal plane shutter mechanism, and can't sync higher than 1/250s (ssshhh, I can get 1/320s with the GX7 and GX8 to sync with my flashes without banding, but don't tell anyone else ;-) ). It is still doable, and I can still ND the whole exposure by 2 or 3 stops, but I want the ambient to be able to be underexposed even more sometimes, just for the sake of getting more headroom. I must tell you, this is more of a "want" than a "need".
Sure, there are HSS-enabled flashes, but as I tried them, the HSS method will cause the flash to fire significantly weaker output. So I tried researching of some more powerful flash option, but the stronger mono-lights are 1) large+heavy, 2) expensive, and 3) will require external pack or something similar. A big no no, so my only option is to get a camera with leaf shutter.
Then I bought the LX100, solely just for that purpose: to be able to shoot off camera flash/strobist at high shutter speed so that my small speedlight can balance or even overpower the ambient, without the need of any special item/feature. The LX100 is said to have the same sensor as the GX7, but slightly cropped by the multi-ratio lens. I was very familiar with the GX7's image quality, so I thought I'd give this LX100 a try.
While waiting for my LX100 to ship, I was searching the whole internet for a trace of people who are using the LX100 as a strobist camera. Not much result, only Mirrorlessjourney and some other folks post their experience in the internet. Even in Flickr, there aren't that much people talking about this camera for this specific application.
The camera finally arrived. Long story short, it works as a strobist camera
!!
Here are some things that I like from this camera:
I can now shoot at 2pm harsh bright daylight using the LX100 at f/4.0 1/1000s ISO 200 with the flash still at 1/4 power from about a meter away from the subject with ease. And with the image quality that it provides, the LX100 produces sharp and clean images, even only at 13MP max.
High ISO performance was not as good as the GX7, because even without pixel peeping, I can see a bit more noise at ISO 3200. But anything below 3200 is fine, and the fact that the lens can go down to f/1.7 at 24mm(equivalent) means I have the option to lower the ISO and compensate using larger aperture.
Sharpness is good. 13MP isn't much, but it's more than enough for me. Yes, the 20MP Sony RX100 files will look sharper, but luckily I'm not tempted by sharpness alone.
I really love the manual control on this camera. The aperture ring, the shutter dial, the exposure compensation dial, they all make sense! I just wish the LX100 also has a separate ISO dial.
The lens is amazing and sharp! I mean, I tried to distinguish my photos, and I had a hard time differentiating which one was taken with the GX7, and which one was taken with the LX100. It's that good. Plus it goes all the way up to f/1.7 at 24mm. Sadly, the aperture rather stops down quickly when you start zooming just a little from 24mm.
4K is fantastic, and even the 1080p is more than enough for me most of the time. I just wish that I could assign a completely custom profile for the video separately from the stills, so that I don't have to go back and forth with the color profile, shutter speed, and the aspect ratio every time I want to shoot video. There's no mic jack and headphone jack, but I don't complain because I haven't need them yet so far.
The camera is small and nearly pocketable, so it's very easy to fit into my small messenger bag. It also functions as my EDC camera now, living inside my commuting bag, ready to shoot whatever I need to shoot any time any day.
Battery life is okay for me, not crazy fantastic but more than enough to get me through the day. It can exchange the battery with the batteries from my GX7, so it's very convenient,
RAW to JPEG in camera plus Wifi have been very important to me. Now with the addition of Lightroom Mobile, I can quickly edit and send my images to the people who need them, as quick as I can be and without having to carry my laptop around. Editing can be done in the camera, then with wifi , then I can send the images from to my phone, do some touch up in Lightroom Mobile, and have the images sent through email or messaging apps as quickly as humanly possible.
There are some things that I don't like too from the LX100:
There's no touchscreen and no tilting/articulating screen. It just sucks, but as time goes by, I learn to live with those shortcomings. The EVF isn't fantastic too, but it's enough for my needs.
The AF can sometimes miss-focus, while giving you the green indicator. Happened to me more than a couple of times, and this could potentially ruin a shot. A temporary fix that I found is to switch the AF mode to AF macro. It helps, but the AF speed gets reduced a bit.
When turning on the camera, it takes time for the lens to extract. Same thing when the camera wakes up from sleep. The zoom speed is also quite slow. In my opinion, this camera can't be used to capture spontaneous candid, unless you have it on all the time and turn off the sleep feature. It is more suited for something that doesn't require instantaneous capture.
The size of the camera, while small, is still not pocketable. I wish it's pocketable sometimes.... But this is not a deal breaker though.
Overall I'm very happy with the camera, and although there are some annoyance when using this camera, I still think that the pros outweight the cons, and for my needs, the LX100 performs well enough. It now performs not only as my strobist camera, but also as my general outing/EDC camera.
I give it a 4.5 star!
This is what I'm talking about, off camera flash, high shutter speed, slightly underexposed ambient.
I took it one step further. I totally killed the ambient here. Just 100% dark ambient. Not 100% black though, but dark enough for my taste.
Another strobist photo that I'm after.
Another strobist type of image that I was after with this camera.
--
Best wishes,
Gary
However, as time goes, I started to do more and more off camera flash/strobist technique when I shoot, especially for environmental portraits during harsh, bright daylight under no shade, using speedlight(s). The MFT system, while is perfectly capable of performing such technique, is often times a bit limited due to the focal plane shutter mechanism, and can't sync higher than 1/250s (ssshhh, I can get 1/320s with the GX7 and GX8 to sync with my flashes without banding, but don't tell anyone else ;-) ). It is still doable, and I can still ND the whole exposure by 2 or 3 stops, but I want the ambient to be able to be underexposed even more sometimes, just for the sake of getting more headroom. I must tell you, this is more of a "want" than a "need".
Sure, there are HSS-enabled flashes, but as I tried them, the HSS method will cause the flash to fire significantly weaker output. So I tried researching of some more powerful flash option, but the stronger mono-lights are 1) large+heavy, 2) expensive, and 3) will require external pack or something similar. A big no no, so my only option is to get a camera with leaf shutter.
Then I bought the LX100, solely just for that purpose: to be able to shoot off camera flash/strobist at high shutter speed so that my small speedlight can balance or even overpower the ambient, without the need of any special item/feature. The LX100 is said to have the same sensor as the GX7, but slightly cropped by the multi-ratio lens. I was very familiar with the GX7's image quality, so I thought I'd give this LX100 a try.
While waiting for my LX100 to ship, I was searching the whole internet for a trace of people who are using the LX100 as a strobist camera. Not much result, only Mirrorlessjourney and some other folks post their experience in the internet. Even in Flickr, there aren't that much people talking about this camera for this specific application.
The camera finally arrived. Long story short, it works as a strobist camera
!!Here are some things that I like from this camera:
I can now shoot at 2pm harsh bright daylight using the LX100 at f/4.0 1/1000s ISO 200 with the flash still at 1/4 power from about a meter away from the subject with ease. And with the image quality that it provides, the LX100 produces sharp and clean images, even only at 13MP max.
High ISO performance was not as good as the GX7, because even without pixel peeping, I can see a bit more noise at ISO 3200. But anything below 3200 is fine, and the fact that the lens can go down to f/1.7 at 24mm(equivalent) means I have the option to lower the ISO and compensate using larger aperture.
Sharpness is good. 13MP isn't much, but it's more than enough for me. Yes, the 20MP Sony RX100 files will look sharper, but luckily I'm not tempted by sharpness alone.
I really love the manual control on this camera. The aperture ring, the shutter dial, the exposure compensation dial, they all make sense! I just wish the LX100 also has a separate ISO dial.
The lens is amazing and sharp! I mean, I tried to distinguish my photos, and I had a hard time differentiating which one was taken with the GX7, and which one was taken with the LX100. It's that good. Plus it goes all the way up to f/1.7 at 24mm. Sadly, the aperture rather stops down quickly when you start zooming just a little from 24mm.
4K is fantastic, and even the 1080p is more than enough for me most of the time. I just wish that I could assign a completely custom profile for the video separately from the stills, so that I don't have to go back and forth with the color profile, shutter speed, and the aspect ratio every time I want to shoot video. There's no mic jack and headphone jack, but I don't complain because I haven't need them yet so far.
The camera is small and nearly pocketable, so it's very easy to fit into my small messenger bag. It also functions as my EDC camera now, living inside my commuting bag, ready to shoot whatever I need to shoot any time any day.
Battery life is okay for me, not crazy fantastic but more than enough to get me through the day. It can exchange the battery with the batteries from my GX7, so it's very convenient,
RAW to JPEG in camera plus Wifi have been very important to me. Now with the addition of Lightroom Mobile, I can quickly edit and send my images to the people who need them, as quick as I can be and without having to carry my laptop around. Editing can be done in the camera, then with wifi , then I can send the images from to my phone, do some touch up in Lightroom Mobile, and have the images sent through email or messaging apps as quickly as humanly possible.
There are some things that I don't like too from the LX100:
There's no touchscreen and no tilting/articulating screen. It just sucks, but as time goes by, I learn to live with those shortcomings. The EVF isn't fantastic too, but it's enough for my needs.
The AF can sometimes miss-focus, while giving you the green indicator. Happened to me more than a couple of times, and this could potentially ruin a shot. A temporary fix that I found is to switch the AF mode to AF macro. It helps, but the AF speed gets reduced a bit.
When turning on the camera, it takes time for the lens to extract. Same thing when the camera wakes up from sleep. The zoom speed is also quite slow. In my opinion, this camera can't be used to capture spontaneous candid, unless you have it on all the time and turn off the sleep feature. It is more suited for something that doesn't require instantaneous capture.
The size of the camera, while small, is still not pocketable. I wish it's pocketable sometimes.... But this is not a deal breaker though.
Overall I'm very happy with the camera, and although there are some annoyance when using this camera, I still think that the pros outweight the cons, and for my needs, the LX100 performs well enough. It now performs not only as my strobist camera, but also as my general outing/EDC camera.
I give it a 4.5 star!
This is what I'm talking about, off camera flash, high shutter speed, slightly underexposed ambient.
I took it one step further. I totally killed the ambient here. Just 100% dark ambient. Not 100% black though, but dark enough for my taste.
Another strobist photo that I'm after.
Another strobist type of image that I was after with this camera.
--
Best wishes,
Gary
