Rob Harrison wrote:
> Hearing this from you Walt (along with AG's ponderings about his next year)
> helps me relax about my DSLR need frenzy. Thanks. My wife thanks you too!
>
> Now, about the *compact* digital...;-) Seems like there are plenty of those
> out there to tide me over 'till Oly comes up with the E-3, or I can afford a
> 5D. Thinking of them as "film with a lens attached" I've narrowed it down
> to...
>
> - L*ica D-Lux 3 or P*nas*nic LX-2
>
From the review of the LX-1:
"If you feel a 'but' coming on, here it is. To release a camera so
obviously aimed at the serious photographer, to add so many usable
manual controls, to put a razor-sharp Leica lens on the front and then
to drop in a chip / processor that is so noisy you can't use it above
ISO 100 is quite simply unforgivable. It's like buying a Ferrari and
discovering it maxes out at 55 mph."
"You can tease some amazing results from the LX1 at low ISOs if you're
prepared to do some work - specifically shooting in raw mode and
tweaking the parameters in Adobe Camera Raw (forget the supplied
software - it's worse than useless). At ISO 200 and 400 noise is a
serious issue, and you certainly won't want to print very large, but
again the inherent quality of the lens means there's plenty of detail,
and if you're prepared to do some work yourself (either using noise
reduction software or shooting raw), the results are just the right side
of acceptable.
> AND
>
> - a F30 or F31fd.
>
From the review of the F30:
"On the downside the F30 is not as impressive on bright sunny days as it
is indoors or at night; sure, the sharpness and low noise are still
there, but the tone curve often produces images that lack highlight or
shadow detail, yet can look a bit flat. You'll get some amazing results
if you know your way around Photoshop (or similar), but I often (though
by no means always) found the 'out of camera' results slightly
disappointing. Add to this the tendency to over expose and you've got a
camera that really needs to be used by someone who knows what they're
doing to get the most out of it."
".... it is - in expert hands - capable of superb results in any light."
> Kinda like having a body loaded with Portra 160NC and another with 800.
>
Obviously, we don't know how the newer camera will perform, although
evidence in at least the form of the recently released FZ50 and, FX-01,
is that Panasonic has been pursuing the mp race at the expense of image
quality. So UNLESS they change their ways with the LX-2, you have a
camera that is incapable of quality high iso results AND requires you to
be "prepared to do some work - specifically shooting in raw mode and
tweaking the parameters in Adobe Camera Raw" to get great iso 100 images.
With the F30, you get by far the best high iso P&S performance and still
need to be prepared to do some work to "get some amazing results if you
know your way around Photoshop" in bright light.
so both of them require more than simply pointing and shooting to get
"amazing" results out of either camera in bright light.
I wouldn't take the LX-2 seriously until I saw test results showing that
Panasonic has changed their ways and updated their Venus engine.
Otherwise, you gain nothing, but complexity and cost, over simply using
an F30 and learning the, relatively simple, rules for bright light use
and processing. Here is a piece of my lengthy post on that subject,
starting with a quote from dpreview:
-------------------------------------------------start of old post
"On the downside the F30 is not as impressive on bright sunny days as it
is indoors or at night; sure, the sharpness and low noise are still
there, but the tone curve often produces images that lack highlight or
shadow detail, yet can look a bit flat. You'll get some amazing results
if you know your way around Photoshop (or similar), but I often (though
by no means always) found the 'out of camera' results slightly
disappointing. Add to this the tendency to over expose and you've got a
camera that really needs to be used by someone who knows what they're
doing to get the most out of it."
----------------------------------------------------------------
I agree here, too, both about the issue and the ability to "get some
amazing results", if you know how. Perhaps, already used to the F10, I
wasn't disappointed with the F30 in this area. Reading the details in
the review, I think they are saying the same thing I have found. The
F30, like the F10, easily blows out highlights, leaving little
compressed detail to be recovered in post. On the other hand, it mostly
compresses shadows, rather than dropping them to black. That means that
shooting in any contrasty situation requires downward exposure
compensation and/or use of spot metering to avoid blown highlights.
With this particular camera, "expose to the right" is a formula for lost
highlights; better to underexpose, and reorganize the histogram later.
Fortunately, with the F30, Fuji has added an EV comp button to the back,
making adjustment MUCH easier. I'm starting to routinely adjust it.The
interesting thing about this, of course, is that it makes the camera in
effect faster.
You can see what I'm talking about in some of the shots I posted a
little bit ago. When I first shot "Aerie", I made two exposures a couple
of stops apart to later combine to cover the full rightness range of
bright sun. The next day, I took another, differently framed shot of it,
and really underexposed it. When I started looking at the results, I
started combining the light and dark shots. as I worked, I realized I
could get everything from just the dark one. You can see both the out of
camera image and the processed one here
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Summita/pages/DSCF1135a.htm>. None of
this would work if the camera didn't have such low noise, so the shadows
can be pulled up without the noise you would get with most P&Ss
On the original image, I've superimposed it's histogram. Notice I
underexposed more than I needed to, wasting some histogram room on top.
But see also how the shadow values are piled up high at the bottom, but
don't hit the end. Convert to 16 bit, play around a bit, and I get a
nice range of all the brightness of the original scene arranged as I
want it. I then tried the even more underexposed shot
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Summita/pages/DSCF1140a.htm>.
Two other shots in high contrast situations also have original,
unprocessed roll-overs. In one, I nailed the exposure, with the
highlights just touching the top of the histogram
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Summita/pages/DSCF1191as.htm>. With
the other, I lost some highlights, should have gone down another 1/3
stop, at least. But it does show what can be done with a very high
contrast subject in bringing up the shadows. For a display version, I
would probably leave them down a little further for drama
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Summita/pages/DSCF1194a.htm>.
--------------------------------------------------------- end of old post
In response to my old post, Winsor wrote:
I think that is what has bothered me about that Fuji sensor. If you
look at pix by average users on pbase.com they seem to alternate
between really nice low light shots and washed out looking daylight
shots. To paraphrase that old Pepsodent commercial you'll wonder
where the RGB went. Maybe it is a specialized low light camera unless
in the hands of someone like you who is willing to really learn how
to use it and post process.
I agree, except I don't think it s much work to learn how to use it in
bright light, it's more or less "-2/3 EV and be there", although a
little bracketing and training of one's eye can't hurt. Take a look at
some other images in this gallery, taken in direct sunlight, several
with high subject brightness range and/or specular reflections
<http://galleries.moosemystic.net/Summita/>.
As to post processing, most bright light shots need just the same thing,
so, as with the F10 before, I have made a PS action that does the bright
light compensation with one click. By doing it in a new layer, only one,
fairly strong, version is needed. The transparency of the compensation
layer can then be adjusted to the desired level.
> Under $1,000 for both, and both together weigh less and take up less space
> than even a 400D.
An F30 for $300 will probably do it all now. Although if you like your
camera really handy, the fitted leather belt case for another $27 is
really well designed and well made. Then if you can't work out bright
light shooting, and the LX-2 turns out to be a real improvement over the
LX-1, you can get it later.
As CH has clearly demonstrated, the F30 above iso 400 isn't competitive
with DSLRs, although 800 is amazingly good, but it's tiny, weighs almost
nothing and costs $300.
> I did a similar thing with film cameras on our
> motorcycle-riding honeymoon. I took a Ric*h GR-1v (28mm/f2.8) loaded with
> Reala, a L*ica Minilux Zoom (35-70mm f3.5-5.6 I think) with Superia 400, and
> a Holga with Tri-X. All fit in the tank bag.
>
It's not quite the same thing with digital. But hey, with the new Oly
list retro movement to film, you could go back to toting three film
cameras with different films in them. :-)
Moose
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