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Manual Control Options
The Panasonic L1 has complete manual controls, and they are all easy to access. The kit lens has an aperture ring. For users who are familiar with older film SLRs, the on-lens aperture ring feels familiar and quick. Using Olympus Four-Thirds lenses without aperture rings is less convenient – adjusting aperture for those lenses on the L1 involves pressing the Func. 1 button while turning the control dial.
Focus
Auto Focus (3.5)
The Four-Thirds format is due for a camera with good auto focus – but it won’t happen in the L1. This Lumix DSLR has only three auto focus sensors, arranged in a row across the center of the frame. For most portraits, the sensors don't fall on the subject's face in a well-composed shot, which means the user should focus, and then re-compose for nearly every shot.
We photographed people in a dimly lit reception hall, and found that the L1’s low-light focusing was inferior to a Fujifilm Finepix S2, which features a pretty old and limited auto focus mechanism. Even with its auto focus assist lamp, the L1 is slower than the S2 as well. In bright light, we found it accurate, but slow. When the L1 is in live view mode, only single-shot auto focus is available, and the live view freezes while it's at work. The auto focus system is in the optical viewfinder, so to focus, the mirror flops down, the camera focuses, and then the mirror flops back up. It's a cumbersome system.
The auto focus can be set to work continuously or only when the shutter release button is pushed halfway. The L1's phase detection auto focus won't stack up well against current systems on Nikons, Canons, or presumably, the Fujifilm S5.
Manual Focus (8.25)
The Panasonic L1 offers two options for manual focus – through the optical viewfinder, or on the LCD screen. The LCD is much better – the optical viewfinder is small and dark. The LCD, on the other hand, is bright and its 100 percent accurate image can be magnified either 4x or 10x. Live previews on compact cameras tend to show unacceptable noise in moderately low light, but the L1 does much better than average that way. Even at 10x, the view in dim light was clear enough to focus critically. There's noise in the live view – much more than in the final image – but at a level that doesn't overwhelm the view.
Exposure (8.5)
The Panasonic L1 offers fully manual exposure, aperture-priority and shutter speed-priority as well as a program mode. Both the LCD and the viewfinder display exposure scales in manual mode. The scales have a zero in the center, representing correct exposure, and run from 2 EV underexposed to 2 EV overexposed. In manual mode, an indicator shows how far the set exposure deviates from the optimal exposure setting, and the user can adjust the aperture ring and shutter dial until the indicator hits zero. In the priority modes, the scales show the amount of exposure compensation set. For users who can’t seem to figure out the exposure or simply want to experiment, there is an auto bracketing mode available that snaps a selectable 3 or 5 shots in selectable EV intervals of 1/3, 2/3, or 1 in the +/- 2 range.
Metering (8.25)
As most cameras do, the Panasonic L1 offers Spot, Evaluative and Center-weighted metering. The spot sensor is the diameter of the central auto focus cross. Center-weighted metering is heavily weighted; we found that a light source has very little effect toward the edge of the frame, and a very pronounced effect at the center. The evaluative mode works as well as most we've seen, maintaining image detail across the frame when the lighting is uneven. The tradeoff is that the exposure is a compromise – the lightest areas are overexposed and the darker areas are underexposed. Careful users may want to commit to optimum exposure for one part of the image, and let the rest of it go dark or light. The metering patterns differ depending on whether the viewfinder or LCD is in use. The optical viewfinder uses a 49-zone multi-pattern sensing system, while the live view mode on the LCD uses 256 zones.
White Balance (8.5)
Panasonic has included flexible white balance controls on even its low-end compact cameras, so it's not surprising to find a good system on the DMC-L1. Its auto setting works well in most situations. In dim tungsten lighting, we found that it biased the colors toward red – it wasn't accurate, but it was pleasing color for most users.
The L1's presets are Sunny, Cloudy, Open Shade, Flash and Tungsten. The selection doesn't include any Fluorescent settings, apparently on the logic that Auto or full manual settings will give better results. There is, of course, a custom white balance setting on this camera. In fact, two custom settings can be saved in the menu. The L1 also allows the user to directly set a Kelvin temperature from 2,500-10,000 degrees in 31 steps. Finally, the Lumix L1 has a fine-tuning control that allows the user to adjust color in both blue-amber and red-green axes.
ISO (7.5)
The L1's ISO range runs from 100 to 1600. It can be set in full-EV increments. There is a button on the back of the camera for direct access to the control. The trend on DSLRs has been toward 1/3-EV increments for ISO, a feature that gives the user extra flexibility in setting exposure. In a camera that shows significant noise at high ISOs, such as the L1, smaller increments can make it easier to balance the sensitivity and noise.
Shutter Speed (9.0)
The L1's shutter speeds range from 1/4000 to 60 seconds. The most frequently used part of that range, from 1/1000 to 1/2, is controlled with the large shutter speed dial, which has click stops at 1/3-EV increments. The fastest and lowest speeds are set with the control dial. The L1 has a Bulb setting for very long exposures. The shutter's maximum flash sync is only 1/160, which is limited for outdoor fill flash. It's puzzling that the sync speed is so slow; Four-Thirds is such a small format that developing a fast shutter for it shouldn't be challenging at all.
Aperture (0.0)
The kit lens has an aperture ring that runs from f/2.8 to f/22. The maximum aperture drops to f/3.5 at the telephoto end, which isn't so bad, considering that many kit lenses start at f/3.5, and drop more than a full stop as they zoom. The aperture ring on the lens has stops at 1/3-EV increments. Though we always appreciate flexible controls on a camera, we imagine that a minimum f-stop of f/22 is too small for a 14-50mm lens – such a small aperture will take a toll on image quality.
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