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Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2

First Impressions Review

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Modes

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Image Parameters
October 12, 2006 By Richard Baguley
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Manual Control Options     
A full manual mode is included, where the aperture and shutter speeds are set by the joystick. Moving it up and down sets the shutter speed, and left and right sets the aperture. This is a good solution that makes the manual mode usable: an unusual situation for smaller cameras like this. The exposure meter on the screen remains on in manual mode, providing real-time advice to users.
 
Focus
Auto Focus – The auto focus on the Panasonic LX2 is a little slow, sometimes taking nearly half a second to find the right spot in the dim recesses of the Photokina conference hall. You can set the auto focus to run continuously, although this would suck down the battery life pretty quickly. Several focus modes are available: 9-area (where the camera scans 9 areas of the screen, and picks one to focus on), 3-area, 1-area high speed, 1-area and spot focusing. In the multiple area modes, the user can’t choose which area is used to focus on: the camera automatically makes the choice.
 
Manual Focus- Manual focus is done by flicking the switch on the lens to the MF position and using the joystick. Like most smaller cameras, it takes some time to go from one end of the scale to the other, but it’s not as bad as some. The center of the image is enlarged to help find the focus point. Manual focus is usable, but not great.
 
Exposure
Exposure compensation for up to two stops above and below is available in one-third increments. The camera can also auto bracket images, taking three images, one at up to two stops below, one at the metered resolution and one at up to two stops above. This can be a very useful feature for complex lighting situations: with some fiddling in Photoshop, you can combine the images to get a well exposed picture. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 has a good range of exposure modes from Manual, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Program, to the Auto and 18 scene modes.
 
Metering
Three metering modes are supported: Multiple (where the camera scans the entire image and picks the exposure), Center Weighted (where the center of the image is given more emphasis) and Spot metering (where only the center of the image is metered). This is a pretty standard selection, and should cover most situations.
 
White Balance
The white balance options of the LX2 are comprehensive: as well as 9 preset white balance settings, there are two custom settings, which can be pre-calibrated and stored. This would be useful if, for instance, you are shooting at a wedding and want white balance points for outdoors (under sunlight) and indoors (under mixed lighting). These settings can also be tweaked with a fine adjustment setting that uses the joystick to shift the white balance setting on an on-screen graph. This is a nice feature to have, but I doubt it would be used that often; the wide range of presets and two custom settings should be sufficient for most users.
 
ISO
The ISO range of the LX2 has been greatly expanded from the previous model: it now offers ISO settings up to 1600. The camera’s predecessor, the Panasonic LX1, had a measly ISO range that extended only to 400. On the LX2, Panasonic also adds a setting called Intelligent ISO, where the camera analyzes the lighting and movement in an image before selecting an appropriate ISO. We weren’t able to test this feature fully on the show floor, but we look forward to playing with this one in our testing lab. There is also a more conventional Auto ISO setting, which most users will probably be quite happy with. We didn’t test the higher settings in depth, but the sample shots we took did show very significant noise, even under reasonably good lighting. This will warrant further investigation, but the noise in images was one of our major complaints about the Panasonic LX1.
 
Shutter Speed
The shutter speed range is from ¼th of a second to 1/2000th of a second in the automatic mode, but this can be stretched out to 60 seconds in the manual mode. This is the same shutter speed range that was included on the LX1.
 
Aperture
The LX2 also has the same aperture offerings as the LX1 because they both have the same Leica 4x lens. The aperture range goes from f/2.8 (wide) and f/4.9 (telephoto) to f/8.0 (wide and telephoto). That’s a pretty average range for a camera of this type.
 

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Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2
First Impressions Review
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Previous: Page 4

Modes

Previous: Page 6

Image Parameters