It has now been just over six months since I took receipt of a brand new Panasonic LUMIX DMC-LX3. Since then I have shot 10,098 images and short HD video clips. All still images were shot in full res RAW+Jpeg mode and all HD video clips were shot in the full 720p res mode. Early on in using this camera I decided to stick to the Standard Color mode. I had experimented with some of the other modes in the first week of owning the camera, but I quickly decided to stick to shooting color, as my preference was to always start with color and do black and white conversions in post production.

This article isn't really a review, but more of a conversation about my dealings with this amazing little camera.

Style

Every photographer has a style. It's something that develops over time. In the beginning we emulate the styles of our peers and our role models. But eventually our true creative vision begins to show through. Developing a style is not about deciding on one particular type of photography, but really about learning to express your own creative vision. Part of my process involves experimenting with all sorts of techniques, equipment, and pretty much anything I can get my hands on. I even shot a box full of 120 transparency film a few months ago ( I'm still scanning it ) with a Mamiya RZ67! The point is, even though I am focusing on this point-and-shoot, it doesn't mean it's the only camera I care about, or am interested in.

I keep finding myself thinking of this camera as a range-finder. It's not a range-finder, and it certainly is no substitute for the real thing, but it has a certain set of characteristics that allow me to make the types of images I think I would be making if I were using a range-finder. Does that make sense?

It's also important to understand that in my "style" of shooting I am usually not afraid to work outside the envelope. I like to turn my ISO up really high, and I love working in dark situations. So my images are sometimes blurry, sometimes full of noise and sometimes a little outside of what we in the photographic world have determined to be "acceptable." But who's to say if one image is acceptable and another is not.

So I find the LX3 to be a perfect companion for my "shooting lifestyle." I bring it pretty much everywhere I go, and I have it set up to perform essentially a single task.

Settings

When I first began playing with the LX3 I noticed that it had a myriad of settings and controls. It is a pretty sophisticated camera for a point-and-shoot. I have to tell you, I checked out most of them. I tried a few of the bells and whistles, I read the forums and the discussions on the flickr group, and I participated with my own thoughts. In the end, I realized that this camera was perfect for performing a couple of things that I like to do photographically.

Its wide 24mm lens is REALLY wide. It harkens back to my first real camera, a Nikon FM with a 24mm f/2.8. I hauled that camera around the halls of my high school and rarely switched out the lens. My only other option at the time was a fixed 200 f/4--a fantastically sharp and small manual focus lens in its own right. On the LX3 I typically leave the lens set to its widest setting. On occasion I will zoom in a little, but I find myself rarely doing so. When I was shopping for a point-and-shoot one of the primary criteria was that it had a fast and wide lens, so this is what I bought it for--24mm f/2.0. In a perfect world, and if Panasonic were building a camera just for me, the lens would have two settings, 24mm at one end, and 35mm f/2.0 at the other with nothing in between. You would press a switch on the lens barrel and instantly change focal lengths, and there would be bright lines for both in the viewfinder.

As I mentioned before I usually leave the camera set to Standard Color mode and I shoot in RAW+Jpeg mode. I really, really wish the RAW format were a little more supported, but I 'll talk more about that later. When shooting I usually stay in Program mode and I set my ISO up and down the scale depending on the situation. As I said before I use ALL of the ISO settings, but I would say I am mostly satisfied with 200 for daylight and 800 for indoors at night.

Flash

This is an easy one. I never use the pop-up flash. In fact, I have only taken a few frames during the first week with the camera using this absolutely horrible excuse for a light source! This camera works with other flashes, but I haven't tried any. I have been using this thing solely for available light photography. Sometimes this means balancing the camera on a beer mug, or holding my breath at 1/4 sec, but this is just the way I work with this camera. No flash.

Viewfinder

The best accessory I have for this camera is the Voigtlander 21mm viewfinder. I tried the 25mm version but ended up sending it back as I found it was too narrow. The 21mm matches just about perfectly. I have added a piece of tape to the back so it can't fall out. It is essentially a permanent fixture on my LX3. I almost never use the LCD when shooting. As you can probably tell, I am a big fan of the viewfinder. There is a lot I could say about my reasons for using the viewfinder over the LCD but I think I'll save that for another day.

Strap

This is another area of debate. When I first bought the camera I got a Gordy's wrist strap. The strap was really nicely made and looked great on the camera. However, I found that I hated using a wrist strap. In some instances it was nice to have the camera permanently attached to my wrist, but I found that in most cases I couldn't work fast enough. I eventually switched back to the neck strap that came with camera. After adding a few pieces of black gaffer's tape, it worked out just fine.

Lens Barrel

I never bought one. I had initially planned to get a lens barrel and cap or filter, but I never got around to buying one. About a month into owning the camera I lost the lens cap. Since then I have just tried to be careful with it. I keep the camera in a small Domke bag most of the time, and it seems to be in pretty good shape. I think the barrel with a filter on the end would be pretty nice, but I kind of wonder if it would be too cumbersome. I would love to hear other's thoughts on this.

Media

For this camera I have a single 16 Gig SanDisk Ultra SD card. It can hold about 1000 RAW+Jpeg images. I can't imagine myself needing much more than that.

Peeves

My main peeve about this camera is that it doesn't have standard USB connector. I have found myself in a few situations where I didn't have my card reader on hand, and had to do things like use a Canon printer to read my card. I really wish there was a regular universal USB jack on the camera.

Results

So far results have been amazing. I am continually blown away by the prints I am making with this thing. That beig said I should tell you what I am doing. First of all, I am converting nearly all of my LX3 images to B+W. Although I am a long time Aperture user, I have since started using Lightroom and Photoshop for this camera as Aperture STILL does not support it. So my workflow is like this. I import my images to LR where I do my metadata editing, and sort through my images. Once I have found the images I want to work with, I open them in PShop as Smart Objects. In Pshop I apply my Nik SilverEfex filter using a couple of settings I really like, and then save it back to LR. In LR I usually add a crop and then that's about it.

The images are typically exported as full res TIFF files for printing on an Epson 4880 using Ilford's Gallerie Gold Fibre Silk paper. The stuff even smells like real photo paper! I am typically making prints around 16 inches along the longest dimension. They look beautiful. I have a set of them hanging in my studio, and have shown them in critiques. No one can believe they were shot with the little LX3.

The other result I am really impressed with is the video. I don't shoot tons of video, but what I have shot has been pretty amazing for what it is. The audio is terrible, but the video quality is really nice, especially at 24mm--perfect for making iMovie style silly music videos!

The big thing about this camera is that it serves nearly a single purpose. I probably wouldn't want it as my sole camera for covering a football game! But, for the type of shooting I have been doing lately it's nearly perfect. Thanks for taking the time to read this "Sixth Month Impressions" article, and I look forward to your feedback.

In the weeks to come I will be posting a new gallery on this website called Brooklyn Notebook. It will be a collection of images I have shot with the LX3 in black and white as part of an ongoing project/journal of the things I see on the streets and in bars and restaurants in Brooklyn, New York. I hope you enjoy it.