Best Scenario

(This is the popular graffiti Hongkong-style. At least, these bills make the streetscape less boring and more lively. In the de facto red light districts, which are prohibited here, in Mongkok, bills of young girls scantily clad are galore. Probably most sexually-sound men have the intuition to agreeing with their existence. Taken with LX3 through the window on a bus)

This is the forth post on my reflections after using the LX3 on loan to me.

Having found the differences between the LX3 and the GX200, I am impressed that the two machines are niether built nor designed for the same scenarios. The question now is: What scenarios is the LX3 suited for? The GX200 is a great camera with top-notch ergonomics which makes it ideal for street shots and in scenarios requiring quick responses. But how about the LX3?

(Bus-stop, Rubbish Bin and Old Lady: Pre-focused, pre-metered and fired. Absolutely no problem for the LX3)

Best Scenarios

So travelling on the bus, I was contemplating the question while pointing the LX3 through the window to the street. An answer struck me just that instant.

In the hand of tyros wishing to be photography enthusiasts, LX3 may best serve as a learning tool because most tyros take a longer time to fumble for the right technical combinations before taking a shot. So the timing in tuning and tweaking the camera is less important, which is the weakest in the LX3.

It is not what LX3 lacks that makes it a good learning tool for tyros. It is of course for where LX3 outdoes the GX200. Its has a faster lens, consumers-regular controls (rather than photographer-specific like GX200's customisable quick menu), non-restrictive apertaure-shutter mechanism (restrictive in GX200), shutter-priority mode (not in GX200), multiple exposure mode (not in GX200), nice high ISOs you can really use and, this is very personal, a built which seems to be less dust-prone.

(This was taken with the LX3 using the multi-point focusing. It worked really well without fumbling for the logical subjects or locking in them. Focusing is a relatively weak point in the GX200)

Unfortunately, in the hands of an experienced photographers, these factors just don't weight in favour of the LX3. For them, the decisive moments matter the most. The camera is more likely to be on full manual and therefore it is their responsiveness enable by the camera which is the most important.

So, for an old hand, the LX3 is best suited for when and where the scene can wait for them to set, re-set or pre-set the technical combinations of the camera. In a nutshell, pardon me, any serious compacts can do just that and more. But I think the fast 2.0 lens is a very unique and useful feature which makes the LX3 enticing to the old hands. Surely, its imaging engine and lower pixel-density combine to produce images of a higher quality than the GX200 at the ISO 400 and above. And to many viewers, they will prefer the character of LX3's images which are generally richer in colour.

Big Mistake

While I was just about to finish with taking pictures of the streets and the passers-by in this cosy air-conditioned bus, I found yet another negative point about the LX3: it didn't tell me what focal length I was using!

With the step zoom function turned on, the GX200 moves the lens from 24mm to 72mm step by step while the LCD screen shows what the focal length is at the moment. This is very important unless you don't know or care about the safe shutter speed. In the film era, the safe shutter speed was important because it warned us of the possibility of a blurred shot. The safe shutter speed is denoted by <1/focal>. In essense, the safer shutter speed should be <1/the>. For instance, the safe shutter speed for 24mm is 1/20s. Of course, in the digital world where digital or optical stabilisation reigns, the safe shutter speed can go three stops past that point.

(The no-show of the focal length in use and some unkown reason made me unable to take a sharp image. Actually, I took three shots all together. But no matter whether I zoomed the lens in or out, the focusing didn't work until the next shot after I turned the camera off. Curious)

But no matter how it is calculated, we need to be given the focal length in use. Another reason which makes the focal length display important is that the experienced photographers can give the perspectives to the shots exactly in a way they wishes. This is important especially when a decisive moment arises and the photographers have to shoot almost instantly.

This is a big mistake, an a rather unfortunate one. Let's continue tomorrow.