A Christmas Rant
Christmas Day, 2008, detail. Mark L. Power. Camera settings too numerous to list. Right click on image then choose “open image in new window” to see entire picture.
The above was taken with a Christmas present to myself, a new Panasonic LX3 digital camera.
It has a nice wide-angle lens from Leica, the menu controls, while numerous and deep, are fairly accessible, or more importantly, seem intuitive, at least the ones that count, and the fast lens and the camera stabilization is a boon to one that often shoots in low light levels. My one major complaint is it offers too many choices.
I am speaking as a professional who has owned numerous analog cameras, from 35mm to 11×14 view and many in between. Each of those cameras and their lenses offered a certain optical look, a way of rendering reality, and the search was to find a look that fit your vision best, or less grandly, with the way you saw the world. The learning curve, once you were past the basics of photography, was fairly simple. With the help of a light meter, you would set a shutter/fstop combination and that, along with trying different lenses, was about all you needed to determine whether the camera fit your style.
But in the digital world the engineers have taken over and provided camera refinements to a level that is close to insanity. The LX3 is the seventh digital camera I have owned. I currently use two; the Sony A350 and the LX3. Each camera was successively more complex but not necessarily better – I still like many pictures I took with my first digital camera the Fuji MX-700 which had all of 1.5 million pixels. In terms of features, it was pretty much point-n-shoot. Now I have the LX3 and of course it out performs the Fuji in almost every respect except pocketability.
I can accept the choice of three viewfinder formats, the multiple perspectives a zoom lens offers, the choice of five light metering methods, a number of autofocus choices, the five or so flash settings , a number of sensitivity settings, numerous white balance combinations, a choice of resolutions, as well as a number of automatic settings, all of which is pretty standard on most digital cameras. I’ve come to accept this complexity as the price of progress.
But with the LX3 that’s just the beginning. You’re then confronted with ’scenes’, 24 in all, each which presets color balances and fstop/shutter/focus combinations to match certain situations ranging from landscapes to face detection to “starry night” – in each, the camera becomes the photographer and maybe that’s fine for someone starting out although I think if you use these automated assists you are going to substitute the camera for your eyes and not learn very much.
Yes, I can skip the scene settings which I’ve done on previous cameras but there’s always the nagging questions for the curious. I wonder what ”pets” would do for portraits of human beings? Make them look hairier? How about ’soft skin’ for a mountain range? So you end up trying all the possible combinations which exponentially are many more than 24. And once you’re past that exhausting task, the LX3 is just getting warmed up. You’re also confronted with ‘modes’ , six in color ( plus three black-and-white ), all of which offer different color and contrast combinations. Each of these modes has adjustable contrast, sharpness, noise levels and saturation ranges. When will it end?
Of course, I could just set the camera on ‘program’ or ‘auto’ and these decisions would be made for me and I could just go on my merry way taking pictures. But I am an artist, not an automaton and as a professional I have to investigate the combinations that work best for my vision and that means testing them all to see which ones I don’t want and which ones I will only use once in a blue moon. ( A hasty look at the ’scenes’ – no, there’s no ‘blue moon’ setting although I’m sure that’s on some engineer’s drawing board.) Another exhausting round of testing and by then another camera will come along with some feature I’m demented enough to think I need and the merry-go-round starts up again.
In the good old days if you bought a camera and put it through its paces, you could be secure in the knowledge that its tempting replacement wouldn’t be along for a number of years and by that time your machine of choice would fit like an old shoe. Nowadays you hardly have time to try on a shoe before a new style comes along that you’re deluded enough you think you need. I owned the LX3’s predecessor, the LX2 for less than two years before thinking I had to have the improvements the new camera offered.
But that’s it: LX4, you can come and go, I’ve had it. But what about the LX5 which is rumored to have an ‘inner vision’ setting? Well…
There’s more discussion of one of the LX3’s peculiarities on Mike’s THE ONLINE PHOTOGRAPHER site for December 6.
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html
Oh, yes, I almost forgot -
Amy Smith wrote,
A very pleasant surprise to see a Power Xmas again – hello Virginia…
Mark – Sorry I missed your talk at the CHAL show you juried, you had just left.
Link | January 2nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Brad Herman wrote,
I also have an LX3. While I do find it to have a lot of options I don’t find it frustrating. I will say that don’t use most of them. I shoot in RAW, with M, Av, T, or once in a while P. It gets the job done when I don’t want to haul out my SLRs and Gear. While the controls are not intuitive I was able to get used to them after a few says. I wish it had a manual focus ring and a faster way to adjust Aperture and Shutter but then it would be a bigger camera and that’s what I was avoiding in the first place.
Link | January 5th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Mark L. Power wrote,
I agree with what you say, Brad, but the problem is curiosity; it’s hard to avoid the nagging feeling that maybe one of those settings you’d normally never use will give you better pictures. I’m now trying the vivid setting as I notice it gives you more highlight detail. BTW, another discovery: I’m finding my JPEG files give me better pictures than RAW. In JPEG as you know, the camera makes certain settings for you – sharpness, lens distortion corections etc. So much to my suprrise I think the camera is making better decisions than I make when processing RAW files. This may be an illusion but so far it’s holding up. I’m talking about a JPEG after I’ve modified it in the RAW dialogue and in CS3 – in other words treating it as I would a RAW image ( and saving both treatments as a TIFF file). I wonder if that matches your experience. Despite my rant I am finding the LX3 to be an excellent little camera. Thanks for contributing and Happy New Year!
Mark
Link | January 5th, 2009 at 11:51 am
jim wrote,
I’ve had the LX3 for a few weeks now and found a few things that might be of interest:
1. Use the histogram when shooting RAW. While playing around with settings one night I paid attention to the histogram, making three images. The first as the camera chose in Aperture Mode. The next I used exposure compensation to slide the histogram a little right and the third to slide it as far right as possible without clipping.
When I processed the images in ACR the image with the histogram as far to the right as possible showed FAR less noise.
I had gone braindead and not remembered the “expose to the right” mantra. Plus using a 5D spoils you when it comes to noise as you can get away with a lot. Every bit helps with a sensor this tiny.
2. Try the manual focus mode when short shutter lag times are needed, such as street photography.
The DOF on small sensors is so great that precise focus is not as critical. When in manual focus hit the small focus button to the right of the shutter release to zone focus on something. The camera will then fire without any focus lag.
Link | January 5th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Toby wrote,
That’s why I never use film: too many film choices. It’s also why I don’t use DSLRs – all those lenses confound my ability to choose. I gave up on Photoshop when they added filters – though I never wanted to use them I found myself unable to complete basic tasks once they were there. And new cars have waaaay too many buttons, how can one even drive anymore? I’ll stick to my VW Bug and plastic Holga with no film, thank you very much.
Link | January 5th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
gfahey wrote,
Ridiculous. As a pro, I own an LX3 and couldn’t be happier with my purchase. Like any tool, I get to know it’s workings inside and out. I take the time to know my gear and be able to use it blindfolded if necessary (in the dark).
If this fine gem of a P&S has you frustrated, send it my way and I’ll use it without complaint. It’s as easy as you want it to be and also affords me enough options to get the shot I want.
Know thy tools and learn them! I didn’t touch the manual and figured everything out in 30 minutes.
Link | January 5th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Mark wrote,
Thanks for the tips, Jim. Toby, i’ve got you beat. I drive a goat cart and use a Diana without film. As for Mr. Gfahey, I suggest a sense of humor to go along with your self-righteousness.
Link | January 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Jerome wrote,
I use a century 4a without a shutter and hope for the best.When I’m really feeling modern and a little racy I’ll use a pacemaker graphic but I’m considered reckless and addicted to living on the edge,:)
Link | June 5th, 2009 at 9:13 am
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Link | May 11th, 2010 at 7:01 am