Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

Image Quality

Over the past few years, Panasonic made a lot of improvements to the image quality for its cameras. The company told us part of the magic lies in the Venus image-processing engine, which is now into its fourth iteration.

At the lowest ISO sensitivity of 80, the image is clean of noise. Viewing it at 100 percent didn't reveal any digital artifacts in the shadow regions and we really like the detailed rendition, even for small objects. From ISO 100 to 400, noise gradually increased but was within a very acceptable level. At ISO 800 and 1,600, smearing of details was apparent but we could still make out fine lines. While purists may dispute that images shot at these ISO settings are not usable for prints, we beg to differ--the larger sensor size still managed to render a good amount of mild details. However, it will be up to individual preferences whether or not can they accept the smeariness caused by the noise-suppression algorithm.

At ISO 3,200, the image had loss of details which probably will not deliver a good output. But we reckoned this is not a problem as most people don't shoot at this sensitivity setting.

The onboard flash unit was one of the most powerful we've seen in a point-and-shoot. The output was well-balanced as it did not bleach skin tones or underexpose the background.

One small gripe we had was with the lens distortion which we noticed on the sides of the image, especially objects placed along that axis. The defects were kept to a minimum and we could easily correct them in Adobe Photoshop. But do note that distortion is a common issue for ultra-wide-angle optics.

Now onto the RAW image. The .RW2 files can be converted to more common formats like TIFF or JPEG with the supplied SilkyPix RAW image-processing software, but the result wasn't as good as expected. This can probably be attributed to the software, and not the lens. We experimented several ways to get around this problem and found a better method of capturing superior-quality pictures. In the Film Mode settings, we reduced the noise reduction and sharpness level to -2, and then processed the RAW image in SilkyPix to TIFF format. After which, we opened the processed file in another image-editing software and tweaked the image from there. The result was significantly better than what we would have achieved if we had relied solely on SilkyPix.

Conclusion

The LX3 has won our hearts with its good range of features and impressive image quality. This is why we are awarding it the much-coveted Editors' Choice. There is a certain air around this shooter that made us very comfortable when using it. If you know your aperture and shutter speed well, using this snapper won't be a problem. But if you don't, follow the instructions on the LCD and you should do just fine.

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