| User Review: Panasonic Lumix LX1 By Ian Lind, Kaaawa, Hawaii New LX1 user, June 2006 Part 2 |
Start-up was straight forward, and the initial menu settings were relatively self-explanatory. When selecting menu options, you have to first select the category, then scroll down to the specific setting, and then press another button to actually lock in the selection. Several times I've scrolled to the proper option but forgot to go the next stop and "Set" it, and then had to go through the whole cycle again after discovering the error. I was unhappy to find that ISO is set via a menu option and there's apparently no direct shortcut to this item. So to change the ISO, you must press the menu button, scroll down to the ISO category, press a button to select ISO, then scroll down to the ISO of your choice and press another button to select, and finally press the menu button again to exit. This is not something you want to do often. [Correction: I discovered there is a shortcut to change the ISO and various quality settings by holding down the small "joy stick" on the back of the camera, which brings up an abbreviated set of menu selections without going to the main menu.) If you start the camera without removing the lens cap, a prompt appears on the screen as a reminder. This first week I've primarily used the P (Program) Mode, which provides auto focus and exposure with manual override possible. The only problem I've had has been with auto focus. Every morning we walk down to the beach at dawn, and was surprised when the LX1 would not take a photo. It seemed to just become non-responsive. It took me a minute to realize that it could not get a proper focus and would not take the photo. The manual warns about possible focusing issues with bright scenes and bright reflections. I've occasionally had a similar problem with my Canon 350D, but the LX1 is much worse in this regard. By contrast, I've never had this kind of issue with my older Canon S410. The screen is bright enough use even in bright light with its booster mode that briefly increases the brightness. While it's usable for framing photos in such light, visibility isn't really good enough to evaluate a photo properly, although a histogram is available which is quite useful. I started shooting in raw mode and found that I had to update to the latest Adobe raw plug-in before Photoshop could read the files properly. I also use iView MediaPro, which opened the raw files without a problem, although a bit slower than the Canon raw files. I have not used the software supplied by Panasonic, so can't comment on its qualities. I was also surprised to find that the LX1 automatically saves both the raw file and a jpg version of each image, and there doesn't seem to be an option to save only the raw files, so full resolution images eat up quite a bit of disk space. Each raw file is 16.1 MB, while the accompanying jpeg's seem to range from 1.3 to 1.6 MB each. If your computer does not have a USB-2 port, then be prepared for long download times. |
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