Author: Jeff

Posted on

panasonic LX-2 review – new york

This weekend wasn’t the first time I’d taken the LX-2 on a big trip, but it was the first time since I’d gotten it that I convinced myself to take it on a big trip along with my D200. Since it’s a camera that most people are looking at either as an SLR backup or instead of buying an SLR in general, I thought it might be good to give an overall review of the LX-2, as well as comparing/contrasting it with SLR’s. I’m not planning to go through the ergonomics of the camera as such. Ergonomics and user interface is generally not your most important concern, particularly on a point and shoot. As a result, I plan to focus most on actually using the camera, and the pictures you (can) get out of it.

Before I start, let me say that I realize comparing the LX-2 with a D200 is not terribly fair. However, it’s important to keep in mind that most of the comparisons that hold true comparing the LX-2 with the D200 would also hold with the D40/D50, or XTi.

The Good

  1. Size & Weight – The LX-2 is small and light. For most of my trip I carried it in my coat pocket, which gave me easy access to using it. I also felt a bit more inconspicuous while taking pictures on streets and in subway station. Pulling out an SLR often draws a lot of attention, but snapping away with a point and shoot isn’t really seen as that big of a deal. As a result, you’re not too unwilling to try shots like this one in the middle of a large group of people during rush hour at Times Square:

  2. Features – I don’t know of any other point and shoot camera that packs this many features into one package. Full manual control, the ability to shoot in RAW, 60 second exposures, Image Stabilization, a decent movie mode, 16:9 native capture – the list goes on. The LX-2 is a very versatile camera that gives you n amazing amount of creative control without forcing you to carry around several pounds of equipment, which allows you to capture more shots than you would otherwise get.
  3. “Leica” lens – I put Leica in quotes because, like Sony with their “Zeiss” lenses, there’s probably more to the story than just the name. While the LX-2 is at least rebadged and sold as a real Leica with the red dot, if I were having to base my decision to buy an M8 or not based only on the LX-2, I would save my $5000. That said, the LX-2’s lens is very sharp, relatively contrasty, and very capable. It is honestly *at times* capable of rivaling my Nikon 17-55, though it does have one severe shortcoming, to be discussed later. At the end of the day though, you can still get beautiful, saturated results like this without too much work:

  4. Build Quality – The LX-2 doesn’t feel like a cheap, plasticy camera. It has a fair amount of metal in it, and you don’t feel like you’re going to break it by breathing around it. As previously mentioned, the fact that it’s basically a Leica without the red dot speaks highly to its construction.

The Not so Good

  1. Speed (the ISO kind) – Due to the nature of the LX-2’s sensor, noise is a serious problem. As a result, it is not advised to ever shoot much above 400 if you are planning on printing your picture, and it is certainly advisable to shoot at 100 whenever possible. If shooting at 100 is not possible, it’s often advisable to make it possible. The following are two pictures which somewhat illustrate my point. The subject is not really important, but each shows a 1:1 crop off an LX-2 image taken at the same time, of the same subject. The first image was taken at ISO 100, and the second at ISO 800. While the first image is blurred due to hand-holding at over 1/2 a second, you can still see an extreme amount of difference in the noise levels of the two images:

    Clearly, the LX-2 suffers both from chromatic and luminance noise in spades anytime the ISO increases.

  2. Noise (not the loud kind) – Even when shooting at ISO 100, the LX-2’s sensor still suffers from noise problems. Below are two images taken from the same spot, but slightly different perspectives. The first image is from the LX-2, and the second is from the D200. Both are 1:1 crops.

    Now on first glance these two cropped photos appear to have similar amounts of noise – which would be good if they had both been taken at 100, but unfortunately the LX-2 was on ISO 100 while the D200 was on ISO 400. Additionally, not only does the LX-2 image have approximately the same amount of noise as the D200’s photo @ISO 400, the D200 noise pattern is smaller and more film-like than that of the LX-2, leading to a more pleasant image overall.

    The combined message of these two points is simple – the LX-2 will have more noise and require you to shoot at a slower shutter speed. If you have a tripod or a well lit room or are shooting outdoors, this may not matter to you, but if you are an average point and shoot user who is just looking to take pictures of the dog and kids, this could cause you fits. Often you can compensate for some of this, but it is just a reality of the camera, and one that must be dealt with.

  3. Chromatic Aberration – Using Starfish’s filtering technique to spot problem areas for chromatic aberration is extremely instructive in this case. The following pictures represent almost the worst case for CA, but none the less shows the scope of the problem on the LX-2’s lens. The first is the normal image, unfiltered, followed by the filtered image, CA amplified by ~6dB (2 stops).

    Obviously in this case, the CA is extremely well defined and easily detectable in the original image as well. CA can lead to lack of sharpness and definition in your pictures, and in general is just something you’d prefer not to deal with.

  4. Filesize – The LX-2’s raw files take up 20MB each. The LX-2’s JPG’s take up 2-3 MB each. There is no option to turn the JPG off if you’re shooting RAW. The result of all of this is that you need extremely large memory cards in order to use the LX-2 for any length of time. The RAW files can be compressed to DNG’s after bringing them onto the computer, but it’s none the less a severe pain to not have an option to compress in native format.

The Wishlist

Not that any Panasonic/Leica engineers are out there reading this right now, but if they were, I do have a wishlist of things I’d like to see in an LX-3:

  1. A Less Noisy Sensor – The LX-2 is fantastic, but it would be much more so were it paired with a capable sensor. The Fuji F30, for instance, gives usable results up to 3200. Why can’t the LX-2?
  2. Faster write times / Smaller file sizes – This one is almost free. Reducing the filesize reduces write times and makes the memory go that much further. There’s no reason not to do it, and it would help shooting out significantly.
  3. Slightly better movie mode – The LX-2 does… well, ok. But 720p @30fps would be very nice. As would slightly better quality on the compression algorithms.

And… That’s about it.

The Verdict

The LX-2 is a very good camera for what it is, but a very bad camera for what it is not. It’s not good for shooting indoors (in general), shooting action (in general) or shooting in low light (in general). It is, however, capable of stunning results that will rival an SLR, and if your primary goal is artistic photography, it is certainly an investment worth making.

Posted on

new york subways

part 1 from NY

For those of you who are keeping score, these were all taken with the Panasonic LX-2. Clearly, it is possible to get good results from a point and shoot (even one with a small sensor) as long as you know what you’re doing and are willing to be patient with it – and it’s also a lot easier to take pictures without drawing attention to yourself when you’re using a normal looking point and shoot instead of a huge SLR.

Posted on

to draw you to himself

Where are you right now?

Are you rejoicing,
aware of God’s blessings,
bathing in the warmth of his provision and grace?

Are you broken, hurting,
feeling lost and alone,
uncertain of God’s presence or care?

Await with eager anticipation His return,
knowing that wherever you may be,
Christ’s desire
is to draw you closer to himself.

Posted on

stumbling on happiness

I don’t usually recommend books, likely because I don’t usually finish books, but I just finished listening to the audio book of Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, and found it quite intriguing. As Gilbert says, “Despite the third word in the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you’ve bought one, done everything it says to do and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to find out why.”

Here’s an extended quote from the end of the first chapter:

So if the question is, ‘Why should we want to control our futures?’, then the surprisingly right answer is that it feels good to do so, period. Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy. The act of steering one’s boat down the river of time is a source of pleasure, regardless of one’s port of call. Now at this point you probably believe two things: first, you probably believe that if you never heard the phrase, ‘the river of time’ again, it would be too soon. Amen. Second, you probably believe that even if the act of steering a metaphorical boat down a clichéd river is a source of pleasure and well being, where the boat goes matters much, much more. Playing captain is a joy all its own, but the real reason why we want to steer our ships is so we can get them to Honalee instead of Jersey City.

The nature of a place determines how we feel upon arrival, and our uniquely human ability to think about the extended future allows us to choose the best destinations, and avoid the worst. We are the apes who learned to look forward because doing so enables us to shop among the many fates that might befall us, and select the best one. Other animals must experience an event in order to learn about its pleasures and pains, but our powers of foresight allow us to imagine that which has not yet happened, and hence spare ourselves the hard lessons of experience.

We needn’t reach out and touch an ember to know that it will hurt to do so, and we needn’t experience abandonment, scorn, eviction, demotion, disease or divorce to know that all of these are undesirable ends that we should do our best to avoid. We want, and we should want, to control the direction of our boat, because some futures are better than others, and even from this distance, we should be able to tell which are which.

This idea is so obvious that it barely seems worth mentioning, but I’m going to mention it anyway. Indeed, I’m going to spend the rest of this book mentioning it, because it will probably take more than a few mentions to convince you that what looks like an obvious idea is, in fact the surprisingly wrong answer to our question.

We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain, not because the boat won’t respond, and not because we can’t find our destination, but because the future is fundamentally different than it appears through the perspecti-scope.

Just as we experience illusions of eyesight – isn’t it strange how one line looks longer than the other even though it isn’t? – and illusions of hindsight – isn’t it strange how I can’t remember taking out the garbage even though I did? – so too do we experience illusions of foresight, and all three types of illusion are explained by the same basic principles of human psychology.

To be perfectly honest, I won’t be just mentioning this surprisingly wrong answer, I’ll be pounding and pummeling it until it gives up and goes home. The surprisingly wrong answer is apparently so sensible and so widely believed that only a protracted thrashing has any hope of expunging it from our conventional wisdom. So before the grudge match begins, let me share with you my plan of attack:

In Part 2, Subjectivity, I’ll tell you about the science of happiness. We all steer ourselves toward the futures that we think will make us happy, but what does that word really mean, and how can we ever hope to achieve solid, scientific answers to questions about something as gossamer as a feeling? We use our eyes to look into space and our imaginations to look into time. Just as our eyes sometimes lead us to see things as they are not, our imaginations sometimes lead us to foresee things as they will not be. Imagination suffers from three shortcomings that give rise to the illusions of foresight with which this book is chiefly concerned.

In Part 3, Realism, I’ll tell you about the first shortcoming. Imagination works so quickly, quietly, and effectively, that we are insufficiently skeptical of its products.

In Part 4, Present-ism, I’ll tell you about the second shortcoming. Imagination’s products are, well, not particularly imaginative, which is why the imagined future often looks so much like the actual present.

In Part 5, Rationalization, I’ll tell you about the third shortcoming. Imagination has a hard time telling us about how we will think about the future when we get there. If we have trouble foreseeing future events, then we have even more trouble foreseeing how we will see them when they happen.

Finally, in Part 6, Corrigibility, I’ll tell you why illusions of foresight aren’t easily remedied by personal experience, or by the wisdom we inherit from our grandmothers. I’ll conclude by telling you about a simple remedy for these illusions that you’ll almost certainly not accept.

By the time you finish these chapters, I hope you’ll understand why most of us spend so much of our lives turning rudders and hoisting sails, only to find that Shangri-La isn’t what, and where, we thought it would be.

Posted on

may you soak up the richness of God

Have you ever seen a fruit tree, branches full with nature’s harvest, limbs heavy, burdened under the load?

Imagine how it provides for all those around it – human, animal, insect and plant – a source of benefit for all in its range.

May you be that tree:
a source of beauty,
of richness,
of wonder.

May you soak up the richness of God’s provision,
and in return,
may you give richly to those around you,
blessing them not only because of your good deeds,
but by the goodness of who you are

Posted on

…commanded in the Bible…

I was reading an article in a Christian magazine recently, and in the middle of the article, the author attempted to support his point with a bulleted list of reasons why he was right. I cringed a bit when I read the first reason: “It’s commanded in the Bible.”

Now I’m not here to suggest that Biblical commands aren’t justification enough for doing something for Christians. What I am here to suggest is that they are no justification at all for doing something if you don’t believe the Bible. Furthermore, in an increasingly post-modern age where the Bible is looked at less as a set of commands and more as a narrative, it is likely to become more and more difficult to extract command out of the narrative as opposed to example and principle.

What does it say about our subculture that ultimately the best reason we can give for doing something is that we feel (legitimately or not) that it is commanded in the Bible? As I listen to arguments about women’s roles and instrumental music and baptism, again and again the top sheet reason given by the opposition in each of these cases is that “It’s commanded in the Bible.” As my good friend Jeremy Hegi recently said, “When someone stands up and stridently says, ‘The Bible clearly teaches …’, that’s when red flags should start to go up.'”

In reality, a biblical command argument will only be accepted if the following two conditions are met: 1) you believe the Bible and 2) you agree with the arguments interpretation of what the Bible says. A perfectly good example of this is regarding the women’s roles issue. “Women are commanded in the Bible to be silent,” one group would say, “therefore they should not be allowed to lead prayers during church services.” The response, “Fine. Make them be silent. Don’t let them talk or sing or make any noise for the duration of the service.” “But that’s not what the Bible says!”, comes the protest in reply. “Ah contraire, that is *exactly* what the Bible says.” “But that’s not what the Bible means!” At this point, however, we are no longer in a discussion about what the Bible *says* in 1 Timothy 2, but rather how we interpret what the Bible says – which is really the core issue of citing Biblical command as a compulsion for action, even among Christians.

Consider, for a moment, what alternatives might reach people outside our own way of thinking, and indeed outside the Christian subculture altogether. Consider whether reason is the arena and argument the commodity that will succeed in a landscape less and less often governed by “truth” and “correctness”, and more often governed by community. If we cannot shift our thinking away from reasoning based primarily on our own letters of the law and our own comfortable interpretations of Scripture and toward practical, creative, relevant approaches to a culture already skeptical of dogma, the long term future of our institutional churches is in serious doubt.

Posted on

what would our lives look like?

What would our lives look like, if they were full and fruitful with the fruit of the Spirit.

What would it look like if we truly loved every person we encountered – not just those from whom we can get something in return? How much would a selfless attitude and concern for those less fortunate than us change the way people perceive us?

What would it look like if we were joyous instead of pessimistic? What would the world think if Christians stopped talking about how bad things were, and started spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ?

What would it look like if we were peacemakers instead of war starters? What if we looked to build bridges between people instead of condemning them, and sought to embrace our enemies instead of destroy them? How would that change the world?

What would it look like if we were patient, not asking every person where they would go if they died tonight, but allowed the process of the Spirit to work in the hearts of men? Would people be less put off by the message of Jesus if they felt like they didn’t have to give an answer right away?

What would it look like if we were kind? What would change in our world if we became people of benevolence instead of greed, sympathy instead of indifference?

What would it look like if we embraced goodness, seeking to always do the right thing no matter how much it cost? How would our actions be affected if we searched every decision beyond its immediate effects and evaluated how it affected our righteousness before God?

What would it look like if we were faithful? Would it change our desire to reason out an explanation for the existence and workings of God? How would our lives be enriched if we truly believed God is who he says without demanding proof?

What would it look like if we were gentle? How differently would we be perceived if we were gracious and understanding instead of inflammatory? How would our lives and testimony change if we less inciting and violent in how we approach those we disagree with?

What would it look like for each of us to be self-controlled in all our actions? What would we be if we were able to tame the demons within and bring our thoughts and actions under control all the time?

I wish badly that my life were governed by these simple principles. I wish I could say my life looked in reality like it does in my mind.

But until then, I continue to strive to be fruitful, hoping to grow someday into something I can only now imagine.

Posted on

What do you cling to?

What do you cling to, pretending it can grant you salvation?

What is it you desire, hoping it will complete you and give you life?

Stop.
Let go.

Hear the words of Jesus:
Real life is not measured by how much we own.

Desire,
cling to the Lord your God,
your maker,
your creator,
sustainer
and completer;
the only way to fulfill your hopes and dreams
one with his will.