pat_the_cat's Full Review: Panasonic Lumix® DMC-L1 Digital Camera
I've been using this camera for about 4 months and have put it through its paces shooting landscapes along the California coast, candids at work, night scenes in town and shooting fairly fast-moving events indoors.
My previous SLR was a Minolta Maxxum of 1990's vintage. The size and weight of the Minolta and the Lumix are similar, with the Lumix being more front heavy with its wide aperture Leica lens. I never quite got comfortable with my Minolta, even after 9 years. If I put it away for a few months, I had to re-learn a lot of the buttons, which had multiple functions. The Lumix is much easier to use, despite having a lot more controls compared to a film camera. The most often used items like meter settings, aperture, shutter speed and white balance have dedicated, clearly marked buttons and switches, so going through menus or remembering odd combinations of controls is a rarity.
If you understand how aperture and shutter speed controls work, this camera will seem more natural to you than one that relies on "scene modes" (e.g. "sports," "indoors," "scenic," etc.) and I think you will feel more in control of things like depth of field and motion blur or stopping fast motion. I just find it more intuitive to think about a basketball game and switch the shutter to 500 or 1,000 to stop fast action than to wonder if I should use "sports" or "indoors."
Much has been said about the L1 viewfinder being dark. While I don't find it wonderfully bright, it is adequate and the emerald green LED information display is well laid-out. The Lumix beeps softly to indicate lock focus, but this can be silenced. I use the live view occasionally when shooting with a tripod or with close-up subjects. Live view is a nice feature to have, but I wouldn't call it "essential."
Focussing is reasonably fast and accurate, definitely sluggish indoors, but useable. It's reasonably quick in office/classroom light and fast outdoors. Although f2.8 is fast for a DSLR, film SLR's commonly had f2 or faster lenses and one of these would make the Lumix perform even better while extending its range.
Being a big fan of bounce flash, this feature was a deal maker for me. It's very convenient not to lug a separate flash unit around. After shooting with my Kodak DX7630 compact digital camera at a party recently, I decided that photographing people with the harsh light of an on-camera, direct flash is just plain cruel! Bounce flash is good for shots in homes. A press of the flash button releases the electronic strobe in the bounce position, allowing you to light your subject with soft, natural-looking light reflected off a neutral surface, typically a white or beige ceiling. Push the button again and you can use direct flash, like any other SLR. Flash is optional in commercial lighting because the Lumix has a fast f2.8 lens (at its widest angle setting) and flexible ISO settings that let you work in available light quite often.
The Leica lens is definitely sharper than that of any other camera I've used. Here's my experience with the system as far as picture quality goes: The Lumix tends not to add a lot of in-camera processing to the image. You may not see the sharpness of this lens until you import the image into Photoshop (or whatever image editing application you prefer) and hit it with something like the "unsharp mask" filter. Unlike with most lenses, a lot of sharpening can be added in post processing without the resulting picture looking harsh or "over-sharpened." I would describe the results as "crisp" and "life-like" in comparison to the Schneider lens on the Kodak or the Rokkor lens on the Minolta, both of which are pretty nice pieces of glass.
Metering is controlled by a switch on the top of the body that allows you to quickly select center-weighted, spot (good for back lighted subjects), or a combination of the two. It is possible to accidentally knock the switch into the wrong position. The Lumix uses the JPEG (with 3 quality options) or RAW format to capture photographs.
To summarize, the Lumix DMC L1 is a great choice for people wanting an unusually flexible camera for shooting vacations, candids, portraits, and vacations. There are better choices if l you shoot a lot of sports action, due to its size and some limitations of the autofocus system compared to the best cameras in those categories. The lens is significantly better than average, yielding, sharp, contrasty, colorful images in most situations. Low light performance is good, but not the best in its class, topping out at 800 ISO before noise is evident.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 850 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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