Interesting variation on the MFT theme.

Panasonic’s LX100 will come to the US in November and it represents an interesting variation on Panny’s GX7. I use two GX7 MFT bodies, one with the 17mm f/1.8 Olympus lens, the other with the 45mm f/1.8 Oly and have never been happier as a street snapper. The wide lens body is perched on my shoulder and the strapless long one rests in a small canvas shoulder bag, ready to be grabbed at a moment’s notice. With these two fixed focal length lenses what I sacrifice in versatility I gain in maximum aperture and optical quality; both the Oly lenses are special and very reasonably priced.

The LX100 adds a fixed (no more sensor dirt!) 24-75mm f/1.7 to f/2.8 fast Leica zoom in a GX7-sized body. 24mm is as wide as any rational user regularly needs and 75mm is ideal for head and shoulder portraits. Best of all, the silent – and it truly is silent – electronic shutter is carried over from the GX7 and 4K video is added for movie makers. There’s a dopey add on lens hood designed by committee whose protective petals open to present sharp, easily damaged protrusions, but mercifully this does not come with the camera. The threaded front of the lens will take a 43mm protective clear filter which is just what the doctor ordered and it looks like the battery is the same as that in the GX7.

Many years ago I owned an LX1 which also came with a capable Leica-sanctioned zoom, but it had some issues. After a couple of minutes of non-use the extended lens would collapse back into the body, meaning increased start-up time next time around and the minuscule sensor made prints over 8″ x 10″ an iffy proposition. Further the LX1 lacked the LX100’s EVF, the one in the new camera being the same as that in the GX7, to whose quality I can gladly attest. I resorted to gluing an external finder on the body which did not even have an accessory shoe. Panny has come a long way since then. The LX100 has a large MFT sensor with some 13mp; the sensor in my Panny G1 was 12mp and quite capable of rendering 13″ x 19″ prints, with 18″ x 24″ at a push. Given the rapid advances in sensor technology since the revolutionary G1 hit the market a few years ago, sensor quality should not be an issue with the LX100. Best of all you get the capabilities of Panny’s costly ($1,000) 12-35mm f/2.8 MFT lens with a body thrown in free. The LX100 is expected to retail for $900 here. And for the ‘serious’ snapper, there are manual aperture, shutter speed and aspect ratio controls, plus manual exposure override – see the picture above. Only the zoom appears to be pushbutton operated, a shame, but those manual controls add substantial utility value.

There’s lots to like here. It remains to be seen how fast the lens extends when the camera is turned on (In days of yore, photographers got turned on. Now it’s cameras) and whether it stays extended. It’s rumored that only the ugly black version will come to the US, but I’m sure there will be no shortage of entrepreneurial Hong Kong vendors willing to ship the far more elegant chrome version. That may well have my name on it.