Outstanding.

I first made mention of this camera a while back when it was introduced. The appeal was obvious – a fixed lens with a 24-75mm zoom range comes with a very fast aperture range of f/1.7 to f/2.8 at the long end. The zoom range is ideal, with the short end being very wide indeed and the long perfect for head and shoulder portraits which isolate the background. That’s not easy to do with most MFT lenses where smaller apertures tend to leave everything in focus.

Search the lens range for better quality zooms for Panny and Oly MFT bodies and you can have the Panny 12-35mm f/2.8 for $1,000 or the Oly 12-40mm f/2.8 for a like amount. By contrast, the LX100 with a lens which is 1.5 stops faster at the wide end, and the same speed when extended, runs just $900, plus another $30 for the nifty petal lens cap which opens and closes automatically as the camera is turned on or off. All of this comes in a far smaller package than with a detachable lens, with the added benefit of dust sealing. The lens cap mechanism is purely mechanical, the sprung leaves being pushed open by the front of the lens barrel and while somewhat ungainly looking when open, the petals do not compromise handling. The LX100 weighs 13.9 ozs, whereas the two detachable zooms for the GX7 weigh 10.8 ozs and 13.5 ozs, respectively. So the LX100 complete with a faster lens – a Leica design made by Panny – weighs considerably less than a body plus detachable zoom.

Panasonic LX100 beside the GX7 with the 17mm f/1.8 Olympus Zuiko fitted.
The AF/MF lever is just visible to the right of the aspect ratio one.

The LX100 shown above is my son’s, a Christmas gift to recognize his growing prowess as a photographer. Winston had a chance to wring out the camera over the holidays and every exposure on his first ‘roll’ was perfect. We left the camera as shipped, which means everything on Auto, with the sole change that images would be recorded in JPEG + RAW. The 64GB UD SDHC card will accommodate over 2,200 of such image pairs, and the limitation is the small battery, the same as the one used in the GX7. That’s good – an identical charger is used – and bad – the capacity is not great. Spares are a must, especially if making movies.

There are a couple of differences compared with the GX7. There’s no tilting LED screen or eyepiece (I find the latter of little use), and the flash is a clip on accessory, rather than being built in. That’s a shame. As with the GX7, ergonomics are superb, the body handling well in large or small hands despite its small size. Best of all the lens barrel extends (to 24mm) when the camera is turned on in a very fast 1 second, meaning that by the time you have it raised to your eye the body is ready to shoot. The zoom lever is atop and nicely balanced between speed and control. A manual zoom ring would be even nicer – perhaps on the Mark II version?

Where the ergonomics really excel is in the raft of manual controls – aperture, shutter speed, exposure compensation (so welcome, that one), aspect ratio, focus and shutter speed, all clearly visible in the image above. All the controls are ‘Leica quality’, the detents being engineered just so and a pleasure to operate. Mercifully the ugly black barrel on the chrome version (see the linked earlier piece, above) has been replaced by a chrome one in the production camera and Winston opted for chrome when asked whether he preferred the black body. The lens collapses shut after a couple of minutes of non-use. Engineering quality, fit and finish throughout is as good as it gets, the whole camera having a jeweled precision seldom encountered in consumer products. I would say that it is subjectively a step up in quality from the already excellent GX7 body.

Manual focus has to be the best implementation yet. Switch to MF and as you twist the focus ring the image is magnified making correct focus a breeze. This is further helped by focus peaking, the sharp parts of the image outlined in blue shimmering lines. Perfection and very fast into the bargain. I much prefer AF ‘focus and recompose’, which is an available option, but for the manual focus maven this is as good as it gets.

With the growing complexity of modern digital cameras there’s some sense to sticking with one manufacturer’s products as the chances are that menu designs will be similar. Such is the case here and after years with Panny’s G1, G3 and a brace of GX7s I felt immediately at home, making instructing Winston a breeze.

Optical quality is excellent at all apertures and focal lengths. It’s easy to switch to manual aperture where the f/2.8 setting at 75mm easily isolates backgrounds.

Winnie plays hard to get. At 75mm and f/2.8 – backgrounds blur easily.

Winston is learning to process images in Lightroom, and version 5.7 of that application recognizes and processes the RAW format from the LX100 seamlessly. It’s rally hard to think why any user would not opt for the superior flexibility of RAW file capture.

Pine Inn, Carmel. Image taken on the LX100 and processed in LR by my son.

It’s hard to think of a more capable camera for many genres of snappers. Be it street snapper, manual control aficionado, landscape artist, movie maker, you name it, the LX100 comes with a crackerjack, fast zoom, fluid operation, wonderful ergonomics, outstanding engineering and manual controls, all at a bargain price. For silent operation the superb electronic shutter option from the GX7 is carried over and works every bit as well. The funky lens cap obviates the need for protective filters on the outstanding Leica-designed fast zoom.

Unless you need ultra wide or very long optics, the LX100 provides an optimal focal length range with fast apertures throughout. Until the iPhone comes out with an optical zoom – likely very soon – it’s hard to imagine a more capable camera in so small a body. Large prints from MFT, as oft illustrated here, are a breeze.

For a closer look, with lens comparisons to the GX7 with the excellent fixed focus 17mm Zuiko MFT lens, please click here.

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.

Getting updated.

A friend of the blog (thank you, NM) dropped me a line reminding me that there was a body firmware upgrade available for the splendid Panny GX7, two of which bodies call chez Pindelski home. You can download it here.

The update is simple; after downloading the ‘GX7V13.bin’ file, drop it into the root directory of your SD card, insert the card in the camera and after powering up hit the ‘Play’ button and wait. The GX7 will refuse to proceed if your battery indicator shows less than absolutely full. The update takes maybe 4 minutes during which time you must not touch any controls and the front orange LED glows merrily. And just in case you are in any doubt, Panny gives you the message in less than the Queen’s English:

Be sure to reformat the SD card in the camera once done, thus erasing the .bin file.

Here are the stated benefits:

I can attest to the iPhone connection issue in v 1.2 and I have had no connection issues to my iPhone5 with the latest firmware upgrade. So it’s a worthwhile upgrade. Neither of my GX7s had an issue with the upgrade process.

As for UHS-I cards, Wikipedia defines these latest fast cards thus:

“UHS-I cards, specified in SD Version 3.01, support a clock frequency of 100 MHz (a quadrupling of the original “Default Speed”), which in four-bit transfer mode could transfer 50 MB/s. UHS-I cards declared as UHS104 (SDR104) also support a clock frequency of 208 MHz, which could transfer 104 MB/s.”

I don’t own any and I’m in no hurry to do so, but it’s nice to know the technology is supported.

The street snapper’s perfect camera.

In film days you would have seen me, as likely as not, toting two Leicas, an M2 with a 35mm lens and an M3 with a 90mm. This was very much an ‘around the world’ outfit, the few occasions when something wider or longer in lenses was needed making the return on humping additional weight too low for that to make sense. None of that solves for the landscape/nature/animal set where you can mostly carry any amount of gear in search of your quarry and for landscapers the subject isn’t about to run away. But for street snappers, light, unobtrusive and fast are the dictates of success in gear and in operation, and the Panasonic GX7 has the genre down by a considerable margin over any other hardware I have yet used.

When I first wrote about the GX7 a few months ago it was my third in a line of wonderful Panasonic MFT bodies, a journey which commenced with the ground breaking G1 (5 years ago!) and later with the sensor-improved G3, the latter now doing happy service with my nephew and pro cinematographer, in Los Angeles.

After many happy years with a 28-90mm zoom (the 14-45mm kit Panasonic lens) I added the truly exceptional 17mm Zuiko, a 35mm lens of outstanding performance and diminutive size. It’s the default optic on my GX7. Later, an equally inexpensive (the benchmark for cost and optical quality being the 35mm and 90mm Summicrons for the M Leica) 45mm Zuiko came along, the equivalent of the classic Leica 90mm portrait lens and almost as good optically as the 17mm Zuiko at a bargain price. I almost wrote “throw-away cheap”, and that’s not far from the truth. Have you priced Leica M lenses recently – you know, the ones without AF?

The 14-45mm kit zoom started to gather dust as I found I was walking the streets with the 17mm on the GX7 and the 45mm in a pocket. But the lens changing thing started getting old and the thought arose that a second body might make sense for the 45mm, especially given how small and light the kit is.

The market gods must have looked favorably upon this idea for as I write I am a happy owner of a brace of GX7s.

Black and chrome – two Panny GX7s.

It helped that I got a new black body on eBay for $608, which compares with almost $800 on Amazon and over $900 at B&H. The chrome GX7 ran me $1000 a few months ago and doubtless a year hence GX7s will be remaindered for $19.99. But if you forever wait for technological progress and price erosion, you are never going to take a picture. So, the heck with depreciation – it’s a minor cost of making the snap.

Black? I dislike black bodies but the color distinction makes sense here as the 17mm and 45mm Zuikos are indistinguishable at a quick glance. The black body does the trick when you are grabbing one in a hurry.

Teething problems? Only one. Conferring identical settings on the new body from the bazillion options and the preferred setup on the first body is an exercise which would try the patience of Job himself but one which, mercifully, need be done but once. I continue to revel in the silent electronic shutter the GX7 optionally offers (I use it exclusively) and have the C1, C2 and C3 custom settings all programed for aperture priority, electronic shutter and auto everything, the sole distinction being the 320, 1250 and 3200 ISO settings. The neat little serrated ring around the shutter button operates the aperture – I still wish it operated in full stops, not the fussy thirds Panny adopts – and that’s about all there is to it. Twiddle the ring, first pressure on the button for focus and ‘click’ – except the ‘click’ is silent, like the ‘D’ in Django.

So what you have here is one happy camper, err …. trekker. Any day now my legs will give out, my eyesight will fail, I’ll start wetting myself routinely and will be doddering around with a cane, but until that day comes you will find me snapping away with not one but two wonderful GX7s and their no less wonderful Zuiko stablemates, in that most eclectic and thrilling of American cities, San Francisco.

Avoiding file numbering conflicts:

All Panasonic MFT cameras start numbering files ‘P1010001’. To avoid duplicate file names, it makes sense to change this, but the camera has no way of doing that, unlike my big Nikons.

Stock file numbering, the SDHC card being viewed in Finder here.

Simply go into Finder and change the first digit of the directory, thus:

First digit of file directory changed from ‘1’ to ‘2’.

Now reinsert the card in the GX7/G3/whatever and format it. Take an exposure. This is what you will now see in Finder:

Be sure to stick with the same SDHC card in that body, or effect a like change on any new card.

You are now set for your next 8 Panny bodies!