Over the years I’ve owned a few cameras, or cell phones with camera capabilities. The first one I ever owned was a 35mm auto-focus compact from the mid 90s, later a fairly crappy 2mp Nikon digital compact in the early 2000s. I also played from time to time, with my dads 35mm single-lens reflex camera from an obscure brand which he acquired in Japan in he 70s. In the last few years I’ve owned a number of cell phones with camera, most of them close to useless due to the limited lens and small sensor. I have always had a fascination for photography and pictures, but I’ve never really prioritized getting a “proper” camera, i.e. a SLR or DLSR. Mostly because of weight and size. Luckily, lately digital compact cameras have become much better, and these days you can get a small, light camera with zoom, autofocus and decent resolution for a relatively small amount of money. The more advanced versions even sport manual setting of things such as ISO, exposure, shutter speed and aperture size, making them interesting for enthusiasts and amateurs that want the little extra.
When the missus asked what I wanted for Christmas and birthday present (my birthday is the 6th of January) I was at loss first, to suggest something I wanted. I really feel I have most things I “need”. Then it dawned to me I’d been thinking of getting a half-way decent camera for a good while. So I told her, and to my joy she said “ok”. We made a deal where researched and found me a camera I wanted within certain limits pricewise, and then she ordered it for me. The camera I choose in the end, was the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3, which is a digital compact wide-angle camera with advanced features such as RAW (uncompressed and unprocessed “pure” image files), the possibility to manually adjust most settings as well as a surprisingly good “auto” mode. This is a camera suitable for landscape photographing, street scenes, macro and similar. It haven’t got a very powerful zoom, only 2.8x (4,5x in EZ mode) + aprox 15x digital, but the wide lens (24mm) means it can capture a very wide area and since it is also very light sensitive it can take pictures in fairly low light.
The reason I fell for it was generally good reviews, but also the fact that the manufacturer have declared a stop in the megapixel race that is so common in the camera industry today, and instead focusing in other things such as image quality. While megapixels are important, there are several reasons why it’s going too far, megapixels say something about the resolution (amount of pixels) a camera is able to capture, but it does not say much about general image quality, the quality of the optics and similar. Over the last few years there are numerous examples of high-mp capable cameras not really producing better pictures than older cameras with lower resolutions. Basically, cramming as many mp’s as possible into a small image sensor like those found in compact cameras, can actually produce worse looking pictures. Still, to sell cameras, the industry pump out camera after camera with astonishing megapixel numbers, claiming their superiority. There was a time when megapixels was indeed a good measure point of the quality of a camera, but today, we got enough pixels, it’s the other factors that constitutes a camera that need to catch up, optics, the quality of the image sensor and so forth.
Myself, I am certainly not an expert, not even an educated amateur, I just like to take pictures and play with light and motives. I consider my aesthetical skills to be pretty much nonexistent, thus I haven’t exactly any desire or belief that I will create some “masterpiece”. On the other hand, the pictures I take gives me a chance to savor some moments here and there, perhaps even giving me the chance to note details my otherwise poor vision would fail to notice. The LX3 seem to fit me like a glove, it’s small enough for me to bother lugging it along, and powerful enough to take fairly decent pictures. It’s not an professional tool, but the results it can produce are far superior to any of the cameras I’ve owned before. Thus, getting this camera have sparked an interest in photography I did not have before, and also given me a new hobby. You can never have too many hobbies ;)
Thus, it is very likely I will be putting up a lot of pictures on this blog in the future, in fact I already has. After a few days with this camera, here’s an example of what I’ve managed to capture. Much of it is experimental, as I’m trying to learn my way.
You can also see more of my recent shots by following these links. Alternatively navigate by the “picture” menu at the top of this site.
- Norwegian Armed Forces Museum (29.11.2008)
- Oslo, November 2008
- Macro Experiments!
- Akershus Fortress (30.11.2008)
- Aker Brygge (Pier) By Night
