arnav

Glacier in Iceland

<p>I just got a LX5 and took it to San Antonio, Texas for a conference. I did not want to carry my dslr. Even though I have a rebel with a 50mm f 1.4, it is still a small lunch box around your neck when you are running around and talking to people, many of them customers.</p>

<p>I went with the LX5 because of its F2.0 to F3.3 lens. While I cannot get pictures like my rebel with a 50mm f1.4 prime in sharpness, there are many shots I would never get if I had the rebel. The autofocus is pretty fast even at low light (resturants with medium light). ISO 1600 with lightroom Noise reduction is usable.</p>

<p>I also tried RAW vs JPEG. While Lightroom handled the raw format without any issues, I went with JPEG in the end. I shot all in Aperture priority and a few in Manual. I did try the scene modes. They are ok but I like the "A" mode the best. I let the camera decide the ISO for me with the upper bound set to 1600.I only used the built-in flash a couple of time as a fill flash with its level set to -1 and it worked great.</p>

<p>The Menus are pretty nicely arranged and it is super fast. There is auto bracketting for HDR and it has two custom slots on the dial.</p>

<p>I did take a few videos. While its 720p, it is very good. You can zoom and autofocus while shooting video. My macbook pro did not like the ADCLight format. So I stuck with Motion JPEG.</p>

<p>The camera comes with a neck strap like a regular dslr. But I found this to be a pain. It got on the way of putting inside/out of a pocket. So instead I put on a PS3 Move hand strap instead so that I could put it around my wrist.</p>

<p>I took about 500 pictures and about 10 videos of about 1 min each on average over four days. I had to charge the battery once on the start of day 3.</p>

<p>I tried the Canon S95 at a best buy. It is a lot smaller but the lens is not as fast and I found the Autofocus/Overall cycle time to be a bit slower than the LX5.</p>

<p>I have posted some pictures here at:<br /> <a rel="nofollow" href="../photodb/folder?folder_id=996058">http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=996058</a></p>

<p>I have a larger set on flickr at:<br /> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightray/sets/72157625906222946/" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightray/sets/72157625906222946/</a><br>

Hope this helps<br /> Cheers<br /> Arnav</p>

<p>I just got a LX5 and took it to San Antonio, Texas for a conference. I did not want to carry my dslr. Even though I have a rebel with a 50mm f 1.4, it is still a small lunch box around your neck when you are running around and talking to people, many of them customers.</p>

<p>I went with the LX5 because of its F2.0 to F3.3 lens. While I cannot get pictures like my rebel with a 50mm f1.4 prime in sharpness, there are many shots I would never get if I had the rebel. The autofocus is pretty fast even at low light (resturants with medium light). ISO 1600 with lightroom Noise reduction is usable.</p>

<p>I also tried RAW vs JPEG. While Lightroom handled the raw format without any issues, I went with JPEG in the end. I shot all in Aperture priority and a few in Manual. I did try the scene modes. They are ok but I like the "A" mode the best. I let the camera decide the ISO for me with the upper bound set to 1600.I only used the built-in flash a couple of time as a fill flash with its level set to -1 and it worked great.</p>

<p>The Menus are pretty nicely arranged and it is super fast. There is auto bracketting for HDR and it has two custom slots on the dial.</p>

<p>I did take a few videos. While its 720p, it is very good. You can zoom and autofocus while shooting video. My macbook pro did not like the ADCLight format. So I stuck with Motion JPEG.</p>

<p>The camera comes with a neck strap like a regular dslr. But I found this to be a pain. It got on the way of putting inside/out of a pocket. So instead I put on a PS3 Move hand strap instead so that I could put it around my wrist.</p>

<p>I took about 500 pictures and about 10 videos of about 1 min each on average over four days. I had to charge the battery once on the start of day 3.</p>

<p>I tried the Canon S95 at a best buy. It is a lot smaller but the lens is not as fast and I found the Autofocus/Overall cycle time to be a bit slower than the LX5.</p>

<p>I have posted some pictures here at:<br>

http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=996058</p>

<p>I have a larger set on flickr at:<br>

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightray/sets/72157625906222946/</p>

<p>Hope this helps<br>

Cheers<br>

Arnav</p><div></div>

<p>Update on my previous post:<br>

HDRtist will not align the bracketed shots if handheld. So now I use QTPFSGui or Luminance HDR(<a href="http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/download.php">http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/download.php</a>) is awesome and it is free (On Windows I think it is not free - $15).</p>

<p>For Panoramas also try out Microsoft ICE for panoramas. Again it is awesome. It is free but available only on Windows. I use a MacBook Pro and run Windows XP as a virtual machine via Parallels and it works very well.<br>

Cheers<br>

Arnav</p>

<p> </p>

<p>While I am tempted to take the shot and go for Adobe Lightroom I have to remind myself that I am an amateur and don't generate a dime from photography. However I do take a lot of pictures and post-process many. Here is my list of software:</p>

<p>Photo management - Picasa (Available from Google on both PC and MAC). It will read a whole bunch of file formats including several RAW formats. It has some nice touch-up tools and it supports Video cataloging as well.</p>

<p>Photo Processing - GIMP (Available on both PC and MAC). I think that although the UI is a bit clunky, it is the next most powerful thing to Photoshop. I have tried others like Paint.net and also PaintShop Pro (not free) but does not come close to GIMP. In addition to that there is a GIMP community out there that writes scripts to perform operations including mask based HDR(called Exposure Blend), borders, edge detections, filters etc. For me it took about 3 hours to get used to GIMP to put masks and do hand HDRs on photos, play around with curves and the Histograms etc. GIMP supports RAW (Canon RAW at least) using a plugin.<br>

Panorama - Hugin (Also on PC and MAC) This is an awesome freewere for panorama stitch (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/download/).</p>

<p>HDR - HDRtist - This is pretty good for HDR. Here is a review of (http://www.electronista.com/reviews/ohanaware-hdrtist.html). However does not come close to PhotoMatrix. PhotoMatrix Light is only $40 and their pro is $100. So if you are going to do a lot of HDRs I think it is worth spending that money. You can download a fully working version. But it puts a watermark.</p>

<p>I am on a Mac. But I never seem to like iPhoto. If you are on the Mac you can look at that as well.<br>

If you are doing a lot of RAW and since you have a Canon, you should look into Canon's DDP that comes with your camera.<br>

Cheers<br>

Arnav</p>

<p> </p>

<p>How about:</p>

<p>1) When your spouse tries to convince you to leave your Canon 5D behind just because she has got her iPhone 3Gs.</p>

<p>2) Or when you see a hottie sun bathing all you can think of is sun spots from her tanning lotion.</p>

<p>3) And when you need a 100mm macro lens you tell your wife that it is a good Portraite lens, but not mention that it's really a good portrait lens for all the insects that live with you in the house.</p>

<p>In all reality the Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro does take good human portraits too.</p>

<p>4) And what happens when your wife says "WHAT! You spent $900 more just because a number on a lens was 0.2 LESS" (50mm F1.4 to 50mm F1.2 L).</p>

<p>Cheers<br /> Arnav</p>