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by bobbyz on Fri Nov 21, 2008 11:23 am
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I hope panasonic puts the same sensor in their next ultra-zoom camera.
 

by ColorChange on Tue Nov 25, 2008 12:05 pm
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DP Review just added the G10 and it shows the LX3 doing quite a bit better job, even when they compared the relatively poor jpg output of the LX3. Pretty resounding win for the LX3.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canong10/
Tim
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Nov 25, 2008 2:41 pm
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Unless I totally missed it, they did not compare RAW which makes it a worthless review in my mind.
 

by ColorChange on Tue Nov 25, 2008 3:48 pm
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EJ, I partially agree but that was sort of my point by comparing pany's weak jpg processing (and it still wins handily) to what you would see if you compared raws ... although I can't be 100% sure as I haven't done it or seen it done.
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by Alexandre Vaz on Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:40 pm
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ColorChange wrote:DP Review just added the G10 and it shows the LX3 doing quite a bit better job, even when they compared the relatively poor jpg output of the LX3. Pretty resounding win for the LX3.
Yes, but in the native ISO settings the G10 outperforms Panasonic "The LX3 seems to be resolving less detail than the G10"...
I think this is clearly one of those situations were one has to decide it it prefers a batter performance at low or high ISO? At least in theory, the best image the G10 can make is better than the best image the LX-3 can...
 

by ColorChange on Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:43 pm
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William, I disagree. I question the low ISO results due to the poor jpg processing on the LX3, but even if it does exist, that benefit is small compared to the much longer low ISO capability of the LX3 (due to the fast lens) and vastly superior upper ISO performance.
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by E.J. Peiker on Tue Nov 25, 2008 5:54 pm
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Alexandre Vaz wrote:Yes, but in the native ISO settings the G10 outperforms Panasonic "The LX3 seems to be resolving less detail than the G10"...
I think this is clearly one of those situations were one has to decide it it prefers a batter performance at low or high ISO? At least in theory, the best image the G10 can make is better than the best image the LX-3 can...
Agin, no conclusions about ultimate image quality can be drawn from the DPREVIEW "quasi" review since it did not test either camera's RAW capabilities.
 

by Alexandre Vaz on Wed Nov 26, 2008 9:18 am
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E.J. Peiker wrote: Agin, no conclusions about ultimate image quality can be drawn from the DPREVIEW "quasi" review since it did not test either camera's RAW capabilities.
Hummm... not sure if I agree here, since probably most of the LX3 buyers will be shooting in JPG anyway...
 

by dbostedo on Wed Nov 26, 2008 9:44 am
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Alexandre Vaz wrote:
E.J. Peiker wrote: Agin, no conclusions about ultimate image quality can be drawn from the DPREVIEW "quasi" review since it did not test either camera's RAW capabilities.
Hummm... not sure if I agree here, since probably most of the LX3 buyers will be shooting in JPG anyway...
Alexandre - That's true. It's a useful review for a lot of people. However, you can't say that the G10 has more resolving power, or that the LX3 has lower noise, or anything like that without comparing RAW. And on these forums, that's what most people care about. At the very least you need qualifiers like the G10 resolves better in JPG mode.
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by ColorChange on Wed Nov 26, 2008 10:07 am
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dbostedo wrote:Alexandre - That's true. It's a useful review for a lot of people. However, you can't say that the G10 has more resolving power, or that the LX3 has lower noise, or anything like that without comparing RAW. And on these forums, that's what most people care about. At the very least you need qualifiers like the G10 resolves better in JPG mode.
I can agree with the following correction, G10 jpgs resolve better at low ISO.

Emil has proven that the LX3 has dramatically lower noise than the G10, and that testing was done in RAW.
Tim
 

by E.J. Peiker on Wed Nov 26, 2008 10:20 am
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Alexandre, you said that the LX3 appears to have less resolving power, I am simply stating that you can not know that from the DPREVIEW article because the max resolving power will be in RAW format not the JPEG format they tested.
 

by Bill Lockhart on Mon Dec 01, 2008 7:12 am
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One should go have a look at what DXO found regarding the LX3 and the G10. It appears that the LX3's setting of ISO 400 is actually closer to ISO 200! The new DXO site may be revolutionary in evaluating cameras from a rational and scientific basis. See: http://www.dxomark.com/

One can compare two cameras on the site in terms of ISO Sensitivity, SNR 18%, Dynamic Range, Tonal Range, and Color Sensitivity.

A comparison of the LX3 and the G10 can be done quite easily. The findings are enlightening.
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by ColorChange on Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:05 am
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Bill, I'm not very familiar with DXO so I can't comment on their methodology/accuracy. Even with the supposed overstated ISO, the LX3 is lower noise, higher dynamic range, but has lower color sensitivity. Not sure what to conclude?

Curiously, when I compared the LX3 to my 1DIII, the ISO's look similar so I initially questioned DXO's ISO comparisons, until I looked at the 1DIII ISO and it too is overstated, leaving the stated ISO of the 1DIII similar to the LX3 (which is what I knew from use). Interesting.
Tim
 

by Bill Lockhart on Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:30 am
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Tim,

I may state this wrong, and I invite others to correct me, but is it not the conclusion, after looking at the data between the G10 and the LX3, that anyone who sets the ISO on the LX3 to ISO 400 and then compares another shot done with the G10 set to ISO 400 would conclude that there is less noise coming from the LX3? Of course there would be less noise, the LX3 is taking shots at ISO 200 not ISO 400!

Best regards,

Bill
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by ColorChange on Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:32 am
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Bill, while what you say is correct, if you compare the LX3 to G10 and look at DXO's plots of noise, they compare stated, and actual ISO (at least normalized according to DXO's tests) and there the LX3 still outperforms the G10.
Tim
 

by Bill Lockhart on Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:57 am
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Tim,

I guess I can't read the charts correctly, I came to just the opposite conclusion, looks like to me that the G10 outperformed the LX3 in SN. Or, at least, from the graph that the two were very close together.

Best regards,

Bill
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by ColorChange on Mon Dec 01, 2008 9:17 am
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Eeeek! Bill sorry, upon further review, it looks like I was wrong, the G10 does have lower adjusted ISO noise (about 1dB). My mistake. They still rate the Pany slightly higher even though noise and tonal range are comparable, big advantage in dynamic range to the LX3, bit advantage in color sensitivity to the G10 if you compare screen based output. For print based output, the G10 appears to trounce the LX3. I'm still not sure what to conclude? I need to learn this site in detail.
Tim
 

by Bill Lockhart on Mon Dec 01, 2008 9:25 am
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Tim,

Thanks. I thought I was missing something.

The DXO data bring a whole new dynamic to this discussion. I hope emil will break in here. I would love to hear what he says about the DXO data.

Best regards,

Bill
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by ColorChange on Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:16 am
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I agree. Paging Emil ... paging Dr. Emil...
Tim
 

by ejmartin on Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:22 am
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ColorChange and Steve Fines were very kind to provide me with test images of the LX3 shot side-by-side with a 1D3 and a 1Ds3, respectively. This the closest I can come to a test of sensitivity without a calibrated light source. I reported the results further up in this thread (page 2):
For the 1D3 tested with 24-70/f2.8, the LX3 was 0.51 stop more sensitive, for the 1Ds3 tested with 24-105/f4, the LX3 was 0.86 stop more sensitive. So relative to the DSLR at ISO 100 (assuming the DSLR normalized properly; otherwise, consider these ratios of sensitivities), the LX3 would be at somewhere around ISO 150 to 186 in the RAW data.
Now, DxO uses a variant of the ISO standard (the actual ISO standard refers to converted sRGB output, so one has to modify it to arrive at something appropriate for RAW data) and report that DSLR's are somewhat below their stated ISO. Really, this just means that DSLR's leave a bit of extra highlight headroom to prevent clipping in the RAW data. This is why one sees the 1D3 in their data about a half stop below the stated sensitivity -- it's really a design choice about how to split the DR in order to protect highlights by leaving more headroom above metered middle grey, and still have enough in shadows to keep down the noise there. Digicams, having less DR, usually put middle grey higher; as we see with the LX3, about .5-.8 stop higher. So they are more prone to blowing highlights when shot as the metering suggests, because they leave that much less highlight headroom in order to devote more of the DR to not having even worse noise in shadows.

DxO seem to report the LX3 as having even less sensitivity than a typical DSLR. That disagrees with common sense, and my own measurements. I think this is one example of inaccurate data, or at least clerical error, on their site.
emil
 

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