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| Photo by Jack Howard |
| Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10 with Olympus Zuiko 35-100 f/3.0. ISO 200 1/640 @ f/5. We dialed back exposure compensation to -2/3 again to showcase the translucent leaves glowing in the sunlight. Click photo for more field-test images. |
There's an old Hollywood adage about never working with kids or animals, but for many photographers, kids and pets will often be their main subjects. And so it was in our field tests of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10. Our very willing subjects included a German Shepherd, Bailey, a gray and black shaggy Golden-doodle, Owen, and brother and sister Em and Will. The kids rarely sat still for a few moments, and the dogs rarely sat still at all, so it was a good real-world challenge for the L10. (And no, we did not employ Kids or Pet mode in our tests! We shot in Program and Manual exposure, mostly.)
The camera did a very nice job of keeping up with the action when set to continuous focus in both bright daylight and shady day conditions. In single-shot mode, AF usually locked quickly and accurately on our subjects (stay tuned for our full lab test with AF speed times). We were particularly impressed with the Auto metering, which did a great job of holding detail in the dark and shaggy dog, both in the shade and in high-contrast sunlight scenes.
Kids and dogs move fast, and a moment too late is a moment lost, so we skipped the camera's RAW capture mode, which is ridiculously skimpy by modern standards with only a three-shot burst (at 3 fps) before the buffer locks up. Instead, we shot finest quality JPEGs, which the L10 will keep capturing at three frames per second until you drain the battery or fill the SDHC card.
Did we miss RAW? Not at all! We were impressed by the look of the low ISO JPEG images. The images look good on-screen and the Auto white balance surprised us with its accuracy in challenging situations. In any event, skintones, shadows, and colors look fantastic pretty much straight out of the gate. With all of our test images, we simply needed to make some minor global tweaks to the contrast or saturation to make the image pop before sharing. All of these minor global tweaks to JPEGs can be accomplished effectively in the bundled PhotoFunStudio software, or any image editing program that you're comfortable with that can handle JPEGs.
But the real story here is how little "cooking" the photos from the L10 need. Generally, the shots were good to go straight from the camera. It's as if Panasonic wants you to spend your time making photos -- not fixing them on your computer!
We threw all sorts of challenges at the L10, and for the most part the L10 produced very nice photos of whatever we threw its way, regardless of the shooting conditions.
LCD-based Shooting; Phase Difference Vs. Face Detection
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10's 207,000-dot, 2.5-inch (diagonal) LCD swivels, which is a very good thing since it doesn't have the widest viewing angle we've seen recently. At about 45 degrees above or below along the horizontal axis, colors start to invert, meaning you'll want to position the LCD parallel to your eye for those rakish angle shots. On the playback side, it means the whole family might not be able to gather around the L10 at once to see a slideshow of the day's photos -- unless everyone's at the exact same height in relation to the LCD. But for framing obtuse-angle shots, with the camera held high or low, or dangling over a mountain creek, it's great to be able to swivel the LCD in so many directions. And we'd almost forgotten how great a flip-out LCD is for framing self-timer group portraits!
But the LCD isn't just for playback on the L10, and Panasonic isn't just keeping up with the trend towards Live View modes on DSLRs. They've actually kicked it up a notch with Contrast Autofocus and Face Detection Autofocus in Live View mode. However, the full Live View Autofocusing experience is limited, for now, to just two lenses, the kit Leica D 14-50mm f/3.8-5.6 and the Leica D 14-150mm f/3.5-5.6.
Older Panasonic/Leica lenses and Four Thirds lenses from other manufacturers will revert to the Phase Difference Autofocus in Live View mode. No face detection, no 11-zone focusing on the LCD -- just the three points (selectable individually or all at once) viewable through the optical viewfinder. Like the Canon EOS 40D, the L10 flips the mirror down, achieves Phase difference focus, and refreshes the Live View. It's not stealthy by any means. There's a good bit of mechanical noise when Phase Difference AF is used in Live View mode as the shutter and mirror flip about.
With the kit lens, Live View mode with the full array of Contrast Autofocusing options is much more exciting. It's not perfect, but it is a very interesting evolution. Face Detection locks onto faces very quickly -- even in sunglasses! It won't detect profiles: it needs two eyes visible, but that's par for the course in our experiences with face detection. Live View AF with the kit lens also allows for a much wider area of autofocus coverage, 11 points or 11 blocks that cover a very good percentage of the frame, which can be selected in groups or individually. And there's no LCD freeze while it searches focus because it's all happening in real time. Unfortunately, Live View focus appears limited to "single shot" mode. Don't expect real-time tracking of your sprinter as she approaches the finish line -- not even with Face Detection, which will continue to track a face, but slows down a bit to lock focus before capturing the image.
In Live View mode, the LCD can display the unobstructed scene, or the scene overlaid with the camera settings (with or without live histogram), or with either a "rule of thirds" or quadrant grid pattern to assist in framing. Camera settings plus a live histogram do clutter up the frame, and when edge-to-edge detail is important, you're better off with the unobstructed view or more unobtrusive grids. When shooting in 16:9 or 3:2 aspect ratios (another Live View-only function), the image settings intrude less into the capture area, and the LCD only displays the image in the active aspect ratio capture area.
Very Basic Playback
Playback mode is rudimentary, which is typical for a DSLR. It will play a slideshow of images, one after another at an interval of your choosing. Don't look for spiffy transitions and fades because there aren't any. In-camera image adjustments are limited as well to rotate, resize, crop, and aspect ratio conversion options. You can select favorites, protect images from deletion, and employ DPOF printing, but that's pretty much it.
Toggling the Display button during playback shows either the unobstructed photograph, the photo overlaid with basic camera settings, a thumbnail photo with a deeper set of camera settings, or a thumbnail with four-channel histogram (R,G,B,Y) displays (The Y channel, despite its Yellow coloring, is a Luminance histogram). Regardless of display option, there's virtually no redraw lag between frames, which is a good thing.
Overall First Impressions
We were impressed with the image quality of low ISO (100-400) shots taken with the L10 on our first look, and we can't wait to check out the lab results. We are, however, a little disappointed with the very limited RAW burst. However, the 3fps JPEG burst to card capacity is class-competitive. For the DSLR beginner and even the advanced enthusiast, the $1,300 street price for the L10 plus the optically stabilized 14-50mm Leica D 14-50mm f/3.8-5.6 might sound scary at first, but if you price out a Canon EOS Rebel XTi, Olympus E-510, or Sony A700 with a similar focal length and speed lens, you'll find that the L10's kit price isn't so bad.
Of course, first impressions are one thing. The other half of the equation is our Full Lab test. We're currently running the Panasonic Lumix DMC-L10 through our battery of tests. Check back here in a few weeks and also the January issue of Popular Photography & Imaging for our Certified Test Results with Panasonic's newest DSLR.
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