How to Outshoot Someone who Outdrew Ya - July 2010

There’s always a bottom rung, an entry point. In cars, it’s basic transportation—the econobox. No Porsches there. In cameras, it’s the point and shoot. These sorts of things typically don’t cost much, are pretty easy to get basic function out of, may be all that’s needed but have drawbacks, and tend to get abandoned when and if finances and interest permit.

There are reasons that the P/S brigade gets no respect, some better than others. They don’t provide much photographic cachet for the wielder: everybody seems to have one tucked away, and while they provide decent results with minimal effort and little if any knowledge, they fairly scream “amateur” in that derogatory sense that many who are serious about their photography inappropriately fear (I once shot victory lane at Daytona with my last functioning camera, a Minox—but that’s another story, maybe later).

More important, the typical P/S has a small sensor that is not helped by packing more and more megapixels into it, a slow lens that gets slower as you zoom, and limited ability to do anything except what the camera has been programmed to do—control focus, exposure, shutter speed, aperture, maybe even ISO—you don’t know what it’s doing at any given moment, and you can’t change it anyway. Everything winds up as a compressed jpeg file. Sensor sensitivity is low, so flash is often needed, and is provided by a tiny tube that fires its limited photons straight ahead to light up the back of the subject’s eyeball. And don’t even start me off on shutter lag—sometimes it seems to be point, shoot—and wait until the camera gets approval from above, in triplicate.

Now I’m going to tell you why I just bought a new one, which one, and why.

First of all, having back-up can be important, both in the event of main camera failure and for those times when you don’t want to or can’t haul out your “big” camera. Ask your friendly neighborhood law enforcement professional about this; they have an analogous problem and solution. The only instrument that can do the job for you is the one you have with you. And in the camera world, an added bonus is that the ubiquitous and innocent looking P/S camera may let you shoot in places where a big camera with a big lens would send up red flags; relative invisibility can be good, efficient fun.

Almost too small for someone with large hands, the little Lumix packs a Leica lens and an amazing array of options and capabilities.

LEONARD TURNER

Now, I knew all of this, but felt quite comfortable with my aging little Nikon Coolpix—it did its assigned job in a panache-free and often frustrating manner, but it did its job. What seduced me away was one particular model of the huge Panasonic line, the DMC-LX3. This idiosyncratic little bugger, although saddled with a short zoom range, comprising a satisfying wide angle up to very short telephoto, comes with the legendary Leica optics for which I had a certain reverence long before I could even pronounce that German name. It is stabilized against shake, and focuses to within less than an inch of the front lens element. It is dry-mouth fast, f2.0-f2.8, and it will happily shoot raw files, giving a leg up in dealing with the noise from the small sensor and making color adjustments.

Curator Ken Gross addresses the legendary Panamericana Spyder at the High Museum. Generous aperture with a wide angle lens allows existing light shots even with an ISO of 80. (f2.2 at 1/40th)

LEONARD TURNER

Wide-angle close-ups can be a fun source of close-up distortions. (f2.2 at 1/100th)

LEONARD TURNER

Another wide-angle close-up gives a different look to the Sport Chrono clock. (f2.0 at 1/5th)

LEONARD TURNER

But it doesn’t stop there. Yes, it will make all its own decisions if you let it, but will also do either aperture or shutter preferred, and—wonder of wonders, full manual. Manual aperture, manual shutter speed, and manual focus, the whole thing. The rechargeable battery can be removed easily for charging or replacement, and with the amazing capacity of the new SD cards, shooting with this little guy can go on and on. There’s a shoe for a big flash on the top, but I’ve found that the little on-board tube can trigger my Nikon flashes for remote lighting. Shutter lag has been no problem.

Light weight makes it easy to brandish this little P/S on the end of a long monopod, even when standing on a ladder. (f2.3 at 1/60th)

LEONARD TURNER

So what does this have to do with cars? Lots of things. I’ve done 24mm high-angle shots off a ladder with this lightweight up on a six-foot monopod, triggered by its timer, for an overhead view of a car. It snuggles right into tight places where a big SLR has no chance for a different view (it’s a lot of fun to try new angles, shooting from places otherwise inaccessible, with the wide 24 mm viewpoint). It’s light enough to sit comfortably on a suction-cup mount for in-car use, something that’s a problem for SLRs because of both weight and clearance. You can reach right through a car window for a take on the dash of a race car, and it’s easy to hold at arms length for a down shot on an open car.

Diminutive size and light weight help with camera positioning for unusual shots. (f4.5 at 1/8th)

LEONARD TURNER

Downsides? Small sensors are not good for light sensitivity, no exception here. Keep the ISO down to the native 80, maybe as high as 200, but expect grain above that. Of course, the fast lens and stabilization help deal with relatively low light sensitivity even without flash. It has a manual lens cap; you have to take it off and put it back on. And the lens doesn’t collapse back into the camera like my old Coolpix, so it’s pretty lumpy in a jacket pocket in spite of its diminutive size. But then, nothing does everything. You probably don’t haul pine straw in your Porsche, either.

Let me know if you have any thoughts about this, or have made any useful “finds” of your own. I'm leonardt@pca.org.