Panasonic Digital Camera Review - The Lumix DMC-LX5

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 is an improvement over the LX3 from two years ago. How they managed to squeeze more improvements into what was already a nearly perfect design is quite a wonder. That camera had a cult following. The LX5 Panasonic digital camera, review writeups such as this one will tell you, is a worthy replacement for the original.

The LX5 is designed to offer you SLR quality in a point-and-shoot camera. It is intended for the professional photographer who doesn't want to work hard for his photographs all the time. Alternatively, it's a camera for the amateur photographer who wants to shoot professional quality pictures. The LX5 offers excellent image stabilization, and you'll find that you can get fantastic crispness at speeds of even 1/10 of a second. The autofocus and the autofocus tracking are tremendously fleet footed, and the sensor works perfectly. For those who wish to have their camera make their decisions for them, the intelligent lowlight shooting capabilities of this camera at ISO 1600 is pretty good. Anything higher than that though, and you'll find that you have to overlook a lot of graininess and other artifacts.

A Panasonic digital camera review is typically reduced to scraping the barrel for something negative to say. Let's try with the Lumix DMC-LX5, shall we? To begin with, the camera doesn't come with a built-in lens cover. In a high-tech digital camera, to have to deal with a dangling cap, is hardly appropriate. The camera is meant for photographers who like to take it out when they travel. To make an action camera and to not make it weather-proof, protected against splashes or sand, doesn't seem to make much sense.

But those are relatively minor quibbles. Paying attention to what the DMC-LX5 is really good at, you really need to love how effective the camera sensor is. Most serious amateurs hate the kind of lighting that flashes provide. The LX5 has superb lowlight sensitivity, and you should almost never need to turn the flash on. All you will need to do is to change the settings to a higher ISO number. Up to ISO 1600, the picture quality even in lowlight, is hard to complain about. Lumix cameras come equipped with a Leica lens. Fans of Panasonic's cameras love the kind of resolution that these lenses enable. Take a shot on the LX5 with the setting at f/2, and you'll probably be seriously surprised by what the camera is capable of. You'll find it hard to tell the difference between a picture out of this camera, and something professional a DSLR produces.

As every Panasonic digital camera review loves to point out, shooting video in HD on a Lumix camera is always a pleasure. You get to shoot in the AVCHD format, and every one of the camera's functions works while you're doing it. So will the LX5 replace a top-flight SLR camera? It isn't quite there yet. But there isn't much that separates it from an SLR anymore.