Painful Decision to Wait on The LX100 - DLux 109

All the reasons are there to buy this new LX100. I need a jacket pocket, glove-compartment take with me camera more than any new lenses for my dslr or say a do it all am-cam like the new FZ1000. It is better than the canon and the sony, and much better than its incongruent predecessor in the lx range, the seven. It has also great DR and mid ISO and OIs and better video than my current jvc camcorder.

However it is a relatively expensive camera which is showing not only its strong sides, but also some weaknesses.

The big point of this camera is a combination of the big chip and the fast lens. That trumps the XZ2, which i had my eye on, and btw can be had new for less than half then original rrp now on line.

It also trumps just about that is, any mft camera with any kit lens, apart from maybe the 12-50 oly at the two extremes of focal length. Why? The fast lens.

Why then not just dash out and buy one, cash down and the rest on credit?

The real reason on the back of my mind is that i am hoping olympus will make a competitor.

What would be so good from oly? Firstly amd most of all, far better out of camera jpegs, which is important in a compact camera which will document the minutiae of oir family lives as much as it will take any images of artistic, photojournalistic or heirloom framed images. My general dslr shoots are in a way warm ups for owning a pro-am FF dslr, in another way they are fun and only when i see the beautiful shot dono turn to raw. I cannot batch process by in large for all sorts of reasons, so frame by frame raw optimalisation is just too time consuiming for me.

Secondly the lens would be sharper, maybe not as fast, but sharper. Also in combination with that it would be a Sony chip with less noise, better resolving ability and better colour.

Panasonic have fallen short , not by much, but just a little short.

1) Soft when open wide below f4
2) noisy and colour abberrant on the edges
3) annoying NR softness, i.e.  default high smoothing
4) little bit short on the long end at eq 75mm
5) other foibles,: auto iso , sensor warm outs on 4k, filters button stupid place, some others yet to be found.
6) out of camera jpegs needing post!

Any one of these points as the single isloated issue on the lx100, would not stop me getting one. But together and with that biggie in 6, they hold up my wallet peel.

I am stalling, i want to handle one but i can see it is going to be nice ftrom the videos. I am not convinced by the on line jpeg galleries, even though the test shots in the so called laboratory conditions say it is class leading.

If only olympus would do this as well!

It is currently a little unclear if there will even be an XZ-3. I guess they are either waiting for something cool from sony's sensor department for the current sensor size, or are reworking to either sony's one inch or hopefully the mFT format.

Panasonic have been able to use Leica to design ground breaking lenses, while having the R&D biudget in sensors and body equipment to now stand head and shoulders above the compact competition with their FZ1000 and LX100. The other manufacturers are who knows, maybe over a year behind in being able to put these size of sensors with so fast glass, enthusiast control elements, and not fogetting the video capability, all into sub 1000$€ packages.

Canon seem to be pretty happy with themselves but their G cameras which take good enough images but are quite bulky and no where near as good as the new GM or existing Epm with their kit lenses. Nikon just cannot do compacts or the milc one syste,, maybe they are too worried about the differential to their dslrs. Users are veryr happy, but they are brand-blinded. Panny are lucky to have had the deep pockets to align with Leica to get the edge and keep it.

Olympus are struggeling outside OMD - they have probably saturated the style seeking market and enthusiasts have fallen off PEN upgrades for omd, and have good enougj back up EP bodies. Omd is a fine fine place to be.

Stylus is not. They need an absolutelty top pair of sensors in order to carry on with the same hardware, otherwise the nice handeling and enthusiast features melt away for those consumers prone to buying the next generation phones with real zoom cameras, and cutting out the middle man on the way to facebook.

I suspect olympus are either consolidating on the up market cash cow omd, or are beavering away on something to really scare the competition in compact land. Hopefully the latter is the case!