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Hands-on with the Panasonic DC-LX100 II

Up until now, the Panasonic LX100 has been one of those cameras for which people have been long awaiting a successor – the Ricoh GR II is another example. While a GR III has yet to arrive, the LX100 II is here.

Panasonic hasn’t messed with success here, keeping the design, lens and trademark multi-aspect feature the same, while improving image quality and usability via a new sensor and touchscreen LCD, respectively.

Here’s a look at what’s changed – and what hasn’t – on Panasonic’s LX100 II enthusiast compact.

17MP from a 20MP Four Thirds sensor

The biggest improvement on the LX100 II is its new Four Thirds sensor, borrowed from the GX9 mirrorless camera. On the GX9 you get an effective resolution of 20.3MP, but on the LX100 II you only ever get to use a cropped region, giving you up to 17MP.

That’s because the LX100 II retains the hallmark feature that traces back to the DMC-LX3: the ability to shoot at multiple aspect ratios without changing the diagonal field of view. Whether you’re at 3:2, 16:9 or 4:3 ratio, the wide end of the lens will always be 24mm equiv. The aspect ratio can be quickly changed using a switch just behind the lens control ring, which makes it more likely that people will use this feature.

While we’re yet to test the LX100 II, you can get a feel for what its sensor can do by viewing the GX9 studio scene. Besides the increased resolution, Panasonic says that the LX100 II’s JPEG color rendering is improved, and based on some samples we’ve seen and our experience with the company’s recent models, that appears to be the case.

24-75mm equiv. F1.7-2.8 lens

Keeping with the ‘why mess with success’ theme, the lens on the LX100 II is the same as on its predecessor, and that’s good news. This is one of the fastest lenses on an enthusiast compact, with a maximum aperture range of F1.7-2.8 through its 24-75mm equiv. focal range. The lens has a total of 11 elements, including two aspherical ED and five ‘regular’ aspherical.

The advantage of having a large sensor and fast lens means that the LX100’s equivalent aperture is consistently 1/2 to 2/3-stop faster than its competitors. The benefits of that are more control over depth-of-field and less need to increase the ISO, since more light is reaching the sensor, helping to keep noise levels lower.

Direct controls

If you want a camera with traditional controls, the LX100 II is it. No more pressing buttons to change the aperture, shutter speed or exposure compensation – as with the original LX100, there are dedicated dials for each of those on the camera. The control ring around the lens can be used for adjusting other things besides focus, including zoom, ISO and white balance.

Panasonic has added more customizable buttons on the LX100 II, with a total of five physical and five on-screen. If you can think of the setting, you can probably assign to one of those buttons.

LCD and EVF

The electronic viewfinder on the LX100 II is the same as the one on the original model. It has an equivalent resolution of 2.76 million dots, which sounds high, but it isn’t really any better than a typical 2.36M-dot EVF, since it uses a field sequential system. Some people find field sequential displays irritating due to color tearing, which creates a ‘rainbow effect’ when you blink or pan the camera. The EVF has an equivalent magnification of 0.70x, which is quite large for an enthusiast compact.

The 3″ LCD has received some notable improvements. First, the resolution has been bumped from 0.92 million to 1.24 million dots. More importantly, it’s now a touchscreen, and Panasonic’s touch features are some of the best. They include touch-to-focus, menu navigation, image review, pinch-to-zoom and Touchpad AF. This last feature lets you use your thumb to adjust the focus point with your eye to the finder. A tab on the side of the screen holds five additional customizable ‘soft’ buttons.

4K video

As you might expect from a Panasonic, the LX100 II offers 4K video capture. This comes in the popular 16:9 UHD aspect ratio and shoots at up to 30 frames per second. A 43mm filter thread on the front of the lens allows the use of screw-on ND filters.

Sadly, the use of the processor from the GX9 means this footage is taken from a native 3840 x 2160 pixel crop of the sensor. This not only narrows the camera’s field-of-view to give a roughly 32-100mm equiv lens range, but also means using a slightly smaller sensor region than the 1″-type sensor found in rivals such as the RX100 V. Video quality, particularly in low light, will be reduced accordingly.

Video is limited to 15 minutes per clip to protect against overheating.

Special effects

The original LX100 has received the latest Photo Styles added on other modern Panasonic cameras. The one that stands out is L.Monochrome D, which is a high contrast black and white mode. If you wish, you can add a film grain effect that is quite convincing, as it uses a pseudo random pattern.

The 4K Photo feature has also been updated with the Auto Marking, Sequence Composition, Post Focus and Focus Stacking features.

For the first two, the camera captures a short video clip which is broken up into 8MP stills. Auto Marking looks for areas with a lot of motion, which it considers the interesting part of the burst. You can jump to those moments quickly using the touchscreen or dials. Sequence Composition lets you select stills from the 4K Photo burst and combine them into a single image, like so.

Post Focus and Focus Stacking work in a slightly different way. The camera again takes a short 4K video, this time scanning the entire focus range. Post Focus lets you pick the area that you want in focus, while Focus Stacking combines frames to bring the entire image into focus.

However, since these modes all come from the camera’s 4K capability, they’re all subject to the same significant crop (and consequent loss in quality).

Performance and Ports

Panasonic has provided the LX100 II with additional buffer memory, allowing it to take up to 33 Raws in a row, compared to 9 shots on the LX100. The burst rate remains the same: 11 fps with AE and AF locked, and 5.5 fps with continuous autofocus.

The LX100 II continues to use Depth from Defocus contrast-detect autofocus, which has proven itself to be responsive and reliable. We’ll see how it perform when we review the camera.

Despite having 4K video capability, the only two ports on the camera are for USB and HDMI. No external mic socket here, much less a headphone socket for monitoring audio.

Bluetooth and Batteries

The LX100 had Wi-Fi and the LX100 II offers Bluetooth as well, for a constant connection between smartphone and camera. The Panasonic Image App has an ‘Easy Remote Control’ which will wake up the camera for you, and it can also take advantage of Bluetooth to automatically transfer photos you’ve taken.

The DMW-BLG10 battery is the same on both the LX100 I/II. Battery life is up by about 10% compared to the original model to 340 shots/charge, which is good for an enthusiast compact.

Included external flash

There’s absolutely no room on the LX100 II for a built-in flash, so Panasonic includes a compact external flash. The flash has a guide number of 10 meters (33 feet) at the camera’s base ISO of 200 but cannot be redirected or bounced. If you want a more powerful or flexible flash, Panasonic has a couple of options available.

Wrap-up

The Panasonic DC-LX100 Mark II’s impressive combination of a large sensor and fast, 24-75mm equiv. lens makes it an appealing enthusiast compact. It’s not pocket-sized like the RX100 V and Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II, but that’s the trade-off for the sensor and lens.

The LX100 II will be available in October at a price of $ 999. That’s the same price as the Sony RX100 V and $ 100 more than the MSRP of the original LX100, by the way.

Look for a full review of the LX100 II in the not-too-distant future.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)