Imaging Coins With The Panasonic Lx-5

Many of us carry cameras whenever we're away from home. Obviously, a bulky dSLR doesn't fit the "casual carry" bill - we want something we can stuff into a pocket or bag without gravity doing the inevitable (and sometimes embarrassing) thing. If you want that dSLR quality (or something close) while retaining portability, you have a few choices.

There are the EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder with Interchangeable Lens ) cameras: Micro Four Thirds, Sony NEX, Samsung NX, Leica M, Nikon 1. Some of them are small enough to consider carrying, but not exactly pants-pocket stuff. In addition, a lens with any sort of zooming ability immediately removes them from the idea of "pocketability." Not to mention, the price of admission is near-dSLR level, which is what you pay for near-dSLR image quality.

If the above turns you off, there's a huge range of point-and-shoot cameras on the market, all of which fit easily into a pocket. Megapixel counts are soaring - you can buy a 16MP point-and-shoot these days for less than $200. Telephoto ability is getting crazy - zooms of 18x are available in a camera which fits a shirt pocket. But there will be compromises in terms of controllability, lens quality and sensor quality. You can only cram so many megapixels, so much zoom, into a tiny package before things start suffering. You can only build-in a certain level of control to reach a given price point, not to mention the manufacturers tend to point these cameras at a demographic which really doesn't care about manual control; they just want to point the camera at something and push the button. Nor do they care about dSLR-quality images, which is good because they're not going to get them.

Those of you who lurk these forums have heard me say a hundred times something along the lines of a point-and-shoot being a chancy proposition for coin imaging, especially those models which lack much manual control. That's not to say CCF members aren't taking excellent images with such cameras - they are - but it's somewhat the luck of the draw based on which camera they've chosen. Further, the "sweet spot" where a point-and-shoot will shoot good coin images is very small, and one must get conditions exactly right to reach it.

There's a third category of cameras fitting the bill, those which we refer to as "prosumer" models. Canon's G-series and S90/95/100. Nikon's COOLPIX P7000. Samsung's TL500. Olympus XZ-1. And the subject of today's (typically for me) long-winded review: the Panasonic LX-5.

These cameras have been designed with fewer compromises than standard point-and-shoots: Bigger sensors deliberately packing fewer megapixels for higher image quality. Better lenses sacrificing total zoom range for higher image quality and lens speed, offering apertures as wide as f/1.8 for superior low-light performance.

And most importantly, full manual control. Quality costs, though - for one of these, you're looking at a price of admission at or above $400.

Needless to say, when it came time to upgrade my own carry camera, I fell into that latter category, and my personal research process ended up in the purchase of a Panasonic LX-5.

Next post: Introducing the LX-5.