"Canon want to slap a standard compact sensor in there, give it a
10x+ zoom, and a few other features but have to keep it under a certain price level or nobody would buy it."
"What good is a
10x zoom if it means you have to have longer exposure times or more noise in your pictures?"
"And consider this: the best image quality results are from the LX3, right? Well, with 10.1MP clarity and actual 'usable' clarity at higher ISO levels means that even though you may not have a
10x zoom, you can easily crop the picture in photoshop, paint, etc... and have the exact same photo but at 5MP and still looking good"
"With my
10x+ zoom digitals, I rarely see myself going over 5x. By the way, the G10 only has a 5x optical zoom... not a huge improvement."
Right...so why do you keep going on and on and on about 10x zoom? That doesn't even apply to what we are talking about.
"But lets look at that... the standard zoom for a full frame SLR is often only a 4.5x zoom [for 5D, its a 25-105mm EF lens, and for a 50D (not full frame), its 28-135mm for a 4.8x zoom].
With a 10x zoom, you give up some of your wide angle abilities as well... so getting a 'full tank shot' sometimes means you are standing 10 feet away."
From the above statement I can see you don't even know what 10x zoom means. A 1mm-10mm lens has 10x zoom. A 10-100mm lens has 10x zoom a 60mm-600mm lens has 10x zoom. "10x zoom" have little if nothing to do with wide angle or telephoto. Your statements are ridiculous.
"As for the macro and wide angle... hey, if you dont see the value of it because of how you take photos, thats up to you. Me, I like taking macros of the pods on the glass and the critters on the sand sometimes. I suppose it all has to do with how you want to use it. With my 10x+ zoom digitals, I rarely see myself going over 5x. By the way, the G10 only has a 5x optical zoom... not a huge improvement."
Well the G10 can take pictures of pods and critters on the glass just as well as the LX3. It can take pictures of corals and anemones behind the glass much better than the LX3.
"So, I suppose I dont agree with much anything you said either TitusvileSurfer, but hey, thats okay... I can live with that. For what its worth, if you read that dpreview.com article they agree with me as well:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/Q40...roup/page13.asp"
The more I read what you say the less I believe you know what your saying. I can find a review that follows my logic as well.
http://www.bythom.com/compactchallenge.htm
Conclusion of article:
Unfortunately, no single camera quite hits the nail fully on the head. For my mark, the Canon comes the closest for my types of use, though the Panasonic provides capabilities that I sometimes need and stays in the bag, too. The Nikon will get sold off and I'll go back to waiting for Nikon to design a decent compact.
"look at the F-stop settings... at best they are what... 2.8? Meanwhile the Panasonic can go up to 2.0! Thats a huge advantage.
As it turns out, reef/aquarium photos are more demanding, and 'indoors in the dark' is a challenge that many compact digitals fail."
The ability to go to f/2 is a great asset. And this ability in a point and shoot camera is very impressive. Let me paint a picture for you though. Since you don't believe in DSLR conversion speak, which I find silly, I'll abide to your way of doing things with it. You can only use your lens at f/2 @ 5.1mm. 5.1mm. I'll say it again. You can only use f/2 @ 5.1 mm. Who is going to shoot a tank at 5.1mm?!
"And consider this: the best image quality results are from the LX3, right? Well, with 10.1MP clarity and actual 'usable' clarity at higher ISO levels means that even though you may not have a 10x zoom, you can easily crop the picture in photoshop, paint, etc... and have the exact same photo but at 5MP and still looking good."
Dude...there are no 10x zooms in the realm of discussion. Why are you even saying that? The fact of the matter is this. Lets say the LX3 zooms all the way out and takes a picture of a coral. The lens can't fill the frame so you have to throw away half of the picture. This reduces your resolution for 10mp to 5mp. On the same shot the G10 can zoom in FURTHER than the 5mp image and still have a full glorious 14mp. It can then crop half of that image for a 7mp image, with nearly
3x the magnification of the LX3 and still 2,000,000 more pixles.
If I was photographing the current TOTM with these two cameras, I would bet a lot that the images from the G10 would win a pole for best image on these boards. In some situations the LX3 would be a better camera. For reef tanks I just don't see it.
