Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Panasonic LX3 and ISO 800 night photography


Night bridge, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

This photo shows how Panasonic LX3 behaves at night, 0.1 s exposure at ISO 800 sensitivity, at full f/2 aperture. If you go pixel-peeping you are not going to see anything pretty, but in a smaller size the result is not bad. Especially as it was taken handheld using the fully automated iA mode. I must say that I was a bit surprised that the result was so nice.

Another positive surprise was that my old flash unit (a cheap manual one) worked perfectly with the LX3. I just plugged it in and the LX3 recognized that there is an external flash in place. My flash is a 25-year old unit using four AA batteries, the name is "Popular 30 THB".

I used this flash unit quite a lot with my Minolta XG-1, in weddings as well as funerals, and even though the unit was cheap, the head can be rotated so that the light bounces off the ceiling.

Good! Now I don't need to go and buy a new external flash.

Update: I have now taken 350 photos with the LX3, some using the internal flash unit, and the battery is still half full. Not bad at all.

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