Monday, October 20, 2008

On the LX3 - lens vs. software


Clouds over Laajalahti, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today I had little time for photography, except in the morning while riding a bike to work, when I took a few hasty shots of the Laajalahti bay. A bit boring photos, but some practise nevertheless.

There has been a series of interesting discussions going on the Dpreview.com forums on the "Leica" lens of the LX3 with and without the software corrections which the Venus IV engine does in-camera to the jpeg files.

It seems that the lens of the LX3 provides quite a good resolution (in RAW), but has a lot of chromatic aberrations and distortion at the wide end. The software corrects the problems automatically in the jpeg files, but if you want to use the RAW files, there is currently only the Silkypix software which can handle them, and it doesn't do as nice a job of "fixing the flaws".

So, the LX3 is a system with a lens and software which go together, and trying to use the RAW files is quite challenging. Some don't think this is acceptable. For me it is, as the jpeg files are excellent in quality, provided that you set the exposure correctly.

Having a lens which goes to 24 mm, can do macro shots in 1 cm distance, and is attached to a camera with excellent handling - what more can you hope for?

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