Compact or full-frame?

Helsinki harbour, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Today was once again a heavily clouded day. This hastily taken panorama shows a view of the Helsinki harbour area. Gray it is - even after I brightened the photo a bit in LightZone. In fact, it was so dark that someone made (a bit after noon) a firework display from one of the forested areas near horizon.

I had a conversation about cameras with a colleague who is much further developed in photography than I am, doing concert photography etc. He had just bought a Panasonic LX3 to replace his F31fd, and was critical about the image quality compared to a DSLR. In fact, he was planning to move to a full-frame DSLR from his current cropped-sensor system.

I agree that any compact - even the LX3 - is much behind an even entry-level DSLR in noise levels and dynamic range. But what can you do when you want a pocketable camera? Given the limitations I have been happy in using the LX3.

Another topic was using RAW. My colleague said that it took him two years to really start to benefit from RAW files. This was encouraging to me - my problems in progressing seem to be common to everyone. So, I'll keep on experimenting.