These are probably the darkest reasonably shake-free photographs that I have taken handheld. Exposure 0.4 seconds, ISO 1600, f/2.2. With the LX3 and LX5 I was able to take shake-free handheld photographs even at 0.5 second exposure, but I had to take several shots to have one that was ok. Sometimes I succeeded even with a 0.7 second exposure, but that was pushing it. And I couldn't raise sensitivity above ISO 400 because it got just too noisy.
With these photographs I got way beyond the point that was the limit for LX3/LX5, and this was at ISO 1600. I have been happy with ISO 3200 photographs, so this isn't even the limit where one can go with the LX100. The OIS seems to work at least as well as with the LX3/LX5, because most of the photographs that I took were almost shake-free.
I have had the LX100 for a week now, and so far I have taken 1033 photographs with it. I know there is still a lot to be learned, but the basic things start to be familiar.
I take a lot of photographs, that is the way of photography I learned when I got the LX3. I go for a walk, and while walking I take photographs instinctively, without engaging rational thinking. At least that is the plan, or rather that is the not-plan. Switch on the camera, point, shoot, switch off the camera. Usually I take 2-5 photographs within a second or two, and then I continue walking. Or I take the photographs while I walk, without stopping.
Most of the photographs are failures, of course, but one in ten or twenty has some promise, and those I don't delete. This is not really photography as most people think about it, it is my approach towards a kind of meditative state, or switching off the chatterbox and just seeing what there is to be seen. Usually I don't succeed, but sometimes, rarely, I do.
The amount of photographs I take now is at the other extreme compared to way I worked when I got my first camera, the Minolta XG-1. I went for a walk then also, but I took perhaps one shot during the walk, or maybe none at all. Film was expensive for a teenager. The exception was when I went to a wedding or a funeral with the family, then I could shoot several rolls of film. I liked that then, being an observer, and I like it now.
By the way, I got a featured comment about the LX100 at The Online Photographer, and that has directed quite a lot of traffic to my observations about the LX100.
But even before that, there has been quite a peak happening with the view stats of my Flickr stream. The only explanation I can think of is the terrific interest towards the LX100. My photographs haven't drastically improved within a week.
I have used Flickr since 2008, and the view stats during the last week are about 10% of those during the previous six years in total. In fact, my photographs at Flickr have been soon viewed almost as many times as is the total amount of photographs I have taken with the LX3 and LX5.
(Posting title is from the poem Silent Film by Kurt Brown.)
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