Your beauty is beyond compare

Green 1

Green 2

Green 3

The photographs were taken on July 2nd, when I had no idea of the dry and hot summer ahead.

An updated version of the LX100 camera was announced recently. I'm using a second LX100. With the first I took over 115,000 photographs before I had to buy a new one (because of the dust problem). With the second one I have taken over 105,000 photographs and the dust problem hasn't yet got bad. Before the LX100 cameras I had an LX3 (203,000 photographs taken) and an LX5 (186,000 photographs taken). Thus I have taken over 609,000 photographs with Panasonic cameras so far. The LX100 II camera seems to be a competent upgrade, and if the current LX100 breaks down I know what camera to buy.

(Posting title is from the song Jolene by Dolly Parton.)

Stare back at the grounds

Kivistö 1

Kivistö 2

The photographs were taken at Kivistö on July 9th.

As I wrote here earlier, my LX100 (bought in October 2014) got worn out after 115,000 photographs taken with it. It developed a serious dust problem, among other signs of wear and tear:

• the control wheel in the back was either unresponsive or sometimes activated by itself, and the middle button was often unreliable
  
• the zoom switch was unresponsive
  
• the lens got stuck (didn't retract properly or refused to extend properly), generating a "zoom error", this could be fixed by pressing the lens back towards the camera (sometimes quite a bit of force was needed)
  

All in all I have taken over half a million photographs with Panasonic compact cameras. In addition to the 115,00 photographs taken with the LX100, I took 203,000 photographs with the Panasonic LX3 (it broke in a thunderstorm), and 186,000 photographs with the LX5.

With the LX5 there were similar problems as with the LX100 (the control wheel stopped responding), so this wasn't quite so surprising. The LX3 was really something in terms of durability, it had no problems at all until the thunderstorm where it got completely soaked.

It remains to be seen how well the new LX100 lasts.

Today I printed the first photograph with the new printer, Epson XP-760. The photograph was a family snapshot, printed on Premium Plus photo paper, and the result was much better than with my old HP printer. But I do so little printing these days that it may not matter much, though.

(Posting title is from the poem The Admiral Benbow by James McMichael.)

I have cleared this space for you, for you, for you

Red 1

Red 2

Red 3

Red 4

The photographs were taken on October 24th, north of lake Myllyjärvi, enjoying the autumn colors.

I commuted by bicycle today. There was a little bit of frost and ice on the road, but mostly the road surface was quite dry, and there wasn't much need for the studded winter tires.

In the front I have a Nokian Hakka SW240 studded tire, which has 240 studs, and in the back a Nokian Hakka A10 tire, which has only 72 studs. The SW240 tire has lasted a long time, but a Nokian Hakka W106 tire which I used in the back lasted only a short while before breaking apart. I hope A10 will be better, at least it seems that the studs are better positioned so that the tire may last longer when it will be mostly used on asphalt roads.

Tomorrow the weather will be colder, -7 °C in the morning.

I had a look at photographs taken in January, 2010, almost six years ago. I was quite surprised of the quality and content of the photographs, they felt better that those I’m taking right now. One reason may be that there was snow in the photographs, and I enjoy the snow season, it inspires me.

On the other hand, the camera I was using was the Panasonic LX3, which got me really interested into taking photographs, and I think the curiosity and interest in learning is visible in the photographs. It may be that I’m nowadays a bit too passive, a bit too jaded, and it shows in the photographs.

(Posting title is from the poem sweet reader, flanneled and tulled by Olena Kalytiak Davis.)

The colors of this industrial autumn

Dark 1

Dark 2

It starts to be the dark season once again. The length of day is still almost 9 1/2 hours, so it is not that bad, but when the leaves fall off trees, the landscape becomes much more dark. Today it rained, and the bicycle got extremely dirty. It was also slippery because of wet leaves covering the road surface.

I have taken over 60,000 photographs with the Panasonic LX100. That is quite little compared to the 400,000 photographs taken with the LX3/LX5, but it is still quite a lot for one year. I got my hands on the LX100 on October 31st, 2014, and it has been mostly good.

Well, there have been some disappointments as well. One of these is the macro mode, which quite often focuses on the background if the subject in front doesn't cover enough of the area. When taking pictures of plants etc., it is often required to first focus on something larger at the same distance, for example the hand, and then point the camera to the subject.

Another disappointment is the rear dial around the four-way controller in the back of the camera. It has stopped working properly; either it doesn't work at all, or then it works too eagerly. In a way this is not a new thing, as I had a similar problem with the LX5. The click wheel stopped working, probably due to dust.

With the LX100 the rear dial has become sometimes unresponsive, or then extremely sensitive to movement, so that it jumps to a random position when one touches it even a little bit. So, it is almost impossible to use it for changing settings, and one easily changes some settings when touching the dial by accident. For example, when using the P mode, one changes the combination of aperture and shutter speed via the rear dial, and these setting easily get changed by mistake.

(Posting title is from the poem The Waste Carpet by William Matthews.)

And their voices become one

Street 1

Street 2

Street 3

Street 4

These photographs were taken on March 30th and 31st in Helsinki.

I have been taking less photographs with the Panasonic LX100 than I was taking with the LX5 and LX3. The reason is a somewhat different shooting style. With the LX5/LX3 I was often "shooting from the hip", raising the camera and taking half a dozen photographs in quick succession, trying to rely on instinct and not on rational thinking. With the LX100 I'm using more and more often the EVF, and this means a slower and more deliberate way of taking photographs. Often I take just one photograph where I would have taken several with the LX5/LX3.

In five months I have taken 25,000 photographs with the LX100. I'm keeping more of the photographs than I used to. Earlier I deleted 90-95% of the photographs when going through them in Aperture, but now I find that I may delete only 80% and save the rest. The more deliberate shooting style is the main reason for this.

I bought a JJC Auto Open and Close Lens Cap for the LX100. The price was half of the Panasonic automatic lens cap (DMW-LFAC1), and this one allows a filter to be mounted on the lens. So far it has worked very well indeed. Although I have become so used to the normal lens cap that I often try to open the lens cap manually until I realise there is no need.

I walked for 2 h 25 min in Nuuksio today, starting from Velskola. I walked around lake Kattilajärvi, and visited lake Kilpilampi, which I haven't done before. It was a good day for walking, as the sun was only partially hidden by a thin cloud cover.

(Posting title is from the song Lene Májjá by Mari Boine.)

Something, in the ineffable clips of light

Zero 1

Zero 2

Zero 3

Zero 4

Zero 5

Today I attended a seminar on open science and research which ended with a panel discussion. The discussion was a delight to follow, the best one I have seen and heard in years. The panelists listened to each other and to the questions from audience, thought carefully what they were saying, and seemed to have fun. All were top people in their professions, and even though the questions asked were complex, all were tackled with finesse and clear vision. I wish all work weeks ended like this.

Yesterday I wrote about how the view count of my photographs at Flickr grew by one or two orders of magnitude since getting the Panasonic LX100 camera. This doesn't mean that all my photographs are popular. Almost 10% of them have zero views, which is a bit depressing.

So, here you see somewhat older photographs, all with zero views according to Flickr statistics. These photographs were taken with the Panasonic LX3 between October 4th, 2008, and January 21st, 2009. At that time I hadn't yet grown into square (aka 1:1 aspect ratio).

I commuted by bicycle on four days this week. This year I have so far got 862 km.

(Posting title is from the poem Going to Zero by Peter Balakian.)

All I could see from where I stood

Dark 1

Dark 2

Dark 3

Dark 4

Dark 5

The LX100 allows to take handheld photographs in the dark, where the human eye has problems seeing anything, especially colours. Usually I haven't pushed the LX100 as far as it can go, using it in conditions in which even the LX3 and LX5 would have been able to produce some kinds of photographs.

But during the last week, when the snow melted away, there were nights when I did push the LX100 to the limit.

Here are photographs taken on January 2nd, 2015. I used the widest setting of the lens, 24 mm equiv., at f/1.7. The length of exposure varied between 0.4...1.6 seconds, and sensitivity was either ISO 800 or ISO 1600. All photographs were taken handheld, which was difficult because we had wind gusts up to 20 m/s, and the wind shook the photographer rather unpredictably. You can see this in how the wind shook the trees in the photographs.

The third photograph in the series was taken at ISO 1600, 1.6 second exposure, which is quite challenging for a handheld photograph. There is camera shake, of course, but nevertheless I was surprised that the photograph is somewhat usable.

I took several photographs at each place, or course, but most of them were quite sharp, and the one I selected to keep was determined mostly due to the composition, not how sharp the photograph was.

(Posting title is from the poem Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay.)

The reflection is its own blurred dream

Pond 1

Pond 2

Pond 3

Pond 4

I did some walking today, over two hours. The flu symptoms are easing, and I got a full night's sleep, which feels good.

These photographs were taken yesterday evening, testing out how the LX100 performs when it is dark. Compared to the LX3 and LX5 it is astonishing how capable the camera is. These were taken using a mini-tripod: 1 second exposure at ISO 1600. I have managed to take with the LX100 handheld photographs at 0.5...0.8 second exposure so that the results are reasonably blur-free. It is possible to explore dark things which were out of reach of the older cameras.

(Posting title is from the poem Winter Journal: Fish Rises, Dark Brown Muscle Turns Over by Emily Wilson.)

The two, too-big eyes that were speechless with sorrow

Dark 1

Dark 2

Fallen 1

Fallen 2

Water 1

Water 2

There are now too many photographs. Here are three pairs of them.

I have gone through two charges of the LX100 battery, taking 2316 photographs. I have done a lot of tweaking the settings and going through menus, so it is apparent that one charge of the battery lasts for something like 1200-1500 photographs, which is about the same as with the LX5.

Two times I have now run into a problem of the LX100 not switching off. This may be due to battery running low. Today it happened a second time. The text "Saving..." got stuck on the screen, and the camera didn't switch off even when I turned the power switch to the off position.

Finally I had to take the battery out to switch off the camera. This is probably a software problem, to be fixed in a firmware update. Similar things happened with the LX3 when I got it in 2008.

I'm not yet used to the LX100 photographs. There are differences compared to the LX5, and I may need to resort to tweaking the settings a bit. In a way the LX100 photographs are too good, I have grown to like the imperfections of the LX3 and the LX5. And I did a lot of experimentation to find just the right settings with these cameras. It is still early to say what kind of settings prove to be best with the LX100.

My Flickr stream has got 100x the traffic there was before getting the LX100. My photographs haven't improved, quite the opposite, but the interest in the LX100 seems to be almost excessive so that even my photographs, which are rather far from the usually popular ones get a lot of views. I don't believe this will last long.

(Posting title is from the poem Switch by Seán Ó Ríordáin, translated by David Wheatley.)

I call this song of needful love my voice

Swamp 1

Swamp 2

Swamp 3

Swamp 4

Yesterday I walked for 2 hours 15 minutes in Tremanskärr swamps and forests. There was still a little bit of snow left, which changed the landscape.

I'm learning how to use the Panasonic LX100 camera, and most of the things I have learned are good.

I like using the EVF for composing a photograph. The exposure compensation dial is easily turned with the thumb while looking through the EVF, and you see the result in the live histogram display. This is great in situations where there are big differences in dark and light parts of the image.

With the LX5 I had set up different EV values in the custom settings, one for snow and one for not-snow, but with the LX100 I don't need that. In fact, it seems that there is much more scope of catching the light and the dark with the LX100, and I don't need to be as careful as with the LX3/LX5. I need some more practise with this.

Yesterday I had gloves on, and the usability of the LX100 proved to be good, even excellent. The on-off switch is easily operated with the gloves on, with a little bit of practise. The exposure compensation dial turns easily when using a glove, and even the quick menu can be used with the gloves. Much better than with the LX3 and the LX5.

Later yesterday afternoon I changed studded winter tires to the car, just in case the weather turns cold next week. This time none of the bolts got stuck. Also, there were plenty of other chores to take care of.

During the night my throat got sore. My voice is almost non-existent today, and I don't feel so good. A little bit of flu, apparently.

(Posting title is from the poem My Voice by Rafael Campo.)

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

Leaves

Lake

I'm learning new things about the LX100 all the time. Steve wrote at the comments of the LX100 observations piece that when the camera is switched on and the OIS system is working, there is a low hum, at the threshold of hearing.

I hadn't realized that the hum was there. I guess I was focused on seeing, not hearing. You can hear the hum when it is otherwise silent and you lift the camera to near your ear. Rather pleasing sound, it you ask me. It almost feels as if the camera was alive, some tiny creature breathing inside.

This reminded me of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels and the iconograph: "Unlike a normal camera, the iconograph contains a tiny imp who quickly paints the pictures (also called iconographs) of the subject at hand."

Further, I remembered the day when I got the LX3. Taking the camera out of the package for the first time I noticed that the lens rattled inside the camera. I was worried that it may be broken, until I understood that this is the way it has to be for the lens to work.

Later I paid no attention to this. And the camera worked for over 200,000 photographs. Finally the camera broke in a thunderstorm, and the lens refused to extend properly. Even then my LX3 was of use: Francisco used it to resurrect his broken LX3.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to find out what is the connection of the title to the Discworld novels. If you are a fan, you may know it already.

(Posting title is from the poem Warning by Jenny Joseph.)

Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt

Wet 1

Wet 2

Wet 3

As I mentioned, I have now the problem of a lot of photographs from which to select those for the postings here. I take 100-200 photographs daily, of which I delete 90-95%, but still there are quite a few left.

I'm slowly getting familiar with the controls of the LX100. With the LX3 and LX5, when using each of them for three years and taking about 200 000 photographs, I got so familiar with the controls that taking a photograph became instinctive, I didn't need to engage rational thinking often at all.

With the LX100 is is now different, I need to check where the controls are, how to switch on the camera, how to check that I have the right settings for the occasion, and so on. However, because the LX100 is better suited for "the manual approach" to photography, I expect that I'll be even more instinctive with the LX100 than I ever was with the LX3 and LX5, after I have used the camera for a year or two.

(Posting title is from the poem The Poet by Amy Lowell.)

To remember their strange light in many a dream

Colors 1

Colors 2

Colors 3

Colors 4

Colors 5

I'm posting here photographs taken with the Nokia E7, as a reminder that I didn't have a real camera for two and a half months, until I got the Panasonic LX100 day before yesterday.

Mobile phones are eating away the market of the low-end-compact, and this is why the LX100 is significant: it delivers high quality, excellent control, and the feel of a real camera in a small package. Low-end it is not.

I wrote a long posting about the LX100 and posted some close-up photographs, so I'm not going into the details here.

It will take some time to really get used to the LX100, and to fine tune the settings, but it is already evident that there is a lot of scope for a photographer to develop with this camera.

With the LX3 and LX5 I was pushing the envelope, trying to get photographs which I knew would probably fail, but the LX100 handles many such situations without problems: fast and reliable focusing, using ISO 3200 in the dark, control of depth-of-field, etc. I need to learn new things to really make use of the LX100.

Update: I edited my postings about using the LX100 into more logical order and made a separate observations piece out of it. I may update these observations when I gain more experience of using the LX100.

(Posting title is from the poem Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)

All you have to do is take me

Close 1

Close 2

Here are two closeups taken with the Panasonic LX100 yesterday night. It was already dark outside when I fetched the camera from the Smartpost parcel point. Setting it up took some time, so I didn't have much time yesterday to test the LX100.

By the way, the shooting experience piece at Dpreview is to be recommended, it gives quite a nice description of how the LX100 feels in use. Richard Butler also refers to the LX3, which was the camera that really got me started with photography.

My first digital camera was the Canon Digital Ixus 400, which was good enough but not really inspiring. And my first camera was the Olympus XG-1 SLR, which was good, but that was a long time ago in the age of the 35 mm film. With the LX3 and the LX5 I took altogether over 389000 photographs, and with the Ixus 400 some more, so that I have crossed the threshold of 400000 photographs taken with a digital camera.

When I switched on the LX100 for the first time...

Well, at first a couple of words about how the camera was packaged. There was a thick pile of user guides in various languages, a cd (which I haven't looked into yet), and cables, battery, charger, etc. It took a little effort to find the string which fastens the lens cap to the camera, and some time to charge the battery, and install a SDHC card, but then I was ready to go.

When I switched on the LX100 for the first time, the click was satisfying, and I didn't need to look into the manual at all. Not that I would have done it anyway, "try it out" is my motto. The lens extends out really far - and it turns out that the lens cap is fixed to the part that extends, so having the lens cap on doesn't prevent the camera from turning on. The string is conveniently just long enough for this.

Speaking of the on-off switch, the camera is really easy to turn on, but switching it off takes some practice, and may not be so easy with gloves on. That remains to be seen. But all the controls felt well made, robust, and probably they will be quite durable in use.

The LCD is good and provides a nice amount of information, and the colors seem to match what you see on the computer. But I haven't used the LCD in daylight yet, this remains to be seen.

The controls feel natural, at least if one has used a SLR or a DSLR, but they are different from the LX3 and LX5 so that it will take some time to get familiar. For zooming I have mostly used the zoom switch, not the ring around the lens, but this may change in time.

I did a little bit of tweaking of the settings, and here I must say that a touch screen would be great to have, using the buttons felt a bit counter-intuitive in some places. But I soon got used to the way one should navigate through the menus.

I tried to use the wifi for transferring the photographs to the iMac, but this didn't work yet; I guess I have to look into the user guide here. I tried giving the wifi password to the LX100, but it didn't manage to connect. In the end I transferred the photographs by using a SDHC card reader.

Update: I managed to set up a wifi connection using the instructions given by Arago at Dpreview forums.

For the photographs so far, I have been using the normal film mode, dropping saturation down by -1 and sharpness by -1. There are all kinds of filters one could use (including dynamic b&w), but I haven't looked into this yet.

It was dark outside when I did a little walk with the camera, so I used higher ISO settings, typically 3200, which doesn't seem to make much of a difference in terms of noise.

And by the way, the camera is really silent when you put it into the silent mode, which I like a lot. The only noise you hear is very low, due to focusing. I think I'll continue using this setting.

And speaking of focusing, this camera is really fast. In fact, focusing happens almost without lag. The difference compared to the LX5 is rather dramatic. Well, I must admit that when I went outside and it was really dark, focusing close proved to be difficult, and handheld macro shots didn't work, but that wasn't a surprise. If there was a little bit of light in the frame, focusing was immediate for subjects a little bit farther away.

The camera fits into coat pockets, but there is enough size and weight difference to feel in the handling, compared to the LX3 and LX5. My initial feeling is that I like the size and weight, but I may have to shop for coats with somewhat bigger pockets in the future.

I tried out the EVF, which at first seemed to be somewhat difficult to use. But now I'm growing into it. In fact, it may be that I will take most of the photographs using the EVF, it is that good. Have to see how it works in daylight situations.

Yesterday I ordered a second battery, one made by Duracell, which should be compatible, at least I hope so; the price difference was remarkable compared to Panasonic originals. Also, I ordered a class 10 SDHC card to be able to import the photographs faster into the computer; my old class 4 card is too slow given the number of photographs I'll probably take with the LX100.

Well, what else is there to be said. I have started going through the settings of the camera, and there are plenty of things to be explored. I need to check out how the focus point setting and focusing in general works, as there are a lot of alternatives. I haven't tried out manual focusing yet either. Also, it may be that I need to fine-tune the film mode to get the look I want to have, even though the results are promising.

Also, custom settings are available, and I started using them. I set custom settings as the function of the fn2 button to make it easy to change between the settings C1, C2, C3 and none. Currently I have ISO 1600 normal color settins in C1, ISO 1600 b&w in C2, and ISO 200 normal color settings in C3. Also, the fourth setting is not using custom settings, as the camera also remembers the way it is set up.

The logic of the camera is different from the LX3 and LX5 because of the dedicated controls for aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation, but I think I'll soon adapt. I will be using aperture priority mostly, but I need to remember to change exposure compensation when needed.

I have put up the live histogram and guidelines on the display, and this seems to work well. There is also an electronic level, which I set up in fn1, but it may be that I won't be using this much.

It will take some time to get used to the camera, and to the look of the photographs. But my first experiences of taking photographs in the dark yesterday evening suggest that using IS0 3200 is not a problem. Or in fact, ISO 3200 is the solution, meaning that I will be able to take handheld photographs at 75 mm equiv. even when it is dark outside.

The LX100 is at least three stops better that the LX5 is when shooting in the dark. This is promising given the long dark winter months we have now ahead here in Finland. The image stabilization seems to work well, so it may be that ISO 3200 is even a bit too high.

Also, it seems that there is more room for tweaking the ISO 3200 jpeg files than there ever was at ISO 400 with the LX5. Not that I'm interesting in doing a lot of post-processing, but sometimes it helps to lighten up the shadows a bit.

(Posting title is from the poem Advertisement by Wisława Szymborska, translated By Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.)