Recently a lot of my friends noticed that nowadays I rarely carry my DSLRs around to gatherings or outings. They noticed I only carry one or two weird looking compact cameras with me. Reason is I have found two small compact cameras that I really loved and enjoyed using. One of them is the Panasonic LX3 and the other is an Olympus Pen 2 compact SLD compact camera. The reason they think the compacts look weird is because I always have some kind extension tube, lens shade or Micro 4/3 attachments on the cameras.
Why I love these two compact cameras? Well, as the name implied, they are really compact, light-weight and hey produced pretty good quality pictures up to around ISO 800. I loved taking photos under natural lighting condition, meaning I would try to avoid flash whenever possible. My Panasonic LX3 compact camera comes with a fixed 24mm-60mmf2-2.8 zoom. My Olympus Pen 2 comes with an interchangeable “Pan Cake” 17mmf1.7 lens. As it is a Micro 4/3 camera, the 17mm actually convert into a 34mm wide angle lens in 35mm equivalent.
I have a Nikon to Micro 4/3 attachment that allows me to use my Nikon AI-s lens on the Olympus Pen 2 body. If I need a longer focal length lens, I could use my Nikon 50f1.2, 50f1.4, 85f2, 85f1.4, 105f2.5 or 180f2.8 lenses on the Olympus Pen 2. The 50mm lenses will become 100mm, 85mm lenses become 170mm, 105mm lens becomes 210mm and 180mm lens becomes 360mm on the Olympus camera and still they maintained the large aperture. If you notice, from the abovementioned, I always preferred lenses with small f-stop numbers. These allow me to throw distracting background out-of-focus and makes my subject stand out from the background and take pictures in low light condition.
As these are compact cameras, they come with a lot of interesting effect settings like, HDR, Pin-Hole, High Grain B&W, Crossed Process and Softener effect, plus many more! So if you are tired of the regular picture settings, you can always try the various effect settings to add some interest to your pictures. These two compact cameras come with 12 mega-pixel CCDs, so I could shoot in 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 or 6:6 (Olympus Pen 2 only), and still do some degree of cropping during the processing stage. I hardly made prints nowadays, but I did print some Super 8R (12x8 inches) photos taken at ISO 400 and ISO 800 settings for my friends and I’m really amazed that the pictures are still pretty sharp and the grain very acceptable!
Well, these cameras will not replace my Canon or Nikon work-horses when I am shooting weddings, sports or PR assignments but they are great cameras to have if you want something compact and light-weight for outings or holidays with family and friends. Here are some photos with and without effect settings from my Panasonic LX3 and Olympus Pen 2 cameras. All the photos are taken in available lights.
