- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 17 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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5 out of 5 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Great camera, but very high noise"
Pros: small, fast, cute, image stabilized, widescreen, manual features
Cons: On the steep side, extremely high (but fixable) noise levels
Summary: I've owned this camera for about a week now, and I love it to pieces. It was somewhat expensive at $600 for a compact, but you do get what you pay for: image stabilization and leica lens, 8mp widescreen, lots of manual features. This thing takes fantastic shots especially in good light.
Now, the CNET review hasn't said very much about the noise, so here's the deal: Unless I'm shooting in clear, bright, daylight, this camera produces the worse noise I've ever seen in a digicam. The noise is most noticable in blues, especially dark blues.
But it can be fixed.
Yup, I didn't think noise this bad could be fixed, but there's a program called Neat Image, for $30, which makes a HUGE improvement. It completely removes chromatic noise, and it puts such a big dent in luminance noise that I was absolutely astounded how well my photos looked afterwords. And with NO loss in detail.
But that is an extra expense and post-production hassle, however slight, and on a camera this nice, Panasonic shouldn't make me jump through hoops. I removed the noise successfully resulting in fantastic pix, but that should be THEIR job, not mine, and it should happen in the camera when I take the picture.
That and the price are the only downsides to this camera.
- 2 replies to this review
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Like Ive seen so many other people say "I really want to love this camera" - From the research I did it looks like Panasonic has the same issue with most of their cameras. The Neat Image filter is awesome. I was 2 steps from returning my LX1 but now I totally love it.
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Rasi,
I think you'll find that the reason the camera is noisy at high ISO speeds is not that the CCD is inherently noisy but that they did not include much internal processing. Most cameras mask their own noise internally.
Try a good post-production noise reduction software like "Noise Ninja" and the results are so amazing that you'll realize that this is actually a better camera than you realize. The lens is worth the price of the whole camera.
Gene.
Where to buy
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 (silver):
$499.95
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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