nüvifone™. The navigation phone.
CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 10/26/2006
- Released on: 08/21/2006
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 also uses a 10-megapixel CCD as the G7 does. There's one significant difference in the implementation, however: the LX2's sensor has a native 16:9 aspect ratio instead of 4:3. To produce 4:3 or 3:2 aspect photos, the LX2 simply uses the relevant fraction of the sensor. This enables the LX2 to produce higher-resolution 16:9 images than would be possible with a standard 10-megapixel sensor. (It would require a 13-megapixel 4:3 aspect sensor to generate 10-megapixel 16:9 images.) Conversely, the resolution of the LX2's 4:3 images is only 7 megapixels.
Which all begs the question: what do we gain by jumping to 10 megapixels? These are extremely small pixels, which equal extremely high noise. Panasonic's noise-suppression algorithms work pretty well at high ISO speeds--400 to as high as 1,600--but at low ISO sensitivities such as 100, the images are quite noisy. The good news is that they print better than they look onscreen, though you'd be well-advised to avoid serious crops.
In all other respects, the LX2's photos are quite decent, with excellent white balance, exposure, dynamic range, and color saturation. There are few optical artifacts, most notably fringing, and though there's a bit of lens distortion at the wide end of the 28mm-to-112mm-equivalent, 4X zoom lens, it's relatively symmetrical and fairly unobtrusive. Movies don't quite measure up, though. They're full of compression artifacts, and you can't zoom while you're shooting.
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Where to buy
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2S (silver):
$549.95
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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