Kristin

Lumix LX5

This is Gail's cousin Kent's adorable daughter, Kristin. We saw them at a party last Sunday. We sat at a table next to some large windows so there was plenty of good, ambient daylight for candid portraits.

So we're continuing to put the LX5 through its paces, and so far I have been very pleased with its performance, considering that it is a small-sensor compact.

I took a series of pictures of Kristin and this is the exact expression that I was after. I finally got it on the fourth shot. Children are so difficult to photograph. They are in constant motion, but when you tell them to smile and pose for the camera, you will often get a forced smile. I prefer a pose like this one, with a natural, relaxed expression and big eyes looking directly at the camera.

The LX5 was set for totally silent operation, no focus confirmation beep, no simulated shutter sound. That's how I like it. Because the camera has no mechanical shutter, its operation is totally silent, and unobtrusive which is an advantage in certain situations like this one.

In my opinion, the image held up very well to some significant cropping that I had to do in order to remove some distracting objects from the shot. The LX5's auto-exposure was very close to spot-on so I did not have to do much editing on this at all, except for the cropping, some color temperature adjustment (as per usual with Lumix images) and a little noise reduction from the RAW output. The big issue that I had with other tiny sensor P&S cameras is that some only save files in .jpg, with the resulting compression artifacts visible in even the lowest ISO settings. By using RAW output, the resulting files are really nice and workable. In the LX5's case, it seems that its RAW capability combined with excellent optics make for a very good combination.

--Warren