Camera Reviews / Panasonic Cameras / Lumix Point & Shoot i Review

20.10 Megapixels	3.00x zoom	1 inch size sensor

Panasonic LX10 Review

by Jeremy Gray, Zig Weidelich and William Brawley
Preview originally posted: 09/19/2016

Updates:
10/31/2016: First Shots posted!
11/22/2016: Field Test posted!
01/06/2017: Performance test results posted
03/07/2017: Image Quality Comparison and Print Quality posted
03/08/2017: Review Conclusion posted

There’s a new entrant in the highly competitive 1" sensor travel camera market, the Panasonic LX10 (also known as the LX15 in some regions and LX9 in Japan). This premium compact camera combines a 20.1-megapixel 1"-type sensor with a Leica-branded 24-72mm equivalent lens that has an impressive f/1.4-2.8 maximum aperture.

Panasonic LX10 offers a seamless, premium body and clean design

Panasonic has placed an emphasis on creating a compact camera with a premium feel and high-quality construction and design. Aimed at enthusiasts, the LX10 has a relatively large aperture control ring around the lens. There’s also a control ring which can serve as a focus ring. On the top deck of the camera body is a rear dial. Both the control ring and rear dial’s default functions change depending on the shooting mode of the camera but can be customized to provide control over settings such as zoom, ISO, Photo Style and more.

The body itself is described as a “seamless metal body” and its rings and dials are constructed of knurled aluminum. To ensure the seamless construction, the top panel is actually a part of the camera’s front panel, which in addition to providing a cleaner look also makes the camera stronger. (As an interesting aside, despite its complex shape, the LX10 front/top panel is press forged rather than injection molded, which is unusual.) The camera is quite small with dimensions of 4.15 x 2.36 x 1.65 inches (105.5 x 60 x 42 mm) which makes it slightly smaller than the Canon G7X II and slightly larger than the Sony RX100 IV. With a battery and memory card installed, the LX10 weighs in at a light 10.9 ounces (310 grams).

The top deck of the camera has a clean, well-organized layout. On the left is a manual pop-up flash and on the right is the mode dial, shutter release, zoom lever, movie record button and the rear command dial. The mode dial has intelligent auto, program, aperture priority, shutter speed priority, manual, movie, and custom modes in addition to a few more creative options, such as panorama, scene and creative control modes. Like the Canon G7X II and Sony RX100 V, there's no flash hot shoe. And unlike the RX100 V there's no built-in EVF, with no provision for an external viewfinder.

The rear of the camera is dominated by the LX10's 3-inch tilting LCD monitor. The 180-degree tilting display has 1,040K dots and touchscreen functionality. To the right of the display there are ten buttons, including five for navigation (four directional buttons and a central 'set' button). Around the outside of the directional buttons are four circular buttons including playback and Quick Menu buttons. There's a 4K Photo button located on the top right of the camera's back. The four directional buttons also serve as focus mode, exposure compensation, white balance and drive mode.

Fast built-in lens hopes to separate the LX10 from the competition

The built-in optic has an actual focal length of 8.8-26.4mm which provides a 35mm equivalent focal length of 24-72mm. This is as wide as the RX100 V and slightly longer while it’s shorter at the telephoto end than the G7X II. The lens has a very fast f/1.4 aperture when shooting at 24mm and a still good f/2.8 maximum aperture at 72mm.

The LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMILUX-branded zoom lens is in a six-component configuration which Panasonic has designed to be compact despite the f/1.4 max aperture. Constructed with 11 elements in 9 groups, the 24-72mm equivalent lens has four dual-sided aspherical elements, two dual-sided aspherical ED elements and one UHR (Ultra High Refractive) element to help control chromatic aberration even when wide open.

One of the main features of the Lumix LX10 is its emphasis on creating high-quality bokeh. The bokeh results are stated to be achieved via a "unique lens mold technology." Compact camera lenses can struggle with creating smooth bokeh, with out of focus areas often displaying lines and sharp edges. The Panasonic LX10 attempts to better replicate the soft bokeh most often seen in larger interchangeable camera lenses.

The lens' iris is a 9-blade design with a minimum aperture of f/11 across the zoom range and while there is no built-in ND filter, at least the LX10 has an electronic shutter with a top speed of 1/16,000 second (the mechanical shutter tops out at 1/4,000 second).

Macro shooters will be interested to hear that the Panasonic LX10 can focus as close as 3 centimeters (~1.2") at the wide end of the lens, compared to 5cm for the RX100 V and G7X II.

The Lumix LX10 features what Panasonic calls 5-axis Hybrid OIS+ which combines sensor-shift image stabilization with optical image stabilization. When recording 4K and high-speed video, the lens provides the only stabilization.

Overall this is a very interesting built-in lens due to its fast f/1.4 aperture at 24mm and Panasonic’s design philosophy of creating a lens that is both sharp and capable of rendering pleasing out of focus areas in an image.

20.1 megapixel 1-inch sensor continues to be a sensor of choice

The 20.1-megapixel 1-inch sensor is a Live MOS sensor. Compared to the 1/1.7-inch sensor found in the LX7, the LX10 doubles the megapixels, has about three times larger effective image area, 1.6 times larger pixels and an additional stop of high ISO sensitivity. Speaking of ISO sensitivity, the Panasonic LX10's native ISO range is 125-12,800 and it can be extended to 80-25,600.

LX offers Lightspeed AF and post focus feature

Autofocus is provided by Panasonic’s Lightspeed-branded AF system which incorporates the company’s depth from defocus (DFD) technology. The DFD tech calculates focus areas from a maximum of 49 areas. In addition to the 49-area autofocus mode, the LX10 also offers face/eye detection, tracking, custom multi, 1-area and pinpoint focus modes. You can also utilize the LX10’s touchscreen display for selecting the focus area. Additional focus features include focus peaking, low light AF and Starlight AF.

In addition to its standard assortment of autofocus features, the Panasonic LX10 offers post focus and focus stacking as part of the camera's 4K Photo features. For those unfamiliar with 4K Photo, it leverages the 4K-capable performance of a Panasonic camera and produces 4K still images (8 megapixels) from 4K video shot at 30 frames per second. Post focus is a neat feature which allows you to select the focus area after shooting a burst of images with a shifting focus distance. After shooting, you select the desired focus area and thereby select a single frame from the burst. On the other hand, focus peaking combines the 4K Photo frames into a single image with greater depth of field.

Panasonic hopes the LX10 is user-friendly yet powerful enough for enthusiasts

The Panasonic LX10 comes with a standard assortment of shooting modes, including both fully automatic and fully manual shooting modes. Exposure metering is provided via Intelligent Multiple, center-weighted and spot metering options and exposure compensation of up to +/-5 EVs is available. There is also AE bracketing available with a max of +/- 3 EVs with 3, 5 and 7 shot options. In addition to exposure bracketing, there is also aperture, focus and white balance bracketing available.

Photo Styles include standard, vivid, natural, monochrome, scenery, portrait and custom varieties. For adding a bit more creativity to your images, you can also utilize Creative Control. Creative Control provides users with a variety of filters that can be applied to images, such as expressive, retro, old days, silky monochrome and much more. In total there are 22 creative control mode filters.

I already touched on some of the focusing features available via 4K Photo, but you can also shoot 4K Photos in an assortment of burst modes. 4K Burst lets you capture 4K Photo frames (8 megapixel images) at 30fps for a maximum of 15 minutes. 4K Burst S/S is similar but starts and stops when you press the shutter release. Finally, there's 4K Pre-Burst which constantly records but saves only the 30 frames preceding and following your shutter press.

Speaking of burst modes, the Panasonic LX10 can shoot full-resolution 20-megapixel frames at up 10 frames per second with single-shot AF, and at up to 6 fps with continuous AF. Buffer depth is quite generous when shooting best quality JPEGs at 80 frames according to our tests, but when shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG frames, the buffer depth drops to 14 and 13 frames respectively. A Super High-speed mode shoots 50 fps using the electronic shutter, but at a much lower 5-megapixel resolution. See our Performance page for details.

4K video, live cropping and more provide a strong features list for LX10

4K video is a big part of Panasonic's offerings with the LX10. In addition to standard 4K UHD video recording at 30fps, the camera also provides users with 4K Live Cropping. By utilizing the full 3840 x 2160 4K UHD frame, you can pan and zoom a Full HD crop around the 4K frame. While the camera is in a fixed position, you can use touch to move the 1080p frame around the 4K frame, creating a 1080p video file with smooth panning or zooming.

Full HD video has additional features besides Live Cropping including slow motion video and 5-axis image stabilization with tilt correction. You can record Full HD video at 120 frames per second. 5-axis Hybrid OIS+ compensates for five types of movement – of course – but the LX10 can also automatically keep your video footage level by utilizing its built-in sensor that detects if the camera is tilted.

4K videos are recorded at 30p or 24p in MP4 format and have a 15 minute time limit per recording. Full HD video is available at 60p, 24p or 60i in AVCHD format and at 60p or 30p in MP4 format, and HD is available at 30p in MP4. AVCHD has a time limit of 29:59 but MP4 format at Full HD or HD resolution is not time limited (other than by card capacity or by internal temperature). High-speed Full HD videos are recorded at 120p and play back at 30p, in MP4 format.

The best of the rest: Assorted features, ports and battery life

Other features of the LX10 include Panasonic's distinct Live Composite mode. This mode allows you to combine multiple exposures into a single frame, such as consecutive shots of fireworks, by automatically superimposing the brightest parts of up to 40 selected frames. There is also range merging. This mode allows you to easily shoot light painting by superimposing the brightest parts of frames in between selected first and last frames.

If you’d rather artificially light your night scenes, the LX10 has a built-in flash that is rated with a nearly 40-foot range (12.1m) at the wide end of the lens and a roughly 20-foot (6m) range at the telephoto end with Auto ISO. The LX10 also includes Clear Retouch, in-camera RAW processing and built-in Wi-Fi functionality.

The Panasonc LX10 relies on SD/SDHC/SDXC cards for recording images and videos with support for UHS-I types. The camera includes a built-in stereo microphone and a mono speaker. Ports include Micro-HDMI Type-D and USB 2.0 Micro-B. You can utilize the USB port to charge the camera, meaning you don’t need to remove the Li-ion battery pack to charge it. The Lumix LX10's battery is rated for 260 shots (CIPA standard) per charge.

Pricing and availability

The Panasonic Lumix LX10 began shipping in mid-November 2016 for a suggested retail price just under US$700.

 

In the Box

The Panasonic LX10 retail package contains the following items:

• Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10 digital camera
• DMW-BLH7 7.2V 680mAh lithium-ion battery pack
• AC/USB adapter
• USB cable
• Hand strap
• One-year limited warranty

 

Recommended Accessories

• Large capacity SDHC/SDXC memory card. We recommend at least 32GB capacity, with a minimum UHS Speed Class 3 rating for recording 4K video.
• Extra battery pack for extended outings (~US$45)
• Small camera case