Lumix LX3 First Impressions
My primary camera of choice for the past four years has been my trusty Nikon D70s. It’s a wonderful camera and I’m not getting rid of it any time soon but because of its size/weight it’s not always ideal for carrying around and taking quick snaps or shooting video (impossible). At the other end of the spectrum my iPhone’s camera isn’t up to the job of anything other than grainy low resolution photos – good enough for making a visual note of something but nothing more.
Photo by Daniel Y. Go
Enter the Lumix LX3, a new high end compact from Panasonic which has been getting rave reviews. I’ve been wanting to get a compact for sometime but none offered quite the right balance of manual control, superior picture quality and HD video (more on this later). The LX3 sports an impressive Leica DC Vario-Summicron 24-60mm f/2.0-2.8 (35mm equivalent) lens, 10.1 megapixel censor, choice of shooting aspect ratios (4:3, 3:2, 16:9), full manual control, RAW recording, and the ability to shoot 720p HD video at 24fps.
Photo by Daniel Y. Go
Unfortunately it didn’t arrive in time for my previous weekend excursion so I’ve not had much opportunity to put it through its paces fully yet but my first impressions are excellent. The body feels robust and the controls intuitive – whilst it came with a weighty manual I only read the first couple of pages to get up and running. The screen is bright and the are menus easy to navigate.
I’ve been particularly impressed with its ability to shoot in low light – the above shot was taken through the window of my apartment hand-held on auto.
I also wont feel like such an idiot getting out my camera to take snaps of my food now!
Dapeng Fortress
This weekend I joined my company’s photography society on at trip to the little known Dapeng Fortress, about 55km east of the city centre. Dapeng Fortress is a small but well preserved ancient town which was built in the Ming Dynasty (1394) to protect the southern coast from Japanese Pirates and later in 1838 bore the brunt of the British naval invasion (thus beginning the Opium Wars).
What makes the town even more fascinating is that it’s still lived in, mainly by migrant workers, with everyday life taking place amongst 600 years of history. The narrow streets contain countless hidden architectural gems from ornately carved wooden beams to beautiful door paintings and a number of fresh water wells (still in use).
Most of the town is in reasonable condition although work is being undertaken to restore and maintain some areas under its state protected status. It well worth taking a few hours to wander around and might just be the perfect getaway from the non-stop hustle and bustle of the city.
Street View Comes to London
Google Street View, the system that provides interactive panoramic pictures of streets in Google Maps, has recently been causing a stir in the UK with privacy groups fearing it might breach data protection laws. After assurances from Google that it would blur peoples faces and numberplates they have been allowed to proceed and there have been multiple sightings of its high-tech cars roaming the streets in and around London.
Some relatives of mine spotted one of the cars while they were having a walk in Surrey (just south of London) and had a chat with the driver as well as taking some pics of the gear he was driving around with.
Apparently the array has 7 cameras at the top with laser range finders just below (to record geospatial 3D information) and an extremely accurate GPS receiver to record the position. All the data is saved to a computer in the boot with 1Tb storage discs which he said he used several of each day!! It’s controlled by a simple touch screen interface which sits in the passenger seat.
Not the most fun job in the world but the technology is pretty cool!
The amount of data they must be archiving alone defies belief and strongly reminds me of the philosophical issues raised by Jean Baudrillard in his book ‘Simulacra and Simulation‘ whereby he questions how can you tell the difference between what is real and what is a copy when the copy is as detailed as the original?
The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory – PRECESSION OF SIMULACRA – it is the map that engenders the territory, and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.
There’s a warning in there somewhere for Google!
GO! GO! PiKAPiKA!!
We interrupt our usual coverage to bring you one of most unique short animated films I’ve seen in a long time from some very creative folks in Japan (all made without a single drop of CG):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zp-65Lwmh8
Using stop-motion animation and time-lapse photography techniques the film was shot in Tokyo over a period of 10 nights, using 77 people, different coloured flashlights, and a digital camera with a long exposure to capture over 16,000 frames (behind the scenes). It’s no small feat for a semi-amateur production and the end result certainly has the wow factor.
A group in Germany called Lichtfaktor do something similar for a living and have made some seriously cool tv ads which you can find on their website. It would appear to becoming a bit of a fringe art form with some calling it “light writing” or “light graffiti” but a whole lot less destructive than its spray-on counterpart (interview)!
You’ve got to wonder when Sony will commission someone like this to do a Bravia advert for them – it certainly has all the right visual elements to go with their “colour like no other” campaign.
Photo by Lichtfaktor
Painting with light is something which anyone can try fairly easily themselves, still images being the simplest. You’ll need a tripod and a camera which can do exposures of 10-30 seconds at around iso100 with as small an aperture as possible (plus a whole lot of practice and patience!).