Due to some poorly judged Ebay bidding I now have two cameras with potential to be back ups for my Pentax SLR kit. I wanted something that I could literally take everywhere particularily for some low profile Urbex / street photography.
So now I am the proud owner of a Panasonic Lumix LX3 (which I paid top £ for - about £310) and a Ricoh GR II (which I was amazed and surprised to get for £180).
I now have the difficult task of deciding who stays and who goes! I haven't had much chance to use either yet but the initial findings are thus:
Ricoh GRII - this is the one that I am most immediately drawn to. It seems smaller than the Lumix and is more of a raw photographers tool. Initial image quality has been so so. Noise is off the scale compared to an DSLR so I have it pegged to a maximum of ISO200. The colours seemed a bit lack lustre but I have now set the white balance to cloudy which may help. The 1:1 square format is quite cool. There is something about this camera I really like!
Lumix LX3 - this camera is better built and has all the bells and whistles but somehow it is too showy for me. The first thing that got to me was that the Panasonic RAW format is not supported by my Adobe sofware so I will have to load up Silkythingie. Because of this I haven't really evaluated the images. I suspect this is the better camera by far but perhaps too showy.
It is a bit like Saab versus BMW. I drive a Saab - need I say more? Anyway lets see if the Panasonic's Leica lens and all round ability can outweigh it's "look at me aren't I clever" character (but after all it was nearly twice as much as my bargain Ricoh)!
