Blurb Imagewrap photo book review

I previous mentioned the Blurb photo book I had ordered with the intention of updating that post with my thoughts when it arrived. Now that it’s here there’s quite a bit to say so those thoughts are now presented as this new post. There are also plenty of photo’s of the book, shared for anyone trying to decide whether to go ahead and place an order.

Delivery took seven days from placing the order, and I received an email the day before notifying me of dispatch with UPS. The book came from the Netherlands to the UK so to me this was very good since Blurb claim 5-6 business days to make the book and 1-15 to deliver dependant on your shipping choice. I had specified priority 2-4 day shipping at £10.37, in effect I got the 1-2 day £21.37 express option. To save more money in future I intend to order multiple books in one order as the shipping cost for ten books was still £10.37.

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Panasonic Lumix LX3

Part of my holiday planning routine involves looking at the photo and video equipment I will be taking. A Canon HF100 HD video camera is doing an excellent job so that will be going on my next trip, but the photo capturing position was unfilled. On my last trip I took a £100 Panasonic DMC-FS3, an 8 megapixel compact that gave acceptable results in bright sunlight and poor quality pictures in anything else. My Nikon D50 performs well in most situations, but a Digital SLR is a burden to carry for anything active. The announced-but-not-reviewed-yet Canon S90 looks interesting, but some of the few sample shots I have seen have not impressed. The combination of compact size and quality images seemed elusive.

One camera that is claimed by many reviewers to offer both reasonable size and decent quality is the Panasonic DMC-LC3, a 10 megapixel compact with a bright f2 lens and a limited zoom range. These have been difficult to come by with every retailer I checked over the past few weeks being out of stock. The few that claim to have stock are known in many forums to be less than honest, so are best avoided. Around a week ago Play.com showed the camera available for immediate dispatch, and since they are one of the retailers I trust to be honest I placed an order.

The camera has impressed so far, with all the manual control I could want and a usable automatic mode. The version 2 firmware for the camera was released a couple of days ago, adding 1:1 shooting and some speed improvements. So far the biggest problem is that neither Mac OS 10.5 or 10.6 support the RAW format of the LX3. The previous LX1 and LX2 models work fine, but for a camera that has been available for approaching a year it’s strange that RAW support has not yet been added. Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom work with LX3 RAW, and the supplied Silkypix software does a great job of RAW editing and conversion so it’s only a minor problem.

UPDATE 1st October 2009

Panasonic has today withdrawn the update citing problems with the custom shooting mode if you had stored settings from the previous firmware. The temporary fix is to reset the camera and re-enter the settings in custom mode, or wait to 20th October when an updated version should be available.

Are Megapixels going the way of Megahertz?

I’ve been looking at high end compact cameras recently, in my continuing quest for a reasonably sized camera that can capture good images in less than optimal light. My Nikon D50 does a very good job, and while a £120 vibration reduction lens would make it even better it’s still a big camera to carry around a theme park all day for holiday snaps. The Panasonic DMC-FS3 (a £100 compact) I took to San Francisco and Las Vegas earlier this year did an OK job in daylight but gave poor results as the light levels dropped.

Unlike the iPhone 3GS finally replacing my mobile phone and PDA, my quest for an all in one image/video capture device has been a failure. The Sanyo Xacti range failed to deliver, with the C5 and HD2 being too much of a compromise in both photo and video quality. A Canon HF100 now does video duties with excellent quality results, so the hunt is on for a compact that can deliver good results in low light.

The current model that has caught my eye is the Panasonic LX3. A fast F2-F2.8 lens (meaning more light reaching the sensor so faster shutter speeds and less blur) and a sensible 10 megapixels suggest at least one manufacturer has taken a step back from the megapixel race to assess what customers actually want. This happened a few years ago when AMD and Intel reached a limit in pure processor speed and had to start looking at increasing efficiency and the number of cores in their processors. Megaherts was never much more than a marketing buzzword, and megapixels means even less. Would anyone choose a fuzzy fifteen megapixel image over a sharp six megapixel one? The crazy thing here is that the number of pixels comes from multiplying horizontal and vertical resolution, so while my Nikon D50 produces six megapixel images of 3000 by 2000 pixels, a twelve megapixel camera which sounds twice as good gives images of 4240 by 2824 pixels, an increase of around 40% both horizontally and vertically. To get a true doubling of resolution to 6000 by 4000 requires a 24 megapixel camera, well out of the consumer price range.

The reason for this rather lengthy ramble is that todays big photographic news is the announcement of the Canon G11. Where Panasonic decided to keep the number of pixels the same and improve image quality with the move from the the Lx2 to Lx3, Canon has decided to reduce the G10’s 14.7 megapixels down to 10 megapixels for the G11. Hopefully reviews will shortly rave over increased low light image quality, and other camera manufacturers will finally realise that consumers value image quality over marketing hype. This may be wishful thinking on my part, but I suspect that two big names making a brave move may be enough to start a new trend.

UPDATE Looks like there’s another model to compete with The Panasonic Lx3, as Canon also announced the S90. Offering the same 10 Megapixel sensor with a 28-110mm zoom and F2-F4.9 lens this may be the model that goes head to head with the Lx3 at a similar price.