Panasonic Lumix LX10 and Lumix LX15 Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Panasonic

Adding to its enthusiast compact line, Panasonic’s Lumix LX10 is a somewhat confusing entry between the more consumer-targeted Lumix ZS100 and the similarly priced Lumix LX100. Panasonic sees the LX10 as the successor to the four-year-old LX7, but when the LX7 shipped there were no competing enthusiast compacts in Panasonic’s line with its fast lens and large (at the time) 1/1.7-inch sensor. (It does enable Panasonic to somewhat disingenuously proclaim “The 1-inch sensor is 3 times larger than the LX7’s 1/1.7-inch sensor” rather than saying it’s the same size as the sensor in almost every enthusiast compact these days.) The LX10 combines the 20.1-megapixel 1-inch sensor of the ZS100 with a fast but short-zoom lens like the LX100, which has a larger but lower-resolution 12-megapixel Four Thirds-size sensor.

Panasonic plans to ship the LX10 in November for $700; I don’t have price or availability for other regions, but it converts to approximately £540 and AU$935.

Relative sensor sizes.

Lori Grunin/CNET

What’s notable

• Design: Panasonic’s main design goal with this model was pocketability. Though it is smaller than the LX100, it’s not by a lot: The company shaved off 0.5 in/7mm or less in every dimension, putting it at the same size as the Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II but still larger than the competing Sony RX100 II — which has a viewfinder and is about the largest size that will fit in a jeans pocket. The LX100 fits in a loose pants pocket. And it’s only fractionally smaller than the ZS100, which has a 10x zoom lens. It looks very much like the ZS100, but swaps the programmable ring on the lens for an aperture ring. And unlike the other two Panasonic models, it has a flip-up display for selfies.
• Lens: The camera’s 3x 24-72mm f1.4-2.8 lens does have the fastest maximum aperture in its class, but only by a bit less than 2/3 of a stop. And unfortunately, it lacks a built-in neutral density filter, which makes it difficult to shoot at slow shutter speeds at wide apertures in sunlight. It does have a 9-blade diaphragm for round out-of-focus highlights. It can focus as close as 1.2 in/3 cm, which is one of the closest in its class. And it incorporates Panasonic’s 5-axis hybrid sensor shift/optical image-stabilization system.
• Performance: It incorporates the company’s DFD (depth from defocus) contrast autofocus system, which is quite fast. That will likely give it an edge over competitors, since AF in these cameras tends to be a bit slow. However, the battery life is rated at only 260 shots thanks to the tiny, low-power battery.
• Features: All the standard Panasonic-specific features come in the LX10. They include 4K video with 4K burst, 4K photo, 4K Live Crop (which produces an HD video from a window panning around a 4K video), Post Focus and Focus Stacking modes. A new capability is Light Composition, a post-capture process which combines frames of a 4K video into the equivalent of a long-exposure still frame.

Panasonic reveals four new cameras at Photokina…
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My take

The LX10 sounds like a nice camera, as long as you’re okay without a hot shoe or a viewfinder, and are willing to trade higher resolution for the photo quality of the LX100 or a fast lens for a long zoom on the less-expensive ZS100. I suspect it will be a confusing decision among those models for a lot of people.

With the exception of the longer lens on the G7 X Mark II, the LX10 seems like it has a lot of advantages in comparison, and it has the potential to give the more expensive Sony RX100 IV some serious competition.

And while it’s certainly an improved option over the LX7 — which you’d expect after so long — you do lose the multi-aspect sensor, which produces images with the same resolution regardless of the aspect ratio you choose.

Comparative specs