Not that the LX3 would be *the* camera I chose for low-light work, but it is possible. I truly despise public relation monsters like the MEGA O.I.S. name that Panasonic gave the image stabilisation mechanism, but I have to state that it works: a quarter of a second handheld yielding in sufficient sharpness for sure is fine.
Was this taken in 24 mm equiv.?
Wasn’t the old rule for handheld shooting with x mm lens “expose less than 1/x seconds”. So with 24 mm one would use 1/24 s or faster. And three stops improvement would bring this to 1/3 seconds. So: rather nice it is with the LX3. Sometimes one may get lucky even with a 1/2 second exposure.
On the LX5 it is written “POWER O.I.S” on the barrel, but I haven’t seen any difference in performance compared to the LX3. However, I haven’t yet gotten used to the fact that with 90 mm equiv. one really needs faster speed. Often I have been too optimistic, 1/10 seconds is pushing it.
Juha, indeed I used the widest setting of the lens, 24mm-e for 2:3 ratio, which is probably more like 35mm-e for the square. Pixel-peeping it becomes clear that the image is not as sharp as it could be, but I don’t care – it will still print.
That image stabilisation for me is one of the finest inventions in photography, and that we can have it even in such small and comparatively cheap cameras like the LXn is just amazing.
1/4th of a second certainly is nice. The photo looks quite decently sharp.
But why the hell would somebody park his or her van under a lamppost?
Thomas, the night mercifully hides the narrowness we encountered on this campsite during peak season. Besides – many campers seem to be very immune against such immissions, plus this is only a minor annoyance in comparison to the disco events in the beach restaurant nearby.