This $200 Street Photography Camera is Wild! USED*
This camera is the Lumix LX 100. Before we get into this, this is the last video I will shoot in this house. In this room, I'm moving into a new apartment where I'll have a dedicated studio space. So in two videos at the beginning of June, you'll see the first one there. I'm so excited. So just a little backstory on the camera I bought last year. I bought the Fuji I famously took this photo, yes, I was trying to decide which compact camera to keep. I eventually sold them, but both the X 100 and ZV One didn't do everything for me and I found that kind of frustrating. So the Fuji X 100s had this fixed focal length but the photography is amazing. And the ZV One was great for video, it has stabilization, it has a zoom lens that works well, but I found that it was kind of, in human terms, not great for me.
Like my hands are too big. The Sony A Seven CI camera matches well, but the ZV One felt like I could use my phone well. But with those two cameras sold, it was probably about nine months until I started looking again for something to take with me to a couple of music festivals this year, and also on holidays and any day trips where I didn't want to carry £2,000-£1,000 worth of gear on my shoulder.
. That's when I went looking for compact street photography cameras that I hope also have a bit of video. And I've landed on the most surprising camera I've come across that truly outperforms some of the cameras I've owned in the past in surprising ways. This camera is the Lumix LX 100. There is a Mark Two, but that's only the 100. Looking at this already, you might think it looks a bit unusual for a Panasonic and that's part of the reason I bought it.
Also, you'll notice a little bit of DIY at the bottom and that's part of the reason why this camera is so cheap. I purchase all my cameras from mpb.com and are not sponsored, please sponsor me. Love you, but I buy all my cameras from mpb.com and I tend to buy them in not very good condition. This actually came with a broken battery door. I bought a replacement and tried to disassemble the camera, but unfortunately the latch to replace that battery door, I don't really trust myself to remove it as much as I had to , so I ended up building and kind of interrupting this video with breaking news. I noticed that most of you watching my videos are not subscribed to the channel. So I would encourage you to hit the subscribe button. It's completely free to you, but it makes a huge difference for me and the channel. Plus you can change your mind at any time. However, let's get back to the video of the metal attachment that keeps everything tight in place.
So far, this will work. What are the specifications of this camera? So this compact compact camera packs a small four-part sensor. In any of the aspect ratios it offers, it doesn't actually cover the full sensor. The aspect ratio where it has the most sensor coverage is four x three. And there you get about 13 megapixels, which is clearly not HD. And I mainly shoot with three by two, which I think comes out to about 11 megapixels. I'll just check twice. What's weird is that, in this camera, they thought aspect ratio was so important to people that we should put an actual slider on top of the lens to be three by 216 by nine, one by one and four by three.
I've only been using three-by-twos and 16-by-nines, three-by-twos for all my kind of casual photography, and then 16×9. If I'm shooting miniature, I always tend to shoot with a 16×9 aspect ratio while shooting YouTube thumbnails. So I used it a little bit for that. Besides the ability to take photos in this camera, it also has 1080p up to 50fps. And there's no camera stabilization to help with video recording, which is a bit of a shame. There's optical stabilization in the lens that I feel like you can see in photography, but I have a feeling it's really broken in video because even with some really steady handheld motion with in- lens stabilization, I couldn't get anything really that's usable yet.
I'll be doing some proper testing with this camera in terms of its video shooting ability, because there's definitely room for some surprising results. Because the lens we have here is a 24 to 75 f 1.7 to 2.8. At the wide end of the 24mil equivalent, you get a 1.7 aperture. I'll put all the equations here and then in the long end extend to 2.8. So photography wise, it has respectable megapixels for a small four-thirds camera that's now eight years old. Released September 2014. I previously owned a Panasonic GH Five and the autofocus on that camera was almost completely unusable, whereas the autofocus on this camera is not fast.
It's not the best I've ever seen, but it's not far off like the Sony A 6300, which is very good. It's not like the more responsive Jump Focus . But if you have single point focus and then move the focus point while moving the camera, you will find focus very quickly. Face recognition seemed to be okay from a couple of tests I ran , but when comparing that to the GH Five, I was never able to get the GH Five to find and focus for longer than a second or two. Looking at the design of this camera, one of the things that really attracted me was the combination of the aperture ring shutter dial, exposure compensation dial, and EVF. They tried to create, like, a compact rangefinder-style LUMIX camera, which is cool to me. Considering that I really wanted to try the Fuji X a year ago, it's no surprise to me that this is what caught my attention. Hence, the huge benefit of this over something like the ZV One or other compact cameras is that the lens already has a Philtre thread.
A lot of compact cameras don't have a filter thread because the lens design doesn't really fit it . And you can sometimes get, like, adhesive attachments to add, like, a filtre ring, which isn't very cool, but this actually has a 43 mil Philtre thread, which then I just got 49 mil rings because that's the smallest size of Philtre thread. I have any usable filter. Again, I'll do some video testing.
So if you don't want to miss it, subscribe to the channel. And I'll probably do some sort of comparison between this and A Seven S Three just to see how much of a difference $200 and $4000 really makes. The EVF itself is decent. It's a very large screen compared to the Sony A Seven C, but it's not as resolution. I mean, it's from 2014, but overall it's large and usable. The first time I looked at it, I thought, how did they get an EVF this big and a camera this size when the A Seven C is, like, why even bother putting an EVF in here? It's very, very small. You have to, like, look down a tunnel to see the electronic viewfinder, which looked a little weird.
The camera, unfortunately, is not a touch screen. But I'm not surprised if it's a touchscreen. It probably costs a lot more. I think the Mark Two is a touchscreen. So, if you're interested in this type of camera, interested in its design, interested in its features, and want a little extra, there's the X 100 Mark Two that might be worth looking at.
If I had this camera for any extended period of time, and really loved it, and wanted a slightly higher end version, I would probably consider the Mark as well, because it would come down in price over time, and it would be a good investment. The lack of a touchscreen means that when you move around autofocus points, you have to set up a dedicated button, then move it. So I have a custom button set up for the first function at the bottom, on the right. I just tap on that and then move around my single AF point. The really good thing about this single AF point is that you can adjust the size very quickly using the wheel. So you can press the first function, move it, and at the same time you're moving it, you can just turn the wheel and then either shrink or enlarge that focus point with the camera off and the lens out.
I think it's a very attractive little camera, which I know shouldn't really be that important, but it's a bit lacking. Then, when the lens is extended, it becomes little more than a classic compact camera. I think it's not nice to look at. And again, you can use the zoom button to retract or extend the lens. You can set up the zoom function in photo mode to automatically zoom between the common focal length lens. So instead of having to zoom in and then trying to land on 50mils, 35mils or 70mils instead, you can just press the rocker once and it will advance to the next reasonable focal length.
So it starts at 242-83-5507 and then 75. And I tend to find myself mainly between 28 to 50. I actually took a few shots yesterday at 70 and 75, and you forget how useful that is in a pinch. And by now, I mean it was incredibly convenient to use. I just want to talk a little bit about why a small camera is important when you want to take photos often. It's definitely an excuse that a lot of us use to try to be like, oh, I can't go out and take pictures all the time. The only camera I have is too big, and it's like the most ridiculous problem in the first place I've ever heard of. My camera is very good and very large. I can't get it out and be discreet and take pictures, but it makes a difference.
I think there's a certain amount of comfort and it's not about anyone else's perception. It's more about whether you feel comfortable taking photos all over the world. Since I started taking some extra photos on my own, like going out with the intention of just taking photos, I've felt less self-conscious anyway. I tend to only use either the LX 100 or A Seven C on a peaked design wrist strap. He must be by my side. I either have headphones or no headphones. Just casually walking around, taking pictures, just trying not to tag anyone I'm photographing, just trying to be like a tourist, basically, just trying to pay extra attention to my city , which at the moment is Leeds. I've been kicking around this camera for a long time, so thank you very much for watching. If you've watched so far, I'll probably be doing a couple more videos on this camera, say, over the coming months. And again, yes, I have this video here. Another video next week, which will also be in this room.
And then, we're in Manchester. Once I get this new studio set up, I'm hoping to put out at least a video a week, which I already do, but maybe two videos a week. I also have another channel, which I'll link below, my personal finance channel . And I want to try to get regular videos on there too because I do it on TikTok every day. I'd like to do it on YouTube a bit more too. Thank you very much for watching. I'll see you next time..
