I bought myself a new point and shoot a week or so ago, and New Years Eve was a good chance to play with it in low light. For the last four years my [digital] pocket camera of choice (I still use a Contax T2 and Yashica T4 film cameras as well) has been a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX07 which I bought for its wide (24mm) Leica lens. I love that camera, but it lacked some of the manual features I found myself wanting. Most of the time I want my point and shoot to, well, just point and shoot, but sometimes you need more control.

I wanted to stay Panasonic as I’ve been really happy with previous models, and wanted to stay as small as I could. All I needed to see was that the Lumix DMC-LX3 featured a 24mm 2.0 lens with full manual features and Raw files, and I was sold. So far so good. It’s a bit larger than my FX07, but it has a shoulder strap, and will fit in my pocket as well. The addition of a hot shoe, as well as manual focus as well as exposure is enough to warrant the extra size in my opinion. And it’s still smaller than my film point and shoots of choice. I also added the accessory eyepiece for both sunny days and because I like looking through a viewfinder (LCD’s can be difficult to see in bright sun).

Transitioning from the FX07, it’s easy to use, but there are some new features to get used to. The files so far look really great out of camera, but I wanted to test it at high ISO’s on New Years. At 1600 it’s noisier than a modern SLR, but for a point and shoot sensor it’s pretty damn good. And as with previous models, the Leica lens is great.

Here’s how it handled very low light, coupled with a fog machine and hipsters. It was the equivalent of a dark club situation. A worst case scenario sort of thing. Spooky feel. And yes, there is a photo of a beer holster, which Tim had handmade in Mexico.

Several of these are at 1600 ISO through thick fog machine fog, a generally “noisy” situation. They are also all from camera JPG and not the Raw files since I think the average user would shoot JPG.