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LS2 |
Panasonic LS2
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Review
Date: Feb 6, 2006 |
Category: Point-and-Shoot
IMAGE QUALITY
The Panasonic LS2 is a digital camera
targeted to beginner amateur photographers. It
has 5.0 effective megapixels resolution on a 1/2.5
in. image sensor. The lens is a Lumix DC Vario
35-105 mm (35mm format equivalent) F2.8(W)-F5.0(T),
3x optical zoom.
We find the overall image quality of the Panasonic
LS2 to be average.
| 3x
Optical Zoom |
 |
 |
Wide-angle
5.8mm
(35mm, 35mm equivalent) |
Telephoto
17.4mm
(105mm, 35mm equivalent) |
In the above pictures, we show the coverage for
35mm and 105mm.
| Macro |
 |
35mm, Macro mode, Intelligent
Multiple, AWB
1/100 sec., F2.8, ISO 80 |
The Panasonic LS2 can focus in Macro mode (selected
on the Mode Dial) to as close as 5 cm (2 in.).
| Auto White Balance Indoors |
 |
 |
| AWB |
Manual WB |
As the above picture shows, the Auto White Balance
(AWB) gives a slight colour cast under fluorescent
artificial light. Fortunately, there is Custom
(Manual) White Balance. AWB works well in natural
light.
| ISO
Comparisons |
 |
| ISO 80 |
 |
 |
| ISO 100 |
ISO 200 |
 |
|
| ISO 400 |
|
The 100%
crops above (area delimited by the white square,
lower right) demonstrate the noise at the available
ISO Speeds of 80, 100, 200 and 400. Noise is visible
at all ISOs, becoming increasingly visible as
we go up the ISO.
| Chromatic
Aberrations |
 |
There is CA in everyday high contrast shots.
In the high contrast shot above, there is CA at
the corner delimited by the red square at middle
(reproduced at 100% crop at bottom right).
The Panasonic LS2 allows the use of a slow shutter
speed of only up to 1 sec. in Normal Picture (Programmed
Auto) mode, so we are not able to bring you our
regular long shutter speed picture.
The Panasonic LS2 has a flash that is effective
up to 3.7 m at max. wide-angle and 2.1 m at max
telephoto. It does not throttle down at close-up
range and will result in severely overexposed
close-up images.
The last feature we will mention is the histogram.
The histogram can be displayed live in Record
Mode. You can see the histogram by pressing the
DISPLAY button until the histogram displays. The
histogram is invaluable to give an indication
of under- and over-exposure (don't rely on the
LCD/EVF since the brightness is adjustable and
may be misleading).
The pictures in the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS2
Gallery page provide a good sample of what
the camera is capable of. I have provided samples
at 800x600 pixels (compressed to Quality 60/100
in Photoshop Elements) as well as the 2560 x 1920
pixels original size (click on the image for the
original version).
You can safely assume that most macro shots and
slow shutter speed shots required the use of a
tripod. Any image that is adjusted for levels
in Photoshop has "_adjusted" appended
to the file name.
I have defaulted the image size to 800x600 pixels.
For those who have their monitor resolution set
to 1024x728 pixels, everything should snugly fit
and you should not have to scroll to see the whole
image. If your monitor is set to 800x600 pixels
resolution, start the slide show and then scroll
to the right to position the image within your
screen width. Then, press F11 (if you are using
Internet Explorer) to switch to full screen mode,
and the image should fill your screen nicely.
Press F11 again at any time to switch your monitor
display back to normal mode.
To return to this page from the Photo Gallery,
click on the animated graphics of the camera.
Please open and download the original size version
only if you need to and only once
to your hard drive -- and save me some precious
bandwidth. Thanks!
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