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Panasonic's lovely LX100 enthusiast compact was a great camera to finish off 2014.
With really good photo and video quality, a great set of features and class leading performance, this is probably one of my favorite compact cameras ever.
It's large four thirds sensor delivers great photo quality for the price.
And its 4K video looks significantly better than plain old HD.
It doesn't have the broadest tonal range I've ever seen and there's not a lot of recoverable detail in shadows and highlights, but you can get sharp jpeg photos up to ISO 1600.
And if you shoot raw you can get usable ones through ISO 6400 depending upon the theme.
And if you're not picky the rest of the rings look okay scaled down.
Its 4k video is also worth the price premium.
It doesn't have the supporting features that a lot of videographers would have like such as a mic input, but the quality is the best I've seen in this class.
And with the 4K Photo feature, you can pull decent eight megapixel stills as long as the video doesn't have really fast action which makes, is a great alternative to burst shooting.
It's also pretty fast.
With the best continuous shooting in its class and reasonably zippy auto focus and processing.
And with one glaring exception, feature set is quite comprehensive.
It's got a fast 24 to 75 millimeter zoom lens with a maximum aperture range of F 1.7 to F 2.8.
There's a small, but very nice electronic view finder, and it also has in camera features, such as the ability to create stop motion animations using it's fixed focus 11 frame per second, or 40 frame per second burst mode.
And I really do like the design.
It's got a nice grip.
Which is more than I can say for some competitors.
And it feels well constructed.
There are manual dials for shutter speed, aperture and exposure compensation.
Plus a programmable control ring and three programmable buttons.
Bundled flash fits into the hot shoe.
It's not perfect.
I really miss having a tilting or articulating LCD.
The camera really needs to come with a lens hood.
And the buttons feel a little too flat.
Plus, if you like to work on a tripod, a plate will obstruct the battery and SD compartment.
Overall though, it;s a great package.
It's not cheap.
But as the price drops over time, it'll be a great buy for some people.
I'm Lori Gurnen from CNet, and this is the Panasonic Lumix DMC LX100.
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