Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsA technological mess - better off with an iPod
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2020
My principal use for a camera is to take close-up photos of insects and other small creatures. 20 years ago I was lugging around a heavy SLR camera, macro lenses, flash attachments and assorted gear. Then I saw an article on using a compact camera to take excellent insect close-ups. I soon found I could take better pictures of bugs with a Nikon Coolpix that I ever could with my heavy SLR rig.
Since then I have gone through several Nikon and Pentax compacts with great results, except maybe their lives in the field were somewhat short for a camera. When it became time to replace my last one a year ago (a 'waterproof' WG-10 that wasn't), I was attracted by the supposed features of the Lumix LX-10 and thought this might be a useful closeup compact camera.
What I found was that Lumix is loaded with TCBH (Too Clever By Half) technology that makes it useless for anything more complicated that the most basic point-and-shoot-on-automatic. In every other compact I have used in macro mode, you depress the shutter button and a focusing screen pops up around the aiming point and you adjust and shoot. With Lumix TCBH, the focusing screen pops up in some random part of the main screen, there's no way to align it with the aiming point so you wind up with a perfectly focused picture that doesn't contain whatever it was you tried to photograph in the first place.
The Lumix developer imps have tried to pack all the features of six full-sized DSLRs into one compact camera. The result is a view screen with more gizmos than the pilot of an advanced fighter plane has on his HUD. However, something as basic as a flash seems to be too complicated for them. Or maybe not complicated enough. The flash unit on this camera is blocked on the automatic settings and several of the other camera modes. Supposedly the TCBH internal sensors will automatically provide the correct exposure. They often don't. In other un-clever brands you would just pop the button that raises the flash, take a shot, and adjust your position as necessary. With Lumix TCBH, you have to change to a mode where the flash actually works, which means navigating through several complex menu screens to set the new mode up; meanwhile the bug has flown, the flower has gone to seed, or the sun has gone down.
After finding Lumix's instruction book only marginally useful in explaining the TCBH quirks, I tried that font of all practical knowledge, YouTube. Unfortunately the few people there that use Lumix for close-ups use a different model from mine. This means different software. Anyone looking for advice on Windows from a community that only uses Macs will know what I mean.
The great irony is that while Lumix and its TCBH developers are working through their Hassleblad Envy issues, miniature optical technology is vastly improving all around them. An iPhone can take closeups that are better than my long ago efforts with an SLR. I still go out with the Lumix trying to figure out how to get it to do what any Coolpix can, but if I see something I really must capture, I have my iPod along.