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Panasonic LUMIX DMC L1 Reviewed

The Panasonic Lumix DMC l1 is the first Digital SLR from Panasonic, but rather than a stylish, modern look you'd expect, it has a distinctly old-fashioned & retro design. It does boast a 7MP 'Leica' lens, but is this enough to compete with established brands?





The first thing you will notice with the Panasonic Lumix is the retro design.

It leans heavily towards the older rangefinder style of camera rather than that of today's Digital SLR's, or even the Olympus E-series with which many similarities are noticeable. The L1 brings back memories of the Epson R-D1, the world's first digital rangefinder.

While Epson managed to balance the fine line between digital technology and retro chic, Panasonic hasn't quite managed the same feat.

It does, however, have something of a revolution mounted on top.

Pop-up flash units have pretty much stayed the same for generations of SLR cameras. Yet, the Panasonic Lumix DMC l1 has been designed so the flash has two clever pop-up modes. It offers the standard direct flash mode, but also a second setting to allow you to bounce the flash off a wall or ceiling!!

It's a genius idea and poses the question as to why other D-SLR's don't have this. The L1 has a setting to automatically enlarges the middle of your frame on initial review, so you can check for critical sharpness unless you are using an off-center AF point. It also has the Supersonic Wave Filter that the Olympus range has, to prevent sensor dust.





You'll notice that the shutter button positioned in the centre of the shutter speed dial. This position means it's not easy to reach, nor particularly comfortable to use. Rotating the dial to change shutter speeds is easy enough, although in doing so it's not unusual to accidentally knock the shooting mode from single shot to self-timer.


The multi-selector is in the same place as on Panasonic's compact range of cameras. Now while that works with the way you hold a small camera, it's impractical for a D-SLR, meaning that you either have to dislocate your finger or totally change the way you are holding the camera to operate it. It's great that the focus mode selector is well-positioned for your thumb, but in order to change between the 3 points you need to use the multi-selector, then it's back to dislocating your thumb!


The L1 does offer the facility to have a live view monitor so you can use the monitor to compose your shots, as you would with a compact, but the screen is fixed on the back of the camera and doesn't tilt, ruling out its use for low or high-angle shooting.

The Leica lens does more than just give the camera some credibility.

The only trouble is that the camera's default setting doesn't add much sharpening to the results, so you will need to apply some later.

With this in mind, the ISO range produces very little color noise. The lowest setting of ISO 100 is very good indeed but ISO 1600 is very soft and covered in the multi-colored speckles of noise.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC L1 is an alternative style of Digital SLR Camera, without any really obvious focus market, the Panasonic Lumic DMC L1 could be adopted as a primary camera by both professional and amateur photographers alike with equal success.





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