Some clever bugger will invent a software for 2D to 3D simulation VK

Yep. I already heard this previously.

Wait, it was guys talking that you don't need proper lighting and good sound, as you can do all in post.

If you are shooting home movies this would definitely be a good choice.

Get Sony TD10 for home movies (<$700 on ebay), as your ancestors will be asking stupid questions why all is so flat :-)

Just got my LX7 from the $304 Amazon deal. Let me just say I am impressed. Great little camera. I just canceled my GH3 order. This little LX7 is just so great I decided to ditch m4/3s.

:O

Just kidding of course. The LX7 isn't going to replace a GH camera. However, it does shoot very good 1080p @ 60 FPS video and rather nice stills. If you are shooting home movies this would definitely be a good choice. The macro capabilities are fantastic too. Depth of field and dynamic range are definitely not anywhere near m4/3s territory. However, they are not terrible like so many other compact cameras.

After taking $10 off and 10% cashback and 2% store credit, net cost would be $255 for me. Hehe. I'd get it in this Thursday and tune it up before handing it over to my little bro. He has no idea how good it is.

I live in VA.15 mins away from DC downtown. Lynchburg is kinda far. I'd see you after I learn mountain climbing. Hehe. Gawd GH3. I'm getting envious!!!

$299 was a crazy deal, but there was "TURKEY10" coupon code for $10 discount from J&R.

In this morning I contacted them via J&R's contact page and got the discount. I wish it's mine. It's for my little brother. Hope a lot more people became LX7 users.

f1.4 gives at least a minimal bokeh, along with significantly better low light performance than the FZ200.

There is another interesting crippling I found. On Creative Video I set "Shutter Priority" to 1/30 and then fix ISO at 800 (say). The auto aperture opens to as much as f1.4 to expose correctly (range f1.4 to f8). But when I engage the ND filter, the auto aperture only opens to f4, giving a very limited range of auto exposures (f4-f8). With ISO left at 'auto' the aperture opens fully with ND engaged, except you can't control the aperture very easily to get a fixed level of bokeh. Take a look when yours arrives (after you have played with all the other neat stuff on this very nice camera).

I use a 1/30 shutter for indoors work, as my target is web, and the extra sensitivity over 1/60 is usually welcome :) If you set Creative Video, Manual Exposure (don't forget to switch the lens to manual too) the LX7 will allow you to select a shutter speed as low as 1/8 second (as will the FZ200). Might be useful in pitch darkness, I guess :)

@Vitaliy Great news! - Without the 30 minute limitation, the LX7 would be very nice for video. Its battery is good for about 2hrs continuous...

I did notice that resolution charts with 1080p on the LX7 were a little more moire and slightly lower resolution that FZ200, I suspect that is beacuse of the fewer pixels on the sensor. But I guess we will know soon :) :)

Btw, we today purchased LX7 for hack.

@goofy23 The big difference from hx9v is that the LX7 has full manual control of video, and can lower the shutter speed to 1/30, 1/25, 1/20. 1/15, 1/13, 1/10 or 1/8 if you are in a really low-light environment. It packages them into the AVCHD container. Donald Graft's DGindex is best for pulling them out smoothly. Indoors, I routinely use shutter preferred, with 1/30 shutter and change the ISO to control my average (auto) aperture. Outdoors one has the inbuilt ND filter, which with ISO80, allows a 1/30 shutter even in the California sun. BUT - the camera is crippled in shutter preferred in that the minimum F stop is 4.0 when you engage the ND filter in shutter preferred creative video. So I carry around a 37mm ND to get over this and allow bokeh in the sun. Panny did a couple of silly things to limit the LX7 utility for 'pros' and were blind-sided when Sony released the RX100. Which IMO has bad video, BTW, saturated shadow grading in particular.

Would be great to see a comparsion to the Sony hx9v, i am no Sony fanboy but can imagine its better video wise

I have been looking into the Moire from the LX7. It is excessive, IMO. But I am not an expert, so I am posting my observations here to ask for your opinions. First, I noticed bad quantization in a frame from a 1080/60p video (first attachment below). This was taken with a film setting of -2 for sharpening, -2 for noise reduction and no internal i.Resolution or i.Zoom (etc).

So I took a closer look at the car which exhibited the worst artifacts: (second attachment below)

The steps on the front window-pillar-chrome-strip are 2 pixels apart vertically and 3 pixels apart horizontally. The rest of the roof is also squeezed into a matrix which is certainly not a 1x1 pixel matrix. This would account for the terrible moire seen on a 1080p ISO chart frameshot (3rd attachment below).

I have been looking at a lot of video this past week from my LX7, and of downloads of FZ200 MTS files too. What I am seeing is that the FZ200 seems to have less absolute resolution than the FZ150 video, on average. The LX7 is better than the LX5 video, which was pretty bad. Yet when I shoot the ISO chart in 720p I don't get much practical difference from the 1080p resolution (4th attachment below)

Has anybody any insight or suggestions as to how to get best resolution from the LX7? Should I be pre-sharpening more (as post-prod sharpening exacerbates these artifacts)?

How do I "lock EV"? Is there menu item for that?