@yaz72:

I would say, the quality is the same. I'm going to sell my 12-35:-)

Impressive, which system has the better 4k video quality ? gh4 with 12-35 or Lx100 ?

Ive already a gh4 and i don't know if i should buy a 12-35 or the Lx100.

@fahrenheit: I guess you are talking about AF during video recording? I can only compare to the GH2, and the focusing in 4k on the LX100 certainly performs better than the GH2 did in 1080p.

But I doubt that the GH4 actually utilizes DFD in video mode - I've not seen any material that would prove this.

Here's a result of my "underwater white balance scenario simulation": Under water, you usually have less light in total, but especially the red parts of the sunlight are missing. To simulate this situation, I lit an otherwise completely dark room only by displaying a red=0, green=255,blue=255 solid color image fullscreen on an IPS panel, causing a dim turquoise light situation, not unlike what you'll find at 40m depth in some tropical ocean during daylight.

I shot some artificial flowers with both a GH2 and a LX100 after setting the white balance to "custom white balance" and setting the white point by shooting the white surface below the flowers.

Both images were taken in RAW format and only de-mosaiced and rescaled, all other raw converter settings were completely "neutral".

The first image from the GH2 shows how weak the GH2 was with regards to compensating for extreme colorful lighting situations. The second image, from the LX100, is certainly also suffering from the little amount of light available, but its white balance is exactly like it's supposed to be. Hurray!

ok thanks.. guess you can't have everything in a small package..

It's a PanaSonic :-) (c)

No live video out (hdmi or composite) during recording and standby. Only in playback mode. Just tried it.

Got mine as well, loving it thus far. It a solid little bugger that feels better in the hand to me than the GM1 due to the nice rubber grip and thumb rest. The control wheel/pad on the back also works better for me. The dials and switches all have a nice click to them that feels well-engineered. Definitely a premium feel to match the good looks of the cam.

One concern I have - The front cosmetic ring that covers the lens bayonet protrudes out a few millimeters beyond the filter thread and lens barrel. I fear a step-up filter adapter could affect the lens' ability to retract fully if the bayonet ring is not first removed to gain some depth clearance. I will test this to confirm when my 43mm to 52mm step up ring arrives in a couple of days. Not a deal breaker really, but a potential a nuisance for folks without 43mm filter sets.

I also got my LX100 (EU version) today (from Cyberport). I bet on some manufacturer selling an underwater housing for it, because for me the LX100 has all that I wanted for underwater videography at this time, in a housing much less bulky than the GH4 (which I would have bought in May, had they sold me one in the EU), with the additional important feature to allow macro shooting with the same lens that "normal" shots can be done with - a really important feature if you see both a whale shark and a flamboiant cuttle fish on the same dive :-)

Now I intend to create a boring, lengthy unboxing video telling all the stuff again that everyone already knows just have some fun trying this new toy.

If you've got any specific idea on the EU version, just ask. Expect some macro test shots plus some low light strange-white-balance test shots from me. :-)

@mpgxsvcd: I agree that a tilting display is generally very useful, but it's of no use in an underwater housing, just as touch screens are unusable underwater. Thus I won't miss those too much.

PS: Ok, I have to share one unboxing impression: Half of the weight of the box seems to originate from the ridiculously large stack of no less than 6(!) manual books (in different languages) that are included. I guess the US box is much lighter ;-)

One thing you can't reproach the Lumix LX100 for is not having enough file formats to record video in. It does 4K in 24p and 25p at 100 Mbps (although it's actually Ultra HD 3840 x 2160, not 4K 4096 x 2160), HDTV in 50p and 25p, all in MP4, plus HDTV in 50p, 50i, 25p and 24p in AVCHD. There's even a "Photo 4K" mode that's optimized for extracting 8 Mpx stills from 4K videos. As on the GH4 and FZ1000, when you record in 4K the maximum wide-angle is reduced from 24mm to 26mm

As expected, the picture and sound quality are top-notch at all times: there's no flickering, no audio saturation and the image is ultra-sharp and well-defined. You can adjust the aperture, shutter speed and ISO sensitivity, plus there's exposure compensation, focus peaking and zebra patterning. The LX100 does everything. All that's missing is a microphone jack and a headphone jack—no possibility to attach external ones on the hot shoe, either. Is that a shame? Maybe, but ultimately the LX100 is more like a high-quality video notepad than a dedicated video camera anyway.

http://www.digitalversus.com/digital-camera/panasonic-lumix-lx100-p21696/test.html

@MarcioK: Just received my lx100. Definitely has the filter threads.

And I have a hard time playing back 4K video on my old computer but moire seems pretty well taken care of on my first few tries

I needed a shutter speed of 1/60 to successfully handhold a sharp image without shake when stabilisation was turned off. With stabilisation enabled, I could achieve a similar result at 1/15, corresponding to around two stops of compensation. Not only is this below the usual three or even four stops I can normally expect from a Panasonic optical stabilisation system, but the difference between stabilised and unstabilised stills wasn't great either. This performance extended into video too, with the LX100 delivering fairly lacklustre compensation against wobbles. I'm somewhat perplexed by this as Panasonic normally has a fantastic track record for optical stabilisation, and as far as I understand, my test sample was a final production model.

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Panasonic_Lumix_LX100/

I've found the filter thread absence somewhat strange too, and I think that maybe there is some kind of cover not perceived in the review - hence the ask to @tron confirm this.

About the moire, in the review they stated that the reason is because Panasonic is not using a 1:1 crop in the sensor:

It's also worth looking at how Panasonic generates both 1080 and 4k video. When filming 1080, the LX100 takes the full usable sensor width of 4480 pixels and scales it down to 1920 pixels. So the diagonal field of view when filming in 1080 is identical to shooting 16:9 stills, but of course the uneven scaling factor means there's also artefacts to deal with. So far so similar to the GH4 and FZ1000, but the LX100 handles 4k differently. On the GH4, the 4k modes simply took 3840x2160 or 4096x2160 crops direct from the middle of the sensor and recorded them without scaling. Since they were crops, there was a reduction in the field of view, but since there was no scaling, there was also no moire to worry about. On the FZ1000 the sensor resolution was higher than the GH4, so a 1:1 crop would have resulted in an even greater field of view reduction. So I believe Panasonic took a milder crop and scaled it down. Since the LX100 already crops its 16 Megapixel sensor to 11.1 Megapixels for 16:9 stills, it has the potential for a 1:1 4k crop with the least field-reduction of the three cameras. After all, 16:9 stills on the LX100 measure 4480 pixels wide compared to 4608 pixels on the GH4. So making a UHD crop measuring 3840 pixels wide on the LX100 would only reduce the field of view by 1.17 times. So instead of 24mm at the widest zoom, you'd be looking at 28mm. But bizarrely Panasonic has opted to employ a mild crop and a scale to generate the desired frame size. This means the LX100's 4k footage not only has a slightly narrower field of view to 1080 video and 16:9 stills (so instead of 24mm at the widest zoom, you're getting 26mm), but it also now suffers from moire. I feel it's an unnecessary compromise too, since a nice clean 1:1 crop would have only involved losing 4mm in the diagonal field of view. I put my disappointment to Panasonic and I got the impression the scaling along with absence of Cinelike D profiles was partly for the LX100's target audience and partly to protect the GH4, but I still think a 1:1 crop would have been better, and rather than detract from GH4 sales, I could see existing GH4 owners picking up an LX100 as a B-roll camera. Maybe flat profiles and 1:1 video crops will be offered in future third-party firmware.

@MarcioK I'm curious about these myself. I had not heard about the lack of threads on the lens, they are listed in the official spec as 43mm. If the moire is present it could be indicative of a weaker low pass filter than what the GH4 uses (though I have also experienced minor moire on the GH4). I'll try and shoot some fine mesh material to see how it behaves once I receive it.