Earlier this year I walked looking to buy a Lumix LX2, the camera was tested and I liked everything except one thing: the 10 megapixel RAW weigh about 20 MB (and besides they are recorded along with a JPG), which means recorded that are slow and bulky, requiring large and fast to use credit cards. Since it was already a veteran camera and approached one of the periods of pre-release shows, I waited to see if they had the LX3 to correct this problem and finally, seeing that it was not, I decided to buy it. The renovation could not take and the LX3 has performed just before the next show: Photokina . The news is important but still a number of characteristics. The first thing you notice is the change of perspective, from a 28-112 mm to only 24-60. Or seen another way, to no less than 24 mm in a compact camera. But it has also been enhanced in brightness, f2.8-4.9 that now goes to f2.0-2.8, so we have a 24 mm lens with a super-bright f2.0, but this change has been sacrificed telephoto as well go short on many occasions. Personally I think this change makes the camera much less attractive for general use, and is slightly closer to a more specific and elitist.

The second thing that stands out is that there has been increased resolution, keep in 10 megapixels. Finally, it seems that manufacturers are starting to focus on improving the quality of the pixels and not the quantity, because what he has done Panasonic has been to increase the sensitive area of each pixel so that, at least in theory, should improve the signal noise ratio and dynamic range , and allows to raise the ISO a little more. In fact now the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 arrives at 6,400 ISO (the LX2 reached 3,200, but since 400 is practically unusable). This also helps the new version of the Venus Engine processor (the IV), which promises better noise reduction while preserving more detail.

It also keeps the details of the LX2, the selection of 16:9, 4:3 or 3:2, full manual control (including focus) and small size.

What I find is any information about the size of the RAW, so you will have to wait to publish the first test to see if that point has been corrected satisfactorily.