Panasonic Lumix LX3 Results

I've been shooting with the LX3 since October 2009. My initial impressions are mostly favorable. Although having a better zoom feature might eliminate the need for me to carry multiple cameras, the LX3 F2.0 lens provides options not found on any other P&S camera. There are several improvements that could be made; as others have pointed out before me, the lens cap is problematic. I've turned on the camera multiple times only to have a warning message flashed reminding me that I forgot to take off the lens cap. Another interesting problem is the location of the tripod socket. I thought that using a JOBY tripod would make difference in shooting in both a lightbox and the field. However, the tripod socket on this camera is all the way to one side, therefore attaching the tripod is awkward, and then, the camera seems to swing on it's own axis rather than lock up tight. Pictures are incredible though, and for the weight savings with the multitude of options available, I have no regrets overall. I own a LX3 and ZS3, and wear 1 on each hip. The combined weight of 1lb provides me the ability to shoot under all conditions from macro to telephoto, and the combined price of the two cameras was less than a cheap body in the DSLR market.

Photograph Post Processing

Best tools of the trade (in my humble opinion):

Gimp - free and very powerful

Picasa - free and moderately powerful - great organization features

Adobe Lightroom - somewhat user friendly, fairly powerful

Adobe CS3 - most intense, rich features

If you haven't tried all of them, you won't know what you are missing. All of my experiences with these have been on the Windows platform. There are ports for them on the Unix/Linux platform. Experiments have revealed that Adobe CS3, and therefore CS4 is the richest featured product on the market.