Five days ago we unboxed the DMC-L10, and now I have spent some more days with Panasonics new digital SLR DMC-L10. The camera is meant to compete with the Canon EOS 40D and the Nikon D200 in the mid segment, and technically the camera is a pretty good choice.

Digital SLRs are a pretty new phenomena and the prices have been falling radically the last three or four years even though the market has been dominated by strong players such as Canon and Nikon and therefore it’s fun to see that Sony, Olympus and now Panasonic entering the market. The Panasonic DMC-L10 is a slower camera than both the Canons EOS 40D and the Nikons D200 but apart from that you can read the specification sheets and find out that they are pretty much on the same level. Panasonic has some cool features that the others lack though and one example is the face detection funtion which automatically gives you correct exposure and exact focus on faces.

Body and design
The camera feels very solid and the case is made out of a magnesium alloy with some parts featuring a couple of layers of rubber to get a better grip and a solid user experience.

The battery is a 1320 mAh 7.2v Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery which gives you a battery life of approx 450 images even though the liveview function will decrease that amount radically if you use that function frequently. You load the battery from the bottom.

On the right side of the camera you can find the USB and video connections. This is also the place to load the camera with your SD-card. The camera can use a standard SD card and the newer SDHC (SD high capacity, 2GB+) cards. Unfortunately there’s now way to hook up the camera using high definition video through either DVI or a HDMI connection.

The controls are pretty easy to get hold of and you don’t have to learn the camera by reading the manual (even though you probably have to look in it to understand abbreviations such as AFS, AFC, AFL and AEL). I have two negative things to say about the body and design though:

First of all I think the location of the front dial is in the wrong spot. Even after a couple of days training I feel that this dial could be in a better position and since you use it to adjust the aperture while in manual mode I use it a lot!).

Secondly the grip is too small. There’s no way I can fit more than three fingers on the grip and I’m used to having four fingers on the grip. One centimeter of extra height would have solved the grip issue.

The function liveview where you can shoot photos without using the viewfinder is a feature that many users have been missing when they take the leap from the point and shoot camera to a more professional version. Most professionals will not use the function, but it can be very nice to have if you shoot macro or are in a very crowded area where you used to just shoot in blind.

The function works pretty good and the only thing that irritates is the intense shutter sound you get ever time you re-focus while liveview is active.

Lens
Even though Panasonic probably was very tempted to develop a lens format of their own, I am very happy that they finally decided to go for the 4/3 standard invented by Olympus.

The amount of lenses are limited but the more camera models and end users the format gets, the more interesting it will be for lens manufacturers such as Tamron and Sigma to produce lenses for the 4/3-system. Sigma have already a couple of 4/3-lenses out on the market.

The kit lens, Leiva D Vario-Elmar 14-50mm / F3.8:5.6 is a solid, genuine lens that feels like a quality lens compared to Canons 18-55 kit lens.

The lens feature Optical image stabilization (Mega O.I.S.) and it works really good. You can a full step higher shutter / aperture setting than you can do with the OIS turned off.

Image quality
My opinion when discussing megapixels back and forth between todays top cameras is that the differences are minimal. Sure, you can do some 100% crops that show a big difference during some condition but for most users either model will fit their needs perfectly.

To prove my point I took a 4 year old Canon EOS 300D (6.5 megapixel) and compared it head to head with this 10 megapixel stallion.

Here’s a true 100% crop:

The picture to the left is the crop from the Panasonic DMC-L10 and the right crop is from the Canons EOS 300D. Sure, there are some differences but the difference in quality isn’t radical.

The Leica lens is better than the Canon kit lens and here you can see a bigger difference in details, but still it isn’t mind blowing.

If you compare the DMC-L10 to cameras with similar resolutions such as Canons EOS 40D or the Nikons D200 I would really doubt that you could see any difference in for example an A4 print out. The only big difference in quality as I see it is that the Canon gives you less noisy pictures while using higher ISO levels (abouve ISO 800).

Conclusion
The Panasonic DMC-L10 is technically a very competitive camera. The resolution is comparable to the competition and the kit lens from Leica is really good (better than the other kit lenses if you would ask me). The only thing that makes me a bit sceptical is that it’s rather expensive ($1300). It’s a great camera but when you start looking for other lenses you have to spend some serious $ to get what you need. If I look in my own camera bag I really need to have a light sensitive 50 millimeter lens and those kind of lenses are cheap to get for the Canon and Nokia Nikon but really expensive for the Panasonic.

And if you skip the 50mm and start looking for telezooms you can only found one or two different modeks, while you can find many models for both Canon and Nokia Nikon.

In regards to usability the camera is very simple to use and the optical image stabilization increase the level of quality on photos. I don’t think this model will be a top seller but I think it’s a great start for Panasonic and I hope that they will continue making DLSR models and push the market into getting more (and cheaper) 4/3 lenses out on the market.

My pure technical rating of the camera will be 8 out of 10, but the total rating will only be 6.5 out of 10 due to the fact that it’s a brand new model with pricey accessories and very few lenses.

Here are some photos in their original size to give you a couple of examples of the image quality from the DMC L10.

Specifications:
Sensor: 4/3 CCD, 17,3 x 13,0 mm
Resolution: 10,1 miljoner pixlar (3648×2736)
Lens: 4/3-standarden
Sensitivity: ISO 100 – ISO 1600
Monitor: Utfällbar 2,5 tums LCD-skärm. 207 000 pixlar.
Dimensions: 134.5 x 95.5 x 77.5mm (55/16″ x 3 13/16″ x 3 1/16″)
Weight (camera body): Approx. 480g/16.9oz
Weight (inc supplied lens, card and battery): Approx 973g/34.3oz
Shutter speed: 1/4000 – 60 seconds
Focus: Phase Shift AF:3-point TTL Phase Difference Detection, Automatic or manual point selection, EV 0 to 19 (ISO 100) detection range. Contrast AF, Face detection/9-area-focusing/Multi-area-focusing/3-area-focusing/1-area-focusing/Spot-focusing, EV 0 to 20 (ISO 100) detection range
White balance: Auto, daylight, cloudy, shade, halogen, flash, custom 1, custom 2, Kelvin temp (3,000 – 10,000 K)
Viewfinder: Field of view 95%, magnification 0.92x, eye point 14 mm at -1 diop
Storage: SD card, support for SDHC
Drive modes: Single, continuous H (3 fps), continuous L (2 fps)

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