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I've been snapping away with the Panasonic Lumix L10 for weeks, ever since it was announced on May 12.
You can learn more about the Lumix L10 in my in-depth Panasonic Lumix L10 review, but because I've taken so many photos and videos with the premium compact camera, I thought it apt to share more of my favorites in this extensive photo gallery.
I've included a range of my favorite photos, and they really show what the Lumix L10 is capable of, but they're also simply for you to enjoy (the timing of cute kittens joining our family couldn't have been better)!
For its gorgeous design and powerful features, the Lumix L10 ranks among the best compact cameras. And with its versatile and bright zoom lens, the L10 is, for me, a compelling alternative to popular fixed-lens compact rivals such as the Fujifilm X100VI and Ricoh GR IV.
As the spiritual successor to the LX100 series, and a camera that's packing the latest Lumix tech, I predict the Lumix L10 will be one of the most popular Panasonic cameras in years — it's available in Black, Silver or limited edition Titanium Gold, and I've provided links to today's best deals below.
That's enough about the camera — let's get to the pictures...
Panasonic's latest autofocus
I had to start with the kittens, which were rescued after being found in a neighbor's cupboard (a stray had entered the house, given birth, and left), and which my family is currently nursing!
The Lumix L10 features Panasonic's latest hybrid phase-detection autofocus with subject detection, including humans, animals and more, and it can be fine-tuned for certain species such as cats, with pose detection. The camera pretty much nailed the focus every shot.
A versatile zoom
Unlike other popular premium compact cameras with a fixed lens, the Lumix L10 features a 24-75mm f/1.7-2.8 optic. That's a 3.1x zoom, and I often found myself at the telephoto end of the zoom range.
Below I've included a series of five shots of the same scene at key focal lengths: 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 70mm and 75mm. A switch on the camera's lens can be assigned as a stepped zoom for quick access to three of the six recognized optical focal lengths, or beyond for digital zoom settings.
Macro focusing
The Lumix L10 can focus as close as 3cm, which sounds super-impressive. However, that's just for the wide-angle 24mm setting of the lens — which is not the perspective I typically go for with macro photography.
With the lens zoomed in to 75mm, the minimum focus distance increases to 30cm, which isn't nearly as impressive. However, the camera can still focus nice and close.
An everyday and travel camera
The beauty of a compact camera like the Lumix L10, which only weighs around 500g, is that it can be with you at all times. It excels as a travel and everyday camera; however, one drawback makes me cautious recommending it for street photography, and that's its start-up time.
The camera itself is lightning-quick in operation, but it features a collapsible lens. That means from starting up, to the lens extending into position, and the camera being ready to shoot, there's a good 2-3 seconds delay, which is fine for many scenarios but less helpful for quick-fire street photography.
Portraiture
The 3.1x zoom lens covers popular focal lengths for portrait photography, while its maximum f/1.7 (24mm) to f/2.8 (75mm) aperture can provide a shallow depth of field to separate subject and background.
With a Micro Four Thirds (MFT) sensor, the full-frame effective depth of field is like having a f/3.4 to f/5.6 aperture. Still, with the right framing, and distance between the camera and subject, and the subject and background, it's pretty easy to get attractive portraits.
Bokeh is nice and smooth most of the time, but if the scene has strong background sunlight I've noticed the unattractive onion-ring effect in bokeh at times, rather than it being smooth (I've included a couple of backlit wildflower photos to give you an idea of bokeh quality). The lens is far from being a specialist portrait optic.
Color profiles and Real Time LUTs
Fujifilm has a solid reputation in this department, but don't overlook Panasonic. A combination of in-camera profiles — which include numerous 'Leica' looks and some new profiles including L.Classic Gold (most of the images below are shot with this new profile) — and Real Time LUTs, which can be downloaded via the excellent Lumix Lab app and used for photo and video, make the Lumix L10 a color powerhouse. As I said in my review, I've never been more tempted to shoot JPEG-only.
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