Lumix LX3 in Poor Light Conditions
Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 23:18 
Metallica @ AhoyLast Monday I visited the Metallica Death Magnetic Tour concert in Ahoy, Rotterdam (NL). A relatively small establishment for a rock band like Metallica, but great for the fans (if you got tickets), since the podium was centered in the middle of the arena. So everyone was relatively close to the stage.
I brought my Lumix LX3 for this occasion (since I won't be allowed entrance with my D300 + 70-200mm lens). This was the first time I brought a (P&S) camera to a concert, so I had no idea of what to expect of the quality.
I must say that I did try several settings, but the iA (Intelligent Auto) mode left me with the best images. Downside is that this mode produces only JPEG's and no RAW files. The A, P, S and M modes are too susceptible to the light changes (over- or underexposed, or just blurry images), and the light conditions change a lot (almost every second).
The movie-mode of the camera performs relatively well. Extremely bright lights results in vertical lines across the movie. The audio is not that good, but hey... it's a digital still camera with filming capabilities.
The only downside of the camera was (and still is) that it lacked zooming to 400 or 600mm :).
The photographic results can be seen on my flickr page.
Reader Comments (1)
Hi Guillaume,
Your concert photographs are great; love the way you've captured the coloured lighting beams as they shine down to the stage, very dramatic.
I own an LX3 myself. I only got it last week, so haven't really put it through its paces; but the more I see other people's photos, the more I'm impressed. It seems to cope with very difficult lighting conditions with ease, and the f2.0 lens really gives you the edge in low light places like those you experienced at the concert.