The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LC80 joins
the ever growing ranks of 5 megapixel cameras. As other Lumix
models, the LC80 offers a Leica 3X zoom lens, a compact size
and a number of shooting modes.
Starting at the top of the camera, the shutter release — providing
auto focus and exposure lock when pressed and held halfway — the
zoom control and the power switch are all grouped on a slightly raised
and darker silver-grey area.
The zoom control also has a function
in playback, displaying thumbnails of the captured photos on
the monitor (9 per screen) when pushed to the wide angle side,
and magnification of an image (up to 8X) with the telephoto side.
The upper back of the LC80 offers an optical viewfinder that has no AF
markings nor any diopter corrector. On its right are 2 LEDs, the green
upper one indicating AF while the lower one, red, is reserved for the flash.
Directly under the viewfinder, the LC80 has a 1.5 inch114,000 pixel
LCD monitor with a Mode dial to its right. The Mode dial provides
a selection of shooting modes and a centre button that is used to select
one of the 2 Burst modes available (see further). The Mode dial
has 7 still image capture modes, a movie mode, and a playback position
[].
The LC80 is a fully automatic camera, and it controls the aperture and
shutter speed selections in all shooting modes:
Normal Mode: is the basic
shooting mode. Much like a Program mode, the Normal mode
allows the user to adjust many image parameters other than
aperture and shutter speed.
Economy Mode: is simply
a power-saving variation of the Normal shooting mode. The
Economy mode reduces the brightness of the LCD monitor,
and implements other power-saving measures that increase
the life of the batteries.
Macro Mode: moves the focus range
from the normal 50 cm (19.5 inches) to infinity, to a range
that covers from 10 cm (3.9 inches) to infinity when the
lens is at the wide angle end, while the telephoto end
remains the same (50 cm to infinity).
Portrait Mode: uses a
wide aperture to soften the background while having the
subject in focus. As always, the effect of the portrait
mode is more pronounced if the lens is set to the telephoto
end.
Landscape Mode: meant
for use in daylight and with the scene at least 10 metres
distant. This mode uses a small aperture to capture foreground
to background clearly.
Night Portrait Mode:
combines the use of a slow shutter speed and the flash,
if desired, to fill in the foreground. With the flash turned
on the shutter speed is limited to a range of 1 second
to 1/2000 second, while when the flash is forced off the
shutter speed can be as long as 8 seconds.
Simple Mode: is Panasonic's
term for the full Auto mode of the LC80. In this
mode, user options are limited to selection of image size,
and setting some very basic camera parameters such time
and date.
(See the Characteristics section of the review).
Motion Images Mode: captures a video
clip at a 320 x 240 frame size with sound. Focus, zoom,
white balance, and aperture are locked at the first frame.
Recordings last as long as there is free space on the memory
card.
As noted above, the centre button of the Mode dial is used to select the Burst
Mode.
The LC80 provides 2 separate Burst recording modes, Low and High,
which are available in the still image shooting modes with the exception
of the Simple mode, which is limited to Burst Low. With either
mode, the camera can capture either 5 frames at the highest image quality, Fine,
or 9 frames at the more compressed Standard setting:
Burst L captures images
at 1.5 frames per second.
Burst H captures images
at 2.7 frames per second.
The four-direction control, which serves to navigate the LC80's menus,
and select images in playback, is placed directly below the Mode dial.
In addition, each of its directional arrows offers other functions:
The left arrow starts the Self
Timer. Two delays are available: 2 seconds, or 10
seconds.
On the opposite side, the right
is used to select Flash modes: Auto, Auto with Red-eye
Reduction, Forced On, Slow Sync with Red-eye Reduction
and Forced Off.
The up arrow can be used to
select up to three different but related functions. Pressing
the arrow once presents the Exposure
Compensation scale, which allows adjusting the exposure
over a range of ±2EV in 1/3 EV increments.
Pressing the up arrow a second
time accesses the Auto
Bracketing mode which offers a range of ±1 EV
in 1/3EV increments. The camera first captures one exposure
with the selected amount of under exposure, one with the
metered reading, and one image over-exposed by the selected
amount.
And finally, and only when
the white balance set to any other setting than Auto, pressing
the up arrow a third time makes it possible to adjust the
white balance towards slightly more bluish or reddish hues.
The down arrow of the 4-direction
control provides two functions. First, while in one of
the capture modes, pressing the down arrow causes the camera
to enter the REVIEW mode. The Review mode serves
to immediately see the last captured image without having
to turn the Mode dial to the Playback position.
Second, the down serves to
confirm some specific selections made in the menus, or
to confirm a selected exposure compensation, auto bracketing,
or white balance adjustment.
Three more buttons are aligned under the LCD monitor:
The FOCUS button has
a dual role. First, it can be used to delete unwanted images
when the camera is in Playback. Second, if selected to
do so in the menu, it can be used to start the autofocus
process and hold the focus until pressed again, replacing
the need to hold the shutter release at the halfway point
to hold the focus while recomposing the image.
Controls the LCD monitor, and
the information that is overlaid on the image. By default,
the camera indicates the AF brackets, the shooting mode,
the flash mode, the ISO setting, the image size and compression,
the battery state and the number of shots that can be captured.
Moreover, when the shutter release is half-pressed, the
aperture and shutter speed are shown.
Starting with the default view,
pressing the display button adds a real-time histogram
on the lower right side of the image. A second press of
the button, replaces most of the information but adds a
composition grid. Pressing the button a third time removes
the grid, leaving only AF brackets. Pressing the button
a fourth time turns off the monitor to conserve power while
the optical viewfinder is in use. And the fifth press of
the button cycles back to the first display.
Simply displays the menu that
corresponds to the mode in use on the monitor.
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Introduction
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The LC80 provides 2 separate Burst recording modes, Low and High,
which are available in the still image shooting modes with the exception
of the Simple mode, which is limited to Burst Low. With either
mode, the camera can capture either 5 frames at the highest image quality, Fine,
or 9 frames at the more compressed Standard setting:
