Lumix DMC-LX1 - An Affordable Widescreen HD 'Video' Camera?

Okay I'm guilty, I've got a fetish for widescreen devices. That said, I'm still unprepared to shell out the cash to buy a hdtv camera. Furthermore I find these video cameras too big and an inconvenience to lug around. Still, my kids are growing up fast, and I seriously need to capture them in high definition. CNET reports that affordable video cameras are on their way, unfortunately with does nogrowing children, time waits for no one.

So when David Orchard solicited advice for a new camera to take photos of his kids. My advice of course was to get a widescreen camera, and apparently the one I knew existed was the Lumix DMC-LX1 camera (aka Leica D-Lux 2 ). I had recently damaged my current camera (a Canon SD400), the LCD cracked and has become unviewable. Although it still can take pictures, I can't go back to the time where you can't immediately see the results of your shots (interesting how technology can spoil you).

Anyway, long story in short, I needed a new camera. I ordered the camera through Amazon. Sure I could have purchased it cheaper. However, I didn't want to both the hassle of bargaining with one of those Brooklyn, New York photo shops. You know the shops that play the bait-and-switch game to the hilt.

Well the camera has finally arrived yesterday and here it is in its full glory (juxtaposed with a PSP to give a feel of its size):

Now it's not a self-portrait of itself, rather it's a shot using my Nokia 7710. Now get this part. I send the image to flickr, which I then download it to my machine and then upload it from there to the website. So essentially, the photo has traveled through the cell network, into the internet, downloaded through my cable modem and then uploaded again. One would think directly connecting the Nokia 7710 to my PC would be easier, unfortunately that method depends on context and trust me is more difficult. The above method works everywhere! (note: if you link to flickr directly this process is just 2 steps)

Now let's get to the details. This is an incredible camera, if you look at the photo above you'll notice that 1/3rd of the camera is all lens. It has a 28mm wide 4x optical zoom LEICA DC Lens. Behind that lens is a 8.4-Megapixel 16:9 aspect CCD. I'm no expert, but that sounds like pretty impressive optics for such a small device.

I'm definitely confident it can take stunning photographs. However, my real question is how well can it take 16:9 videos? Let's see, the manual says at 16:9 at 848x480 pixels and 30fps you will burn through a 2GB SD card in 19 minutes of filming (Quicktime Motion JPEG) . I don't know if the battery will last that long. Now you can do the math, how long do you typically film? In general it's the short unplanned moments that you try to capture, and usually a scene lasts less than 5 minutes. That's enough time to store in a 512mb card, and enough time to flip in a spare in between takes. Therefore, be prepared to carry a stack of SD cards.

I've posted on Google video a clip so you can see of how well this works:

Select "original size" on the dropdown on the lower right to get a feel of how the original actually looks like. Unfortunately, the Google version doesn't do the original justice. I see a lot of compression artifacts that aren't in the initial capture. Still, consider that the original was 96mb in size, one you have here is a streaming version which most likely is less than 1/10 the size.