Pt. 1 - Appearance and Zoom Range
Pt. 2 - JPEG Noise
Pt. 3 - ISO 80 JPEG Crops at 35mm & Full Aperture
Pt. 4 - Flare Performance
Pt. 5 - Noise Performance Revisited
Pt. 6 - G7 Default JPEG vs GX100 Silkypix Conversions
Pt. 7 - Key Timings
Pt. 8 - Build Quality, Quality Control, and Battery Life
Pt. 9 - Conclusion

The question I get most often is "Which one do you recommend most?" None of these cameras are right for everyone, but I will try to provide a summary analysis here along with my personal decisions and their basis.

Form factor: Each camera has its merits here. The D-LUX is the most portable, followed closely by the Ricoh. I appreciate the fact that the G7 lens retracts, making a clunky separate lens cover unnecessary. The Ricoh is the only one to provide a decent grip, though in truth I find all quite comfortable to control. The G7 feels the most solid, but it's also the heaviest by far.

Controls: I prefer the manual dials of the G7 and GX100 to the joystick approach of the D-LUX. The G7 controls and menus have a nice familiarity since I have owned a number of Canon DSLRs and compact digital cameras which share control elements. The ISO dial on the G7 is a real blessing, something all my cameras should have but none beside the G7 do. All three cameras position controls well from a usability standpoint. However, I have come to love the controls and customization of the GX100 most of all. I love being able to register my most commonly used indoor and outdoor settings to the two "My Setting" locations main dial. The dual dials are simple and effective, and the menu can also be simply customized for easier access to important settings.

Zoom range: No brainer here. As described here, the focal length ranges are dramatically different and in my opinion this should serve as the main differntiating factor in choosing amongst these cameras.

Image quality:

The G7 and GX100 seem to resolve a comparable amount of detail when "pixel peeping." The D-LUX too rises to the occasion, particularly when shooting RAW. The GX100 marginally outresolves the G7 when the former is shot in RAW mode and care take in postprocessing. That said, the G7 does an admirable job in removing noise without destroying image detail. However, for those of us who really understand and enjoy postprocessing, RAW provides another level of flexibility. We get to choose our own detail versus noise removal trade-offs throughout each region of each image.

The noise quality and image detail of the GX100 is subjectively the most appealing of the three cameras to me when using the default in-camera black and white JPEG mode. This is true at all ISOs, but particularly at ISO 200 and above. I won't go so far as to call the Ricoh noise "grain" as some have done. It still looks digital to me at the pixel level. However, both on the LCD and in print, the GX100 B&W noise appeals to me more than the G7 noise does. The D-LUX noise, in RAW conversions to B&W, also has a pleasing quality to my eye.

The G7 lens shows great resistance to veiling flare compared with the others. It is difficult to emphasize just how important this quality is - a major plus for the Canon.

The GX100 lens shows very little purple fringing, even wide open at the shortest focal lengths. What little purple fringing exists is effectively treated by the in-camera JPEG processing. Purple fringing is not a major problem for any of the three, but the GX100 is the best of the lot.

Automatic white balance was acceptable on all three. The G7 and D-LUX seemed a bit more consistent outdoors with the GX100 perhaps more consistent indoors.

Color accuracy was not specifically tested, but my impression was that all are quite good in this respect.

Dynamic range, as expected, is not very good with any of these small-pixelled cameras. I'd say, without rigorous testing, that they are all similarly weak in this aspect. The D-LUX and GX100 RAW files can afford a bit of leeway in salvaging lost shadow detail and clipped highlights. G7 users lack this flexibility.

Shot to shot time in RAW mode was slightly longer with the GX100 than with the D-LUX 2.

Movie mode: In my tests, the G7 produces the highest quality movies of the three.

Metering is comparably effective with all three cameras. I am the weakest link in each case when it comes to metering.

Subjective Assessments:

LCD: The G7 LCD is the most legible of the three, particularly in bright light. All three have bright LCDs that are "good enough" for a variety of lighting situations.

Viewfinder: The G7 is the only one with a built-in viewfinder. However, there is considerable framing inaccuracy with this viewfinder. The Ricoh EVF is a clumsy attachment to carry, and doesn't give the best image in the world, but at least it frames accurately; it is therefore much more useful to me than is the G7 optical viewfinder. The D-LUX lacks an optical viewfinder.

Battery: My subjective impression is that the G7 has a better battery life than the other two cameras, though none of the three have very good battery life.

Focusing accuracy and speed were not objectively measured. In use, they seem very good with all three, and I am unable to say that one is better than another.

Image stabilization: Image stabilization was effective on all three cameras. I have insufficient data to judge between them in this category.

The menu system and operation speeds are excellent on all.

Not tested:

The flash on each has been insufficiently tested for me to make a judgment.

I have not used any of the bundled software. RAW users should check the compatibility of their RAW processing software of choice prior to assuming a given camera will be supported.

Macro modes have not yet been tested.

Continuous shooting modes were not tested.

Other Special Features

- The G7 and GX100 have a hot shoe.

- G7 has face detection.

- Native 16:9 aspect ratio of the D-LUX 2.

- Step zoom of the GX100 is a great feature for prime lovers.

- Snap zoom of the GX100 is a bit of a gimmmick, not different than setting manual focus to 2.5m on the other two cameras. However, having this "feature" as a distinct setting allows one to quicly select it, which is quite useful.

- The GX100 allows one to shoot in 1:1 format.

- The D-LUX 2 has a TIFF mode in addition to RAW and JPEG.

- The G7 seems to work with regular 4GB SD cards (I tested it with the Transcend 150x 4GB SD card) whereas the GX100 requires SDHC cards when going higher than 2GB. I'm not sure about the Leica.

- The GX100 will take AAA batteries in a pinch.

- Various conversion lenses and accessories are beyond the scope of my comparison.

So which one should you buy?

All three cameras are excellent choices if you want a compact camera with full photographic control.

Here are a few tips:
- If you eschew RAW, like to shoot JPEGs only, and enjoy shooting at high ISO and making large prints, avoid the D-LUX cameras.
- If you mainly shoot B&W, I think the GX100 is the most rewarding of the three. It has a great in-camera B&W mode, and RAW files are ultimately the best source for high quality B&W conversions from color.
- If you want a camera that will impress the general public, the G7 and D-LUX get the most comments. On the other hand, if you want not to be noticed, a black LX2/3 or GX100 are probably the best fit.
- If you want a camera that will impress other photographers, the GX100 gets the most questions =).

In the end, the most important question to answer before buying one of these cameras is what focal length range suits your style of photography. If you like to shoot telephoto, the G7 is the clear answer. On the other end of the spectrum, the GX100 is the only one of the three to extend to the ultra-wide focal length range. The D-LUX 2 has the most moderate range extending from wide to moderate telephoto.

The G7 is a fantastic photographic tool. I have used it to make large prints which are similar in quality, to my eye, to those taken with my 5D and L lenses. For the JPEG shooter who doesn't frequently go wide, I don't think there is a better compact camera available. It is a highly controversial camera, but the great majority of criticisms seem to come from those who haven't used one for any period of time. Professional reviews have all voiced similar complaints about the omission of RAW, slower lens than previous G-series cameras, and lack of a flip LCD, but their summary conclusions have been almost universally positive.

I was planning to keep all three cameras, but after carrying them all for the past couple of weeks, I have decided that that would be overkill. Since my style of photography is more and more tending towards wide angle and B&W, the GX100 suits me best. The D-LUX 2 makes a wonderful backup, and I really enjoy shooting in its native 16:9 aspect ratio as a change of pace. I will gift the G7 to my father, who recently gave me his D-LUX 2 and could use a compact camera to go with his Canon DSLR.

If this multipart comparison has helped you to decide to purchase one of these excellent cameras, you can help me by purchasing from Amazon after going there via the links below.



Visiting the Amazon page using these links doesn't change your price but makes it so that Amazon shares a bit of the profits with me. I can honestly recommend Amazon for photography gear. In addition to competitive prices, they have great customer service and one of the best return policies around (though if the item is being sold on Amazon by a third paty seller, then the return policy of that seller would apply)..

Pt. 1 - Appearance and Zoom Range
Pt. 2 - JPEG Noise
Pt. 3 - ISO 80 JPEG Crops at 35mm & Full Aperture
Pt. 4 - Flare Performance
Pt. 5 - Noise Performance Revisited
Pt. 6 - G7 Default JPEG vs GX100 Silkypix Conversions
Pt. 7 - Key Timings
Pt. 8 - Build Quality, Quality Control, and Battery Life
Pt. 9 - Conclusion

I received feedback from a number of individuals who wanted to see the prior high ISO noise testing repeated with some RAW conversions included. I am posting here some prelimanry results of such tests. Of course, RAW conversion is a highly personal process. I have used here Adobe Camera RAW with slight noise removal at ISO 400 and up only, since my main goal here is to show how much extra detail can be retained if one is willing to tolerate noise. Of course if one were to find the noise levels of my RAW conversions to be excessive, additional noise removal could be applied during or after RAW conversion.

As before, I used standard in-camera processing settings when possible. Cameras were set to 35mm equivalent focal length and tested on a tripod with self-timer. Aperture was fixed at f5.6 (f5.8 was the closest possible on the GX100).

Here was the overall test scene:



As always, click on the photo for full size (In some browsers, a second click is necessary to get actual size). Here are the right edge crops:

Edit/Correction - In my haste, I mislabelled the bottom GX100 crop in each set, which should instead be labelled as GX100 ACR conversion.

ISO 80:



ISO 100:


ISO 200:



ISO 400:



ISO 800:



ISO 1600:



I will add the results from the center, left edge, bottom left corner, and bottom right corner later today. I will also add results from Silkypix RAW conversions as soon as possible.

My brother Bijan recently asked me why I shoot RAW whenever possible. Sometime in the near future, I plan to explain that here in detail with accompanying example photos. For now, I'd like to explain two concerns about the availability of the RAW format in current digital cameras.

First of all, what is RAW? Most digital photographers shoot in JPEG, a lossy compression format. When we shoot JPEG, we choose aperture, ISO, shutter speed, focal length, composition, and perspective (ie, where we stand) prior to taking the shot. The camera takes the information recorded by the sensor (ie, the light gathered by the sensor) and, based on our pre-selected settings, applies adjustments including white balance, sharpening, noise reduction, contrast curves, and saturation; it then turns the image into a smaller file by eliminating much of the "extra" information that is less necessary for the photo to have the intended final look. This resulting compressed file format is JPEG. JPEG is a great format for people who don't want to do this processing by hand or don't know how to process, though I should note that many desktop applications can process for you as well as or better than your camera can. Being smaller, JPEG files keep storage costs and camera buffer needs lower. When we shoot RAW, we make the same decisions about aperture, ISO, shutter speed, focal length, composition, and perspective prior to taking the shot. After the shot, all information gathered from light striking the sensor while the shutter is open is stored for us to process later. In other words, we save the "raw" data. The advantage of this is that we get to make a lot of decisions after the shot. For an extreme and obvious example, let's say we shoot in JPEG mode and take a black and white photo with in camera settings for contrast and noise reduction set to "high." We get home and decide we wish the image were in color. Too bad. Wish the image had more detail? No problem, just decrease the noise reduction. Oops the camera's processing engine permanently through away that detail while it was trying to keep noise down. Blow some highlights? If only the contrast setting hadn't been quite so high... If only I had shot RAW. All of those decisions could have been made later, and I'd have my color, noisy but detailed, well-exposed shot. Many advantages of RAW are far more subtle. There are some other advantages of JPEG as well. Both of those issues will have to wait for another installment. Now back to my concerns about RAW.

RAW is being dropped from advanced compact cameras at an alarming rate. Canon and Nikon have abandoned it. Many of us think that this has been done in order to steer enthusiasts to DSLRs where we will spend thousands on lenses. Others feel that RAW files are being kept from us so we won't see how noisy these tiny, pixel-stuffed sensors are before in-camera noise reduction is applied. I also wonder whether companies are leaving out RAW in order to save money on hardware costs. RAW file capture and storage typically necessitates a larger memory buffer for reasonable continuous shooting rates. Whatever the reason, it is important to understand that RAW is not being kept from us because the cameras don't "make" a RAW file. When light hits the sensor, RAW data is recorded. They just need to fork it over. This point is illustrated by a Russian hack which makes RAW files available on Canon digital cameras with DIGIC II processors from which Canon had disabled end user access to RAW data. Many held out hope that Canon would keep RAW in their flagship prosumer G-series. No such luck. Canon's Chuck Westfall explained that this omission was a consequence of the pixel pitch being so small on the G7. By shoving 10 million pixels onto a 1/1.8" sensor, Canon made the G7 pixels so small and noisy that no RAW processor can eek more out of them than Canon's on-board DIGIC III processor can. I won't argue against the implication that little pixels are no good. Two of my cameras (Leica D2 and Canon 5D) have a large pixel pitch, and I think that when one compares them to cameras of the same technology generation, one can really tell the difference. Larger pixels tend to capture a greater dynamic range as well as to limit the amount of noise. I'm getting off topic though. Users of the tiny-pixelled G7 would still benefit from access to their RAW files. First of all, there is nothing magic about the DIGIC III processor. It is not more powerful than my Mac Pro, and it's processing algorithms will be dated as fast as Canon can produce the DIGIC IV. Therefore, to imply that the G7 can get as much or more out of the RAW files than we can is downright silly. Second, RAW is not only about how much detail or how little noise we can extract. It is about flexibility. When I shoot ISO 400 with the G7, the camera applies a certain amount of noise reduction (NR) to create a balance between detail preserved (NR destroys detail) and noise eliminated. Each camera's JPEG engine does this differently. For example, Panasonic's Venus III engine has been widely criticized for striking a balance that favors excessive noise reduction with resulting smearing of details. NR also creates the Fuji compact camera "watercolor effect" at very high ISO. Getting back to the G7, what if I want to preserve more detail at the expense of greater than usual noise for ISO 400? Often with black and white conversion, I choose such a compromise since color noise is not a factor in B&W. RAW would give me that option. Mr. Westfall's explanation is not good enough for me.

Now for the main reason I am posting this. It has recently come to my attention that, even in the cameras which still offer RAW, our RAW may not be as RAW as we think it is. I was reading about image quality comparisons between the Panasonic DMC-LX1 (branded by Leica as the D-LUX 2) and the DMC-LX2 (branded by Leica as the D-LUX 3). These two cameras are interesting to me because they are compact, offer RAW, offer a choice of 16:9, 3:2, and 4:3 aspect ratios, and have a wide angle lens (starting at 28mm when shooting in wide aspect format). The LX2 has more pixels, which as noted above is not always a good thing when sensor size limited. However, I was intrigued by the fact that LX2 RAW files, at typically between 19-20MB each, are considerably larger than my 5D RAW files. This prompted me to do a little digging. One reason for the LX2 RAW files to be so large is that they contain 16-bit color as opposed to 12-bit as in most RAW files. The other thing I found out about LX2 RAW files is more ominous. Panasonic appears to have applied a considerable amount of NR to the RAW files themselves! This reduces the amount of shadow noise considerably but also reduces the low contrast detail available in those shadows. Björn (viztyger) on DPReview was kind enough to make available his LX2 RAW analyses in those forums. Here is his post showing identically processed RAW files from the LX1 and LX2. I think the results speak for themselves. It is clear that the LX1 crop contains noise that the LX2 crop does not. Many would find this noise objectionable, and yet they could largely remedy the situation by applying NR software during or after RAW conversion on their computer. On the other hand, the shadow detail which is present in the LX1 crop is irrecoverable in the LX2 photo. No software could restore it.

This raises the question as to whether Panasonic is an evil company that is alone in violating the sanctity of RAW, whether everyone is doing it, or whether I have just been thinking about RAW the wrong way. One thing to consider is that the processing of recorded light data is not limited to a single processing engine such as DIGIC III or Venus III. There is so-called "on-chip" processing on the sensor itself. It has never been clear to me whether to think of this processing as distinct from what the main processing engine does or not. In other words, I wonder whether "on-chip" NR permanently eliminates detail the way other NR does, or alternatively whether it could somehow be improving signal to noise capture at the source. If anyone knows, please tell me. As to whether "everyone is doing it," it is becoming clear to be that the answer is probably "yes" to one extent or another. In a 2006 thread in the Rob Galbraith forums, Canon's Chuck Westfall had the following to say: "...This dates back to previous discussions on this board (circa 11/2003) where I stated that .CRW files from early EOS Digital SLRs (D30, D60, 10D, Digital Rebel/300D) were minimally sharpened in camera. Canon Inc. engineers confirmed this to be true. Conversely, no sharpening of any kind is applied to raw images captured as .TIF (as in EOS-1D, EOS-1Ds) or .CR2 (EOS 5D, 20D, Digital Rebel XT, 1D Mark II, 1D Mark II N, and 1Ds Mark II)." He went on to add, "To the best of my knowledge, there is no softening or smoothing per se on Canon RAW images. However, it's clear that on-chip noise reduction is performed prior to exporting the image data to the camera's image processing system." Although they are rascals for tampering with my RAW, I do respect Canon for having a prominent representative answer the tough questions posed in a public, third party forum. What about the number 2 producer of digital cameras? Jim Cockfield, who informed me of the aforementioned comments from Mr. Westfall, also gave me this link, which suggests that as of 2005 there was evidence that Nikon was modifying RAW files.

While every camera manufacturer's offered RAW is clearly more raw than their in-camera JPEGs, I now understand that not all RAW is equally raw. From now on when I shop for a new camera, I will not only have to ask "Does this camera have RAW?" but also "How RAW is it?"