Panasonic Lumix LX10 test shot reel

Hello all,

I’ve been playing around with the Panasonic Lumix LX10 (LX15 / LX9 in some locales) for underwater video, and finally got around to collecting some of these test shots in a reel.

I’m sharing this test footage because there’s not much compact camera based underwater video footage around, and I think it  might be of interest to people looking into compact cameras for underwater filming.

I added some captions / subs which can be activated for information on shooting depth, light and equipment used, as well as site and conditions.

The conditions were far from ideal in most cases (working as an instructor-guide, I can only bring the camera when I'm not leading a dive), too deep, bad viz etc, but I found it interesting to experiment with this compact camera, push it a little to see what could be extracted from the resulting footage.
 

This LX10 test footage was almost exclusively ambient light, in Japan and Palau (Micronesia) where I currently work, mostly with a Keldan Spectrum SF -1.5 filter gel, and an Inon UWL-H100 wide conversion wet lens.

I first used a generic wet red filter (Howshot) on the UWL-H100 (not happy with the colour balance) before switching to a far superior (Auto) Magic Filter gel taped directly on the Lumix lens (inside the housing), then finally to a Keldan Spectrum SF -1.5 filter gel, also taped on the lens, which is now my primary filter.

Magic Filter and Keldan came really  close, but I found the Keldan Spectrum to offer more options for working in post.
I would say the main issue I had with the Keldan filter on this camera is the water column blues, which, under certain light / shooting condition, can feel a little too vivid, as in the shallow second-last clip, which would require more desaturation / luma work in post to make it less day-glo...

While most of the footage is shot in ambient light (which is my favourite way of shooting), some of the macro footage was shot using artificial lights (2x Archon D11V-II 1000 lumen video lights), with an Inon UCL-165M67 close-up lens (and a homemade quadripod on the nudibranch shots).

The camera is housed in a Nauticam NA-LX10 housing, with a Nauticam tray, and float arms to compensate the over  -1.5kg negative buoyancy in salt water...

The camera is shooting in 4K at 30fps (no zooming in needed to avoid vignetting with the Inon UWL-H100, thanks to the camera’s 36mm crop) , in manual exposure, using backbutton focus (focus peaking for macro), and manually white balancing every 5m or so using a WhiBal white-balance card.

The picture profile used is Cinelike D (CineD - there is hack to load and save it in the LX10), with sharpness, noise reduction and saturation at -5, and contrast at 0, and the footage was graded in Final Cut Pro X. I find the footage to be sometimes a little too crisp, despite sharpness being at -5 in the profile.

Stabilisation is very average in 4K and autofocus really not the best (but I work with backbutton focus, which solves most of the issues), there is no option to add a monitor, and battery life is good for 1.5 dives on average.

But beyond obvious limitations and its age, the LX10 is still a very interesting compact camera for filming underwater, with a good fast lens, and I was quite surprised at how much colour information does make it to the sensor, much deeper than expected.

cheers!

b

Awesome stuff

Very nice video! Nice colours, interesting shots, and amazingly steady. It really reminded of how great it is to dive in Palau. Personally, I also find ambient light gives a better sense of "being there", because it's more natural. My last time there was 2018, and I'd love to go back soon (I usually go on Ocean Hunter III).

I use a different red filter for my GH5, the one from Aditech (which I think is UrPro), but my results with the Magic Filter were always too green.

Thanks a lot for posting it.

Cheers,

Matt

On 10/8/2022 at 4:20 PM, DSB said:

Awesome stuff

Thanks DSB!

On 10/13/2022 at 9:50 PM, matdiver1234 said:

Very nice video! Nice colours, interesting shots, and amazingly steady. It really reminded of how great it is to dive in Palau. Personally, I also find ambient light gives a better sense of "being there", because it's more natural. My last time there was 2018, and I'd love to go back soon (I usually go on Ocean Hunter III).

I use a different red filter for my GH5, the one from Aditech (which I think is UrPro), but my results with the Magic Filter were always too green.

Thanks a lot for posting it.

Cheers,

Matt

Thanks a lot Matt.

Yes, Palau's definitely a good place to be, though the conditions at the moment are not the best, and there's a risk this will be a complicated La Nina season, unfortunately...

Good to hear I'm not the only ambient-light fan out there! Yes, I love ambient light shots for the same reasons, more immersive, and also more balanced, with less of the bright foreground / ambient background result which I don't like too much in wide-angle video. 
You need sufficient natural light of course, doesn't really work in greener temperate waters or for macro, but for wide-angle in the tropics, it's definitely worth digging into. (also probably better for marine life, not being flashed by 2x 10K+ lumen... )

The "mixed light" approach with ambient filters is really interesting, but even then I prefer the results given by discreet artificial light to bring out a little foreground details than a super-lit, UW strobe lit picture-like foreground.

I'd love to upgrade to the GH5 or similar (Canon?) someday, but at the moment I'm not in a position where I can use it enough to justify the investment and extra luggage for a side-hobby. It's high on the list for a retirement plan though

cheers

Ben

This is really outstanding. A skilled image-maker with lesser equipment is always better than a lesser image-maker with top of the line equipment. Well done.

Simply superb

Goes to show that a 1" compact in skilled hands can give better image quality and colours than some of the Full Frame or GH5 footage I've seen. Impressive!

Here are some macro shots on the LX10, shot over 3 dives in Tulamben, Bali a few weeks back.

Gear is a Lumix LX10 mounted on my homemade quadripod for the Nauticam Flexitray, shooting with an INON UCL-165 (+6 diopter) closeup lens.

I hadn't shot macro for a while, and a lot of Tulamben critters are really tiny, which proved challenging for my aging eyes, and led to the use of the LX10's macro zoom, for lack of stronger diopters.

And I actually managed to forget my pair of usual lights, so this was lit with a single Archon D11V 700 lumen-ish video light...
Having only one light made it difficult to compensate Tulamben's strong daylight in the shallows (you can see the light changes as clouds pass overhead), and also accounts for lighting issues on wider shots like the Tozeuma Shrimp or the tiny frogfish - I won't be making that mistake again, diving up there again in the weeks to come.

Otherwise the picture profile used is Cinelike D (CineD - there is hack to load and save it in the LX10), with sharpness, noise reduction and saturation at -5, and contrast at 0, and the footage was graded in Final Cut Pro X.

cheers
ben

Stunning.  Thanks for sharing.