After many man hours on the net I have finally decided between either Panasonic LX3 or Canon S90. I know that the canon S90 is yet to come and the Panasonic LX3 is available on Ebay.in for 25.5K at eBay India: PANASONIC LUMIX DMC-LX3 DIGICAM + WARRANTY! BRAND NEW! (item 140352519902 end time 22-Oct-2009 14:59:40 IST)

Can anybody who is familiar of either the Panasonic LX3 or Canon S90 post their views?

Thank You.

Hi Cyrus,

I must compliment you for choosing two of the finest cameras in their class and price range. You would be happy with either, I would think.

Points to consider:
1) Canon service is India, I believe, is pretty good, whereas everybody says Panasonic service for Lumix is not that great. You need to verify that. Moreover, eBay seems to be the only place the LX3 is available, and they most probably do not give you Panasonic warranty, they probably give you just a dealer warranty. Please check that. Digital cameras involve a lot more than optics, and hence service facilities may be important.

2) The only thing I do not like about the S90 is that it does not have a viewfinder, which may be useful in bright light where LCD displays may not be too helpful in composing a shot. However, the LCD and its resolution and brightness on S90 is top notch.

3) Both can take RAW format pictures, I believe, if you are interested in that sort of thing and RAW PP (post processing) with software.

4) There are a lot of good reviews about the LX3, but almost none so far for the S90 because it's just got released. However, if you type "LX3 vs S90" and google it, there would be some comparisons of actual shots showing up in different photography forums. Take a look especially at the dpreview forum discusions.

5) Also take a look at the initial impressions of the kenrockwell.com site. He seems to like the S90 a lot because he reckons the S90 to be an extremely speedy camera where you can preset all your picture settings like WB, ISO etc in the two rings around the lens. This he thinks is better than the arrangement in DSLRs where it may take more time to do the settings.

6) I find LX3 shots to be fine upto ISO 400. On the S90 they look cleaner upto ISO 800 and usable images for small prints even at ISO1600. This is truly DSLR range. Makes me very excited about the S90. However, at high ISOs there is quite agressive noise reduction (NR) software at work which will take away some of the details. But I have seen and compared RAW images (naturally without any NR) for both and the S90 images look superior to me at high ISOs.

7) There is another new Canon camera released with the S90 and that is the G11 (a bit more expensive than the S90). The G11 has slightly more elaborate optics than S90 and stronger bigger built, but has the same sensor as the S90. Image qualities are more or less same with the S90. In the dpreview forum there is a discussion of a German forum which compares G11 to LX3 and the G11 looks better in their comparison.

Regards.
Asit (hi, I am the same Asit from HiFiVision, so please call me just Asit).

Hi Asit,

Thanks for your recommendation. I just got back from S'pore and did not find the Canon S90 for sale. As I was undecided I did not make a purchase. However the salesman there was rec. a Ricoh GRD III and another Ricoh CX2. The camera looked great but I though that I would ask here before buying it.

Originally Posted by Cyrus

However the salesman there was rec. a Ricoh GRD III and another Ricoh CX2. The camera looked great but I though that I would ask here before buying it.

I would suggest you look at the Ricoh Forum • Portal and read the reviews on the CX2 at Ricoh CX2 Review - Digital Camera Reviews - TrustedReviews and Ricoh CX2 and Ricoh CX2 digital camera review - Pocket-lint

Now you have me thinking...

The Ricoh CX2 looks like a good find Jagat. I am checking out some pics at Ricoh Form and they look impressive.