To measure and compare the Panasonic Lumix LX2’s noise levels we photographed the standard Gretag Macbeth ColorChecker with it and the Fujifilm FinePix F30 at each of their ISO settings. We also repeated the LX2 tests using its High and Low noise reduction settings.

The crops are taken from the original images and presented here at 100%. To compare typical noise in skies and dark shadows the crops were taken from patches 3 and 24 respectively.

Up to 400 ISO, the LX2’s crops below look quite clean with noise only making a significant appearance at 800 ISO and above. As you’d expect, noise levels are also higher on the examples with the Low Noise Reduction setting. The LX2 also roughly matches the Fujifilm F30 up to 400 ISO, although the F30’s results are noticeably cleaner at 800 ISO and above.

Viewed in isolation, this would still be an impressive result for the Lumix LX2, but it’s easy for overly-aggressive noise reduction systems to give the impression of low noise in this test. As such, it’s crucial to also compare real-life outdoor results taken at different ISO settings. We’ve provided these on the following page, where you’ll see the LX2 is best used only at its lowest sensitivities.

The High Sensitivity mode in particular should only be used in situations where you have no other choice, as it results in considerable loss of detail from noise reduction and reduced resolution as seen in particular on the following page.

Note: we have compared 100% crops from both cameras here measuring 136×136 pixels. In reality the LX2 crops represent a slightly smaller area of the image than the F30’s due to its higher resolution, but as explained on the previous pages, the LX2 is effectively acting like a 7.5 Megapixel model here. As such the areas are actually very close – this is illustrated on crops from real-life subjects on our first results page.