I am thinking of moving on my Panasonic LX100 once I get my act together and finish putting it back together (replaced the LCD) screen. I just cannot get excited about the electronic zoom (have the same issue with the Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42 I brought to use on the EM-5ii). I am old school or something as I prefer to manually adjust the zoom.
Anyway I thought I would move it on and play with a compact with a prime lens. It does not have to be the latest model, in fact I would be inclined to buy second hand anyway irrespective of the model cycle.
So just throwing out there the question: what would be on your short list for a nice serious compact with prime lens that shoots raw?
Well, everyone has pretty much answered this question in great detail, so I'm afraid my answer is probably either too little, too late - or conversely, too much, too late - but I'll dive in -
The holy Trinity of super high quality compact cameras with primes which shoot RAW are the Coolpix A, the Ricoh GR (in multiple APS-C iterations) and the Fujifilm x70. Have owned, used and enjoyed all three personally.
The Coolpix A is probably the bargain of the bunch - its prices have truly gotten into the more-than-reasonable level though I suspect there will be fewer and fewer of them around - and if you have familiarity with Nikon's menus and Nikon controls (which I never did), that is an additional plus. It has an incredible lens, it's built like a tank, and if you can find a good copy, is truly affordable.
Haven't ever used the GR II but the APS-C GR is an incredible camera, with amazing IQ, and beloved of everyone from Ming Thein to half the great street photographers around. The prices of the older (non-II version) have fallen slightly to what I would call the almost-affordable category. The upside - and downside - is that it has an incredibly powerful menu system which allows one to do pretty much anything - once you get the hang of it. And - sigh....I never really did. If I had, I might have kept it. Incidentally it's beautifully built, as well.
Both the Coolpix A and the GR/GR II are masters at the zone focusing presets favored by so many street photographers.
The third member of the trinity which I currently own and really like - and also recommend - is the diminutive Ricoh x70. Cool physical buttons and controls. A simple menu. A very cool touchscreen which also folds up and out. And truly superb in-camera JPEG filtering including the 'Chrome' filter which seems to duplicate certain tonal characteristics of classic slide films. And a great lens. All of the above make it more than a worthy contender. The downside is that prices are still relatively high though coming down quite a bit over the last few months - size-wise it's definitely larger than the smaller and more pocketable Ricoh - and converting Fujifilm native RAW files to Lightroom-manipulable DNG's is a slight chore (though eminently solvable thanks to Irident's new inexpensive standalone X-Transformer which really seems to do a beautiful job).
I think the x70 is an incredible camera. Well, hell, all 3 of them are.
Finally, no discussion would be complete without adding 1 more name to the list...or maybe 2. The discontinued and diminutive Panasonic Lumix GM1/GM5 cameras - tiny jewel-like mu4/3 bodies - which mate beautifully with tiny Panasonic and Olympus prime lenses - including my favorite, the 20mm f/1.7 (the 1st generation, which supposedly focuses slowly but actually is a relatively quick auto-focuser in my experience) - as well as the optically wonderful Lumix 14mm pancake prime (a superb lens) and the often dissed but excellent Olympus 17mm f/2.8 pancake prime lens. Either body plus any of those lenses (my favorite, the 20mm, is not only the fastest but also physically the largest of the trio) gives you your tiny subcompact with an excellent prime. What they don't give you is the larger and generally sharper APS-C sized sensor --- the GM1/GM5 sport the same relatively recent-vintage micro four thirds sensor that was in my truly excellent GX7 camera, and it's a camera/sensor/lens combo that give superb results.
You can't really "go wrong" with any of the above. My personal likes and dislikes led me to both buy and then sell both the Ricoh GR and the Coolpix A before stumbling on an x70 which I suspect I will keep for a long time; I also own a GM5 which is a rather incredible small camera that also doubles, when necessary, as a small 'system' camera with the ability to interchange both excellent primes and, occasionally, zooms or other lenses.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
Miguel
) Pan 45-175 all gone simply because I just can't take power zooms as much as I try. Main reason I haven't tried an FZ1000 or FZ300. The Fuji X30 might be worth a look, LOVE the manual zoom with the power switch incorporated. Don't like the smaller sensor.
, fitting in with your existing system.
