LX3 EZ Zoom

Panasonic LX3 EZ Zoom

The notion of EZ zoom that now appears on many cameras is a queer one to me. To obtain this extra zoom extension, you have to put the camera into a lower resolution mode thereby losing the advantage of buying all those megapixels in the first place. Way better to always run a camera in maximum resolution and crop in post process to get more "zoom" if needed, it can go past the 2.5X optical "limit" with care for small prints or screen display.

There may be slight advantages in being able to frame more accurately and get better focus and metering, but that's a very slight benefit compared to the huge hit of throwing away resolution at anything other than the maximum tele setting in EZ zoom. Keeping always to maximum resolution allows more freedom to post process crop (=zoom) in any image taken at any focal length.

Some say there are image quality advantages to using EZ zoom but all I can say is that they have vivid imaginations.

When in operation it appears that the camera firmware delivers a smooth transition between the downsized full image up until the optical zoom limits where just the chosen resolution number of pixels are being used from the centre of the sensor. A table of what the lens is doing and what the exif reports as equivalent mm is below.

An email contact alerted me to an early demonstration of the LX3 EZ zoom here.

In the case of the LX3 the information is sparse in the manual and the function is not explained fully anywhere. I tried all resolutions on all aspect ratios on my LX3 and came up with this table. I found a decent explanation of EZ here in the TZ3 pages... http://panasonic.net/avc/lumix/popup/ex_zoom/index.html

When using 4:3 aspect ratio
Picture Quality	Pixels Size	EZ Zoom	Effective Zoom	Net result in 35mm camera terms
10M	3648 x 2736	No	2.5X	24 - 60 mm
7M	3072 x 2304	Yes	3X	24 - 72 mm
5M	2560 x 1920	Yes	3.6X	24 - 86.4 mm
3M	2048 x 1536	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm
2M	1600 x 1200	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm
0.3M	640 x 480	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm

When using 3:2 aspect ratio
Picture Quality	Pixels Size	EZ Zoom	Effective Zoom	Net result in 35mm camera terms
9.5M	3776 x x2520	No	2.5X	24 - 60 mm
6.5M	3168 x 2112	Yes	3X	24 - 72 mm
4.5M	2656 x 1768	Yes	3.6X	24 - 86.4 mm
3M	2112 x 1408	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm
2.5M	2048 x 1360	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm

When using 16:9 aspect ratio
Picture Quality	Pixels Size	EZ Zoom	Effective Zoom	Net result in 35mm camera terms
9M	3968 x 2232	No	2.5X	24 - 60 mm
6M	3328 x 1872	Yes	3X	24 - 72 mm
4.5M	2784 x 1568	Yes	3.6X	24 - 86.4 mm
2.5M	2208 x 1248	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm
2M	1920 x 1080	Yes	4.5X	24 - 108 mm

The maximum EZ zoom effect may be useful for those who only ever print to postcard size or only ever view images on screen. Then the 2M or 2.5M setting is all that is needed. But why buy a high resolution camera and throw most of it away?

So many people seem so interested in this strange EZ zoom idea that I sat and tried to work out what the lens is actually doing by viewing the results in the exif data, here's what I found when using my usual 16:9 aspect ratio setting. There only seems to be 13 optical zoom steps, but more and finer steps in the EZ mode when at wide angle end. I'll fill in more numbers as I find out more. The zoom lever is rather twitchy and it's hard to achieve small moves in zoom. This camera desperately needs a zoom memory option (now has it from V2.0 firmware onwards) and/or step zoom option, so once finding a desired setting it can be repeated.

The lens stays at the 5.1 mm setting for quite a range of EZ zoom settings, maybe that is to take advantage of the f/2.0 aperture as long as possible. It downsizes the full resolution image selectively cropping and downsizing as the zoom lever is advanced, up until the point where it gets to the selected resolution, then needs to start moving the lens for real zoom on that selected low number of pixels.

I'll fix the obviously sparse 2MP table later when I find the missing steps. I will not make tables for the other aspect ratios as the purpose was only to show in general what the lens does while the EZ zoom goes through its range.

True lens Setting	The EZ modes equivalent mm results at 16:9 aspect ratio				Non EZ eq. mm
Optical Zoom mm	2MP EZ	2.5MP EZ	4.5MP EZ	6MP EZ	9MP
5.1	24	24	24	24	24
	25	25		25
		26	26
		27		27
		28	28	28
	29	29		29
		30
	31	31	31
		32	32
		33
		34
	35	35	35
	37	37
	41
	43
5.4	47	47	37	31	26
5.9	50	50	40	33	28
6.3	54	54	43	36	30
6.8	57	57	46	38	32
7.4	63	63	50	42	35
7.9	66	66	53	44	37
8.8	73	73	59	49	41
9.3	79	79	63	52	44
10.2	86	86	69	57	48
11.1	93	93	75	62	52
12.1	102	102	82	68	57
12.8	108	108	86	72	60

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