Panasonic Lumix L10 Review

The premium compact went most of a decade without a genuine new entry, and the L10 is the camera that ends the drought. The sensor is far larger than the one inch chips that used to define the category, the Leica badged zoom covers 24 to 75 in equivalent terms at apertures fast enough to lift a subject off its background, and the whole thing goes into a jacket pocket. The controls are the pleasure of it, with an aperture ring and dials placed where a photographer's fingers already sit, and the real time look system lets you bake a color treatment into the file at the moment of capture rather than an hour later.

Video runs to 5.6K with the log profile from the larger bodies. The reservations are specific and they matter. There is no in body stabilization, which the lens partly covers for stills and does not cover at all for walking video, there is no headphone socket, and the body turned out noticeably larger in the hand than the announcement pictures suggested. Reviewers landed in the same place: a delight to carry and shoot, and short of the complete hybrid the specification sheet implies.