Panasonic LX100 vs Sony A 6000

Photo courtesy of  camerasize.com

Sub title: The obvious is not obvious

I have noticed on user forums   several posts asking members to cast an opinion as to which of these cameras they might prefer.  At first sight one might wonder why they would be compared.

One is a Mirrorless ILC, the other a compact. One might imagine they would inhabit different worlds.

But maybe not.

So I ran a little comparison between the two based on specifications. I have and use the LX100. I did not have an A6000 in hand to test.

It appears there are many photographers who want a compact camera which can be taken almost anywhere and which delivers high quality pictures.

The LX100 obviously fits that category.  

But so does the A6000 with a kit zoom lens. The A6000 is very small for an ILC and the Sony E 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 lens is very compact. This makes for a good comparison with the LX100 as both lenses have the same effective focal length range.

Size and Mass

	Width mm	Height mm	Depth with lens mm	Box volume with lens cc	Mass with lens  grams
Panasonic LX100	115	66	65	493	393
Sony A 6000	120	67	75	603	460

So we see the A6000 is a bit larger and heavier than the LX100 but not dramatically so. Neither will be carried in a pocket but will likely find a place in a small bag carried over the shoulder or on a waist belt.

Price  The A6000 is being very aggressively priced as I write this. So are many entry and upper entry DSLRs. The A6000 is 10 months from announcement and being discounted. The LX100 is about 3 months from announcement and selling at full price.

Typical prices, retail in Sydney today are

LX100, AUD1079.

A6000 with 16-50mm kit lens,  AUD848. Some retailers are including a bonus 55-210mm lens at this price making for a very attractive deal.

Lenses:   Both are collapsing power zooms

	Actual Focal length  mm	Equivalent (to full frame) focal length  mm	Aperture Range as f stops	Advantage to LX100 as stops
LX100	10.9-34	24-75	1.7-2.8	2
A6000	16-50	24-75	3.6-5.6

So you can see the  Panasonic has a 2 stop advantage across the zoom range. This means that at any selected focal length the LX100 can operate at 2 stops wider aperture than the A6000.

I have not had an opportunity to compare one lens against the other. The Sony E16-50mm has been tested by SLR Gear and found to give good sharpness in the center but not the edges. I do not know if it can resolve all the A6000’s 24 Mpx.

In my testing I have found the  LX100 lens to be very sharp in the center but a bit soft in the corners at the widest apertures.

DXO Mark Score  I don’t want to get into a debate about the merits or otherwise of  DXO Mark scores. For the sake of this exercise let us take them as given and see where that leads us.

	Overall	Color	Dynamic Range	High ISO	Megapixels
LX100	67	22.3	12.5	553	12
A6000	82	24.1	13.1	1347	24

You can easily see the A6000 has a better sensor than the LX100. It has more pixels, better subscores and a better overall score, which is 15 points higher than the LX100, representing a 1 stop advantage in the DXO scoring system.

Summary  At the risk of oversimplifying a subject which can be as complex as someone wants to make it, I see the essence of the matter as being:

The A6000 sensor has a 1 Stop advantage

The LX100 lens has a 2 Stop advantage.

Overall the LX100 has a 1 stop advantage at any focal length.

The A6000 has more pixels and that might be important to some users. It also means that for any given output size A6000 files require less enlargement and therefore less apparent luminance noise. 

For the same pixel resolution in print or on screen,  images from the A6000 will be 1.4x larger in any linear dimension than those from the LX100.

This might be thought a persuasive argument in favour of the A6000.  

However  I am finding that the LX100 squeezes a remarkable amount of subject detail from its 12 Mpx.  

I have been making prints up to 800mm wide from the LX100 and finding they look very crisp and clear displayed on a wall.

Conclusion  The subtitle of this post is “The obvious is not obvious”.   In this case the superiority of the A6000 sensor might lead one to conclude that it would obviously be a better camera than the LX100. Indeed for some users and for some purposes it may well be. 

But with the 16-50mm kit lens mounted the sensor advantage is lost by the lens.

Of course you can fit a variety of different zooms to the Sony but all are considerably larger than the 16-50mm and none has the wide aperture of the LX100.