Panasonic LX100 as a vlogging camera

So we're gonna do a little microphone

testing. Testing, testing. And now we're

gonna put my hand behind the microphone

holes and we're gonna see if the audio

sounds any better like this. Any

difference? Any difference? Hey, so today

I want to try making a full vlog just

using this camera, but like I said before,

the audio sounds pretty terrible, but I

realized that if you cup your hand like

this over the 2— no, not over, just behind

the 2 microphone holes, it does improve

audio quality a lot more, a lot better.

So I'm gonna make a little contraption,

see if this is gonna help anything. We're

gonna stick some cardboard right behind

the microphone holes, see if

it improves things. I'm thinking about

putting it right here, like right on

there.

Look at

this, I've done it, I've done it! Look,

so I've got the cardboard sticking up.

Hopefully it should stay like this. I

guess if it's windy, it's gonna move

around a bit. That's not very good.

Also, the sellotape's making a bit of

noise, so if it's windy, it's going to be

like making noise, isn't it? That's not

good. But the microphone holes are— crap,

now it's broken. It's not very good,

isn't it? What, what happened? It's like

broken here. The microphone holes are

here, 1 and 2, so they're not being

blocked or covered up. But this bit keeps

falling forwards. I want it to be like

Okay, so now I'm outside, as you can tell.

It's really strange using this camera

because I can't see what I'm recording,

and I don't know how it's gonna sound or

how it's gonna look. I don't even know if

I'm in focus right now. I don't know.

I guess I could show you stuff.

So this is a— I don't know what this

is because it's not focusing.

Focus, focus.

Now there we go, there we go. See, it

looks quite nice, doesn't it? It has nice

background blur. The only problem is it

doesn't focus very fast.

So the reason why I bought this camera

was, was a person in Japan, he lent me his

Canon 5D and And I went out and took

photos, and I really enjoyed it. The

photos were amazing. You could like blur

out the background and do all these

artistic photos, and I really wanted a

camera that could do that but was a lot

smaller. So I decided to buy this camera

just for photos, but now I don't really

take many photos, and I'm wondering why I

have this camera. And I really wanted a

better quality camera for videos because

all I have right now is my smartphone and

a Sony WX500, and they're

okay, but they don't look great, and you

can't blur out the background, which I

have like an obsession with blurring out

the background because it looks so nice.

Anyway, I kind of want to sell this camera

now because I want to get a camera that

has a flip screen. Like, I wish I had my

old camera back, the Sony A 5100,

or is it 5100? But the only problem is

this camera, I bought it in Japan, so

there's no English settings, and I'm in

England, so it's going to be difficult to

set it because most people want to be able

to understand the menu.

I don't know why. Like, when you buy a

camera in the UK, they have all these

different language settings, don't they?

They have English, French, German,

Chinese. But when you buy a camera in

Japan, you only get Japanese. They're so,

they're so selfish like that. They only

think about themselves. They don't think

maybe a foreigner might buy this camera

and might need to change the language

settings. But no, they're like, oh no,

this is Japan, you have to do everything

in Japanese because this is Japan and we

only speak Japanese. It's kind of like,

I don't know, I feel like it's kind of

selfish of them, but Whatever, it's their

country. It's their camera, their camera

brand, isn't it?

Panasonic.

I have to say that there's a good thing

about not being able to flip the screen

round. You don't keep looking at yourself.

One of the problems with people who make

vlogs is they flip the screen over and

then they keep looking at their face

because they want to check how they look.

And it's a bit weird sometimes. Like, I'm

talking to you, but I'm looking over there

when really I should be looking into the

lens. I just noticed this lens is covered

in dust. Anyway, I should be looking into

the lens because it's like I'm talking to

you, I'm looking into your eyes. But it

can be hard to do that when you have a

flip screen and you're constantly looking

at your own face. Also, I get kind of

worried, like I wonder if I look okay. Is

my hair okay? Do I have something on my

face? So that's why I like to have a flip

screen. But maybe I should stop

showing you my face and show you some

other stuff, because this

camera does look pretty good. I mean,

look at that. The only problem

is it doesn't focus very quickly. But when

it does focus, things do look pretty nice.

Zoom in a bit. If you zoom in, you can get

a nicer effect.

But the zoom's really slow as well, like

it takes ages for it to zoom in and out.

You can change it to manual focus. There,

that's a lot better, isn't it?

Okay, the closest I can focus is, is this

far, but the depth of field is so shallow

it's really hard to get it all in focus.

I guess you have to change the aperture a

bit. Yeah, I'll change the aperture to—

how about 6, 6.3?

Looks like that. It's really difficult.

Let me play around with the focus a bit.

See, if I do that,

then it looks quite nice.

Let's put it back into autofocus.

It's nice because there's lots of buttons

on this camera. You don't have to fiddle

around in menus, you can just press the

physical buttons. So here

an apple. Looks pretty nice,

doesn't it?

See, again, the autofocus is pretty slow,

but the— it just blurs out the background

so nicely. It's just so pleasing to look

at. So pretty.

Also, you know I put that piece of

cardboard on the top of the camera? I'm

not sure if the audio is going to sound

bad when I talk from behind the cardboard

like this. It might sound a bit muffled,

but hopefully it should sound better when

I've got the camera facing towards me. I

guess we'll find out later.

Insects everywhere.

So I'd be interested to know what you

thought about how this video looks. I use

a lot of cameras, mainly because I have a

lot of spare time and I like fiddling

around. So this is my 3rd camera.

I have— my first camera is the smartphone

Samsung S6, which has really good quality

audio because I bought a microphone for

it, but the video quality is the worst.

It doesn't look great. Then I have the

Sony WX500. Video quality is not bad.

It's a bit better than my smartphone.

Audio is also not too bad.

It also has a really nice long zoom. But

you can't really blur out the background.

And then I have this camera, the ED-X100,

which the audio is pretty terrible. And

the only way I could— there's a car, it's

a car. Okay, car's gone. The only way I

could think of to fix the audio was to put

this piece of cardboard on top of it to

try and capture more sound. But the image

quality is so nice, it looks really nice,

and I like the way it blurs out the

background. Like, it has that professional

kind of look, but it doesn't have a flip

screen, so it's kind of hard to do that.

I don't know if I'm in focus. Hopefully

I'm in focus. And also the autofocus

is a bit sluggish. So which one do

you like better? Samsung S6, WX500, or the

LX100? I don't know which one I like

better. I like them all for different

reasons. Like, I like the way the Samsung

S6 sounds better and it's easier to hold.

I like the way the WX500 has a flip screen

and it looks nice and it has a nice zoom.

I like the way the LX100 blurs out the

background. So I just

wish that I could combine them all into

one camera that does everything that I

want. It to do.

Camera problems, it never ends.