A DAY IN AMSTERDAM IN PHOTO'S & 4K VIDEO | PANASONIC LX100

Last Friday my friend Ziggy and I decided to take a small trip to Amsterdam to not only walk around testing out our, collectively, three recently purchased cameras, but to also find places that were named after us and pose in front of them. We were ultimately successful at both of these hair-raising adventures and I am positive that the following text detailing those exploits will keep you on the edge of your seat. [WARNING: this statement is not guaranteed]

See? Just look how excited we were!

 
​For the latter mission we resourcefully employed our iPhone's, while for the former we had a few choices namely my Panasonic LX100 and Ziggy's Nikon D700 and Fujifilm x100. All photo's seen here, except for the extremely flattering photo's above, were shot using my Panasonic LX100. I also used the LX100 to shoot the 4k video below.

With that said, if by any chance you hoped that this post would be about any other camera besides my Panasonic LX100 and about it's 4k video capabilities (and maybe a few pretty photos too), then I suggest you turn away now and throw your laptop/smartphone out of the nearest window in a fury; because this will be the last time you see words "Nikon D700" or "Fujifilm x100" in this article. If you do not care at all about any of my ramblings over the video, camera, and day then you can just scroll through the pretty pictures while skipping to the bottom for the embedded video. No body will be the wiser!

Except for this guy... and he WILL come after you!

Still here? Excellent.
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The video at the bottom of this post was shot entirely handheld and made over a several hour long period of random wandering around Amsterdam Centraal, parts of the infamous Red Light District, Dam Square, and wherever else that tickled our fancy. There is no usual obligatory "IAMSTERDAM" sign footage, photo's, or anything like that that... So sorry if you were hoping to see that in the video. This was mostly due to the fact that we were too lazy to head that far south. Even for the sake of art apparently.

As per the typical Friday in Amsterdam we saw a bunch of interesting characters...

This would be an example of one such character.

​... and plenty of heavily bundled up tourists and locals... even though it was a Spring day, albeit a rather cold one. You have got to love Dutch weather.

There was also this strange individual... but I was actually hanging out with him.

We wandered and photoed/videoed our way through a decent portion of the center of Amsterdam, but while we were walking through the actual red light, ladies-of-the-evening portion of the Red Light District I did not really attempt to capture much footage or photo's. This was mostly due to the fact that — while I would never actually photograph or video any of these gainfully employed women anyways — Ziggy had just finished telling me a story of a friend of his who was caught by a woman thinking he was making photographs of her. This inevitably resulted in an expensive camera taking a refreshing swim inside of a bike-infested Amsterdam canal. Needless to say, I was not at all enthusiastic about the idea of accidentally being blamed for the same thing and parting ways so soon with my LX100.

This was the best that I could do due to the fact that I was shaking so hard...

So enough about the other stuff, here is some more about the camera because I love the LX100's portability and the photo's and video's that it produces. Previously, I carried my Canon 5D Mark III or Rebel T2i  whenever I could with a relatively small 40mm f/2.8 pancake or 24mm f/2.8 lens on either, respectively, to try to keep the weight down as much as possible, but even that was often a pain to carry around during the times that I desired to travel more lightly. 

This was even more true for whenever I wanted to use either of those as a daily carry camera. That actual occurrence was extremely rare and I would usually op for one of my pocketable film cameras instead, but I am not made of money so the film ends up being a bit too costly to purchase, develop, scan, and print. Because of this my film photography is, unfortunately, a more special occasion kind of thing.

I could also go the route of using my iPhone 6 for making photo's and video's, but it just takes all of the fun out of it whenever you are not actually holding a camera and able to adjust settings, and because of that I will more often miss a cool photo opportunity rather than use my phone. I can not say that I am personally a big advocate of "iPhotography", or whatever the kids these days are calling it. This doesn't mean that it doesn't work for other people, but it is just not my thing. Unless of course that involves me making slow-motion videos of squirrels climbing my leg to eat from my hand... but that is beside the point and a different story.

With that said, the LX100 has been the answer to both of those dilemmas by producing beautiful digital images and still being small enough to serve as an everyday carry camera. While it does not exactly slip in a pants pocket, it can easily fit into a many a jacket pocket with little to no issue (and I wear those quite often here, as a native Texan the concept of a "summer jacket" was initially extremely foreign to me). Because of these reasons I find myself carrying my camera more often and that allows me to capture more photographs than I usually would if I just had my iPhone. It is the best of both worlds and everybody wins! Well... mostly me, but I believe that this time it is actually the point.

If I recall correctly there is a saying that is something like "the best camera is the one that you always carry on you", and this camera has allowed me to do just that. Again, the photo's and video's that this camera produces are excellent in both RAW and right-out-of-the-camera JPEG formats. All of the photo's seen here were shot in RAW and received some minor post-production lovin'. I will not write too much about the quality of the photo's and video beyond this because I believe that the photo's and video's can better showcase that than anything I can say.

If you would like to see more of my photo's from the LX100 before your 4k viewing experience then please feel free to distract yourself a wee bit longer by viewing these examples below: 

​As a potential spoiler alert, variations of three of the above photos were also used in the video from that day. So with that said, here is finally what I am sure you all likely came here to see!
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AMSTERDAM IN 4K | LX100

Amsterdam in 4k | LX100 from Benjamin Hull on Vimeo.

​Anyways, thanks for making it this far and I hope you enjoyed the photographs and video! Check back soon for more updates.