 | Very Good Camera
rating: 4
The best Lumix that I had.
Good: easy and portable for its capabily.
Bad: zoom do not work in movie mode.
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Poor image quality
rating: 2
The FX500 was intended to replace a Canon TX1 but even in well lit scenes, the TX1 still produces higher quality images - I returned the FX500.
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Great camera, too much noise
rating: 4
I bought this camera due to its compact size, its wide angle lens, its long maximum exposure (60 seconds, I'm an astronomer and amateur astrophotographer), its manual controls, targeted tracking autofocus, and 'intelligent ISO mode'.
I nearly returned this camera because the images seemed to have blurry edges and like they were covered in dirt. Eventually I realized the pictures were NOT blurry (see #2 below), and if I was careful with my exposure and noise reduction settings I could make the noise look like film grain.
Combined with a mini travel tripod, I've managed to get some pretty nice night scenery (60 seconds, "full" manual controls) and nice portraits. That 25mm is great for scenery. (Incidentally, the "Scenery" scene mode fixes the focus at infinity, which is great for taking pictures of the Moon. Unfortunately, you can't control shutter speed or aperture, but see #7)
If the noise still bothers you, resizing the pictures to 7 megapixels or less (which can be done in-camera) should basically remove the problem.
Some random notes:
1.) The on-screen review can apparently zoom in farther (16x) than 100%; your photos are sharper than they appear on screen.
2.) I've seen some noticeable distortion at the corners of images taken at the full wide-angle.
3.) Contrary to the manual, switching to 7 and 5 and 3 megapixel modes is NOT just cropping out the center; they're merely scaled down versions of the full frame just like you'd expect. On the other hand, digital zoom WILL crop out the center.
4.) The Intelligent ISO mode actually works. It seems to be like tweaking the gamma in an image editor.
5.) Targeted autofocus does NOT work well. More often than not it can't seem to lock on the object I touched. On the other hand, once locked it tracks the object well.
6.) The Mega OIS image stabilization works wonders, but in low light it's usually not enough to make up for the longer exposures you'll need to see anything.
7.) You can set the desired exposure compensation for the 'Scenery' mode (and possibly others) by going to Aperture or Shutter mode, setting the exposure compensation, and switching back.
8.) The USB connector is microUSB, not miniUSB.
9.) It works with Linux out of the box! When you plug it in to a computer, it will ask you to select (via the joystick thingy) between MTP and PC connection, which seems to be a standard USB Mass Storage mode.
10.) I actually got pretty close to what Panasonic quotes for battery life.
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Best camera I've ever got
rating: 5
I read a lot about this camera before buying it. I found, as always, many reviews on both sides saying is great and is lame.
I found it great. The automatic mode recognizes the type of shooting almost perfectly everytime and the pictures looks great on the screen, on my laptop and on y main pc.
The noise factor is there, especially on dark pictures, but is barelly noticeable.
The camera is larger than most Panasonic models making it hard to fit in small cases.
But still, the manual controls are amazing and if you're not a pro, go ahead with this one because the auto mode is just magnifique
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It's a tough battle!
rating: 3
I'll try to keep it simple.
Pros:
- 25mm wide angle is UNBELIEVABLE! My previous camera was a Canon Powershot SD500. So being used to 35mm and now 25mm is a HUGE difference. So massive thumbs up to this camera for the 25mm function.
- 3.0 inch screen. I was used to a 2.0 inch screen
- Clarity and sharpness of photos are FANTASTIC when at 25mm. Otherwise not so much (I'll describe later in the CONS)
- small compact size.
- Eh??? touch screen is alright. Not all menus etc are accessable via touch. You also have to access certain menus/functions via the joystick
Cons:
- NOISE NOISE NOISE! UGH!!!!!! Using the IA shooting mode isn't as beneficial as one would think. Especially for indoor shots. It automatically puts the ISO at 400 ... and UGH!!!! at 400 the noise is awfully noticable. south of like ISO 300 is much better, but you really really have to play around with the camera to get at a lower ISO for indoor shot without flash. I've been pulling my hair out trying to find the best method to accomplish this, and for the moment, I think I did find the correct method. Use SHUTTER PRIORITY MODE, and play around with the horizontal and vertical bars and turning the flash off. Depending on the lighting in the room, for the mostpart, you can achieve non-noisy shots at lower isos. GOOD LUCK
-Movie quality. even in the 1280 x 720p 30fps mode, sound quality SUCKS and the visual quality is still quite pixelly. I'm not impressed with the video quality at all.
-OH, the zoom (talking about optical zoom ... NOT digital zoom). At 25mm photo quality is perfect. Even if you zoom in a little bit, I've found that photo quality is poor. Blurry (even is beautiful sunny weather outside). I've tried focusing and focusing, and refocusing on the same object in a higher zoom and each time, the image is blurry (non-super crisp). I've even tried putting the camera on a tripod. Same result. So, I for the most part do not zoom. Which is annoying.
-Time between taking shots seems slower than I would like. I've set the Autoreview off and it's still slower than I would like.
All in all, as others have said, this is a camera that I want to love soooooo much but I just cannot. I preorderd the DMC-LX3 camera hoping that it would be less noisy. I hope amazon will come out with this camera sooner rather than later so I can try it out.
Comments and criticism are welcome. Thanks.
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