Panasonic Câmera Digital Lumix DMC-FX48 (Prata)

Comments about Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX48 Digital Camera (Silver):

I purchased this camera to use as a pocket camera that I could carry on business trips, rather than lug around an SLR. I used this camera for one weekend, and when I looked at the results (on a high resolution monitor) I was disappointed and returned the camera. Photos taken included scenery, buidings, people on the lawn at an outdoor concert, indoors at a church (without flash) and some flash photos.

The outdoor photos were taken on an overcast day, using the camera'a automatic program, with the camera set for highest quality. The outdoor pictures showed a lot of sensor noise, and on close-up inspection of the photos, it appeared that the JPEG compression program had a hard time dealing with this noise. The result was images were blurred, to the extent that it was not possible to determine on what the camera had tried to focus. There were odd blocks of distorted color, particularly obvious on surfaces of one color with little texture, such as the side of a piano. The only image out of about 80 that was sharp was a flash picture taken at about 10 feet.

Examining the information that the camera stores with each image, I noted that the camera seemed to prefer to use an ASA of 400, which, although well below the max ASA of the sensor, could contribute to the noise. So I took some test photos, in bright sunlight, with the ASA manually set to 100. (The camera controls are intuitive and easy to use) When the ASA is manually set to 100, the noise level is much reduced, but the images remain blurred, and there were still compression artifacts.

On the positive side, exposure control and color were both excellent, and two photos taken indoors with the flash turned off were properly exposed, and also showed that the image stabilizaton worked well.

Since the image quality was not good enough for my needs, I returned the camera and bought a Canon SD990, which produces excellent pictures.