Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX5

Opinion: Bought used because it's the only Sub-Compact with the combination of decent resolution (4Mp and above), an Image stabilizer AND most importantly an OPTICAL VIEWFINDER, the FX7 and later are of the "Shake about looking at the LCD" persuasion which largely negates the OIS advantage and also chew batteries..

This is an FZ10 Era camera which means more noise reduction than the FZ20/5/FX7 era so images look cleaner but with less fine detail, as a result the images don't have the pixel level sharpness of the FX7 when post processed but are cleaner, very much like the Canon Ixus S400 in fact only without the blurred corners of the Ixus model (the Leica lens is better than the canon optic) - likewise the FX5 has only two apertures for any given focal length and is totally Automatic, the FX5 gains by having OIS but like the FX7 loses out by having an almost useless built in flash..

The best points are the combination of 4Mp, OIS & OVF in a sub compact, the FX5 is totally unique in this -- the LCD is tiny but higher rez than the FX7's 2.5-incher -- Plenty of thumb space to hold it steady (too easy to press buttons when holding an FX7/8/9) --- the LENS which is the best I've seen in any Sub-compact, none of the soft corners / edges / CA you see in Canons, Sonys, KMs etc --- Decent battery life when using the OVF (over twice that of the LCD bound FX7) --- has a Focus button missing from later cams

Opinion: just as what i expected, it's a good mini dc
it's easy to use

Opinion: great picture quality

Opinion: Ordering my Panasonic DMC-FX5 was exiting, I couldn't wait for my new camera to arrive. I have had a couple of digital cameras from before, Canon S20, Ixus and a Minolta G500. I also have borrowed a Canon D60 that gives abolutely great pictures. I expected a lot from this Panasonic with Leica lense and optical stabilisator. The Camera was very easy to use, however I had to read the manual to fully understand some things, like taking picures with linger time than 1/8 (you have to turn off the optical stabilisator for some reason).

Positives with the camera is absolutely the format, it is handy and easy to use to take pictures, the anti-shake seems so work ok and it is pretty fast. Pictures in the dark using long time is wuite good. Making movies is easy and result is good, an extra plus for unlimited movie-length.

Negatives are however a lot of thing: Taking pictures with flash is limited, seems to be quite overexposed and overall quality bad. Not so different from many other small cameras. The major bad is that I cannot make the camera take good pictures under normal circumstances, there is no sharpness in the pictures. I hope that they look good when printed on paper, but so far I am disappointed. The camera also seems to color the picture to much and you must process the picture afterwards, and that is exactly what I don't want to do with a point-and-shoot camera.

Overall I miss my Minolta G500, that was lost, in my feeling it gave much better pictures for less money. I cannot recommend this camera to anyone really, unless you want a camera with good movie capabilities

Opinion: It's a pretty standard 4MP point-and-shoot camera with a 35-105mm equiv. lens and manual controls limited to +-2EV exposure compensation.

it has two main selling points: a lens designed by leica and a built-in mechanical image stabilizer mecanism. This means you can take pictures at slower shutter speeds without using the flash.

What I like:

* good overall picture quality
* cute design
* responsive camera, this is clearly a camera from the ":new generation". I'd say about 2s power-up delay. 1s pre-focus delay, negligible shutter delay when pre-focused or when not pre-focussing.
* The image stabilizer seems to do a good job (see the fire extinguisher in the gallery, taken in a train). All the pictures in the gallery were taken hand-held
* control layout work well for me
* good slow sync flash. When taking pictures indoors (which we do quite a bit don't we), the slow-sync flash is great.
* You can take pictures in 16:9 format. This is primarily intended for viewing on TV, but it also allows you to take (slightly lower res) pictures in a format closer to 24x36mm. I like this format much better than the usual digital format (is it 4:3?). Better to print on A4 too (more even borders). Yes you can crop, but I find composing your shot directly in this format makes a significant difference for me. The first picture of the gallery illustrate this feature.
* optional display of a 3x3 grid on LCD to aid composition.
* optional live histogram display (although I don't use it often).
* quality of the LCD (113,000 pixels or something) although it is way too small compared to the new generation 2.5 inch screens
* movie mode at 30fps (only 320x220 or something, but I don't want bigger since it uses more memory). I use the movie mode quite a lot, to record spontaneous moments with the time and sound dimension. I often says a lot more than just a picture. The movies files produced are in the apple quicktime format, which require you to have the (free) quicktime player installed to read them, but it seems it does look a bit better than mjpeg avi?
* camera retain settings in different modes when powered down

What I don't like:

* Autofocus system not very reliable. It is faster than the previous generation cameras (faster than my S30), but misses quite often in adverse conditions like moving people at close-range, this might be due to the fact that there is no focus-assist lamp. Pre-focusing helps a lot of course, but I still have seen many misses. Even with the flash it misses quite often. It seems using the program for a particular photo helps. i.e. use the portrait program for a portrait. Much smoother tone too, but yet as sharp. Not sure what they do to the pictures there, but something is happening! I think the last picture of the gallery illustrate this problem.
* AE is strongly biased toward fast speed and big aperture. It use the lens wide open most of the time. Except in realy bright conditions, you will find most pictures have been taken using a f2.8 apteture. This makes the autofocus problem mentioned above even more of a problem. I have found the lens sharp corner to corner wide open though.
* Build quality is not anywhere as good as canons. I accidentally dropped the camera from about 1,5 meter high on concrete. The plastic battery cover door is now harder to close. camera works fine though.
* The battery life is short compared to other cameras, I bought a backup battery.
* The charger has annoying cords which makes it more bulky to take around than say the canon chargers
* noise at ISO 100 seems to be higher than others. This is offset by the fact that there is an Image stabilizer to you can shoot at slower speed with ISO50.

Check out my full review at http://oxygen.ee.unsw.edu.au/fx5review/