In summary
Panasonic’s new DMC-FX8 Lumix camera is an upgrade to the FX7 model released a year ago. It has the same 3x optical/4x digital zoom lens, 2.5-inch LCD monitor and 5-megapixel CCD sensor and also features Panasonic’s Mega O.I.S image stabilisation system. Body dimensions and weight are also unchanged, although some minor cosmetic adjustments have been made to styling. . . [more]
Full review
Quality rating (out of 10) Build: 8.5Ease of use: 8.5Image quality: 8.0Value for money: 7.5
Panasonic’s new DMC-FX8 Lumix camera is an upgrade to the FX7 model released a year ago. It has the same 3x optical/4x digital zoom lens, 2.5-inch LCD monitor and 5-megapixel CCD sensor and also features Panasonic’s ‘Mega O.I.S.’ image stabilisation system. Body dimensions and weight are also unchanged, although some minor cosmetic adjustments have been made to styling.
Under the skin, however, some changes have been made that place the FX8 a cut above its predecessor. For starters, the new Venus Engine Plus image processor has improved power usage, requiring only 70% as much power as the Venus Engine II processor. This, plus an improved lithium-ion battery, says Panasonic, give the FX8 a battery life of approximately 300 shots per charge.
The test camera produced pictures that were sharp edge-to-edge, reflecting the high quality of the Leica optics. However, image contrast was a little high for bright outdoor conditions, causing the brightest highlights and deep shadows to lose detail. Colour saturation was close to 20% above normal levels. This produced very vibrant-looking pictures, a result many users will prefer. Overall colour accuracy was good, although Imatest detected a low level of lateral chromatic aberration. The white balance control turned in above-average colour accuracy with both its auto and manual settings.
Digital zoom performance was outstanding and the camera proved capable of good close-up shots. However, the flash required ISO 400 sensitivity to light up an average-sized room and low light performance was limited by a lack of manual shutter speed settings. This made it difficult to set the slowest shutter speed (8 seconds) and resulted in visible noise in shots taken with ISO 400 sensitivity.
We measured an average capture lag of 0.8 seconds, which reduced to 0.125 seconds with pre-focusing. The high-speed burst mode captured three shots at 0.55 second intervals, while the low speed setting recorded shots at 0.9 second intervals and the ‘unlimited’ setting recorded at 1.5 second intervals until the memory was full. The FX8 took less than two seconds to power-up and shut down. [24]
Specifications
Image sensor: 5.34 x 4.01mm CCD with 5.36 million photosites (5.0 megapixels effective)
Lens: Leica DC Vario-Elmarit 5.8-17.4mm f2.8-5.6 zoom (35-105mm in 35mm format)
Zoom ratio: 3x optical, up to 4x digital
Dimensions (wxhxd): 94.1 x 50.5 x 24.2 mm
Weight: 127 g (without battery and card)
Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.2); Movies – QuickTime Motion JPEG (VGA/QVGA at 30/10 fps)
Shutter speed range: 8 – 1/2,000 sec.
Focus system/range: Selectable point AF; range 50 cm to infinity; macro to 5 cm.
Exposure metering/control: Intelligent Multiple metering; Program AE plus 12 scene modes
White balance: Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Halogen, White Set
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, Auto with Red-eye Reduction, Slow Sync. with Red-eye Reduction, Forced On, Off; range 0.3-4.0 m
ISO range: Auto, ISO 80, 100, 200, 400
Sequence shooting: 3 high-resolution shots at 3 frames/sec.; ‘unlimited’ setting records at 1.5 fps to memory capacity
Storage Media: 16 MB SD card
LCD monitor: 2.5-inch polycrystalline TFT LCD with 114,000 pixels
Power supply: Li-ion Battery Pack
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