Award Sounds Music, Photography & Consultancy

I've been using the Panasonic DMC-FX150 for the past 4 weeks. Most of that time, I was on honeymoon with my new wife in Nevada and California. Obviously, being on honeymoon meant that I couldn't spend time taking lots of artistic shots, but it did provide many opportunities for snapshots. In many ways, the DMC FX-150 was ideal and even today, I'm not convinced there's a better camera for the purpose.

Having lived with the camera for four weeks, here are some thoughts:

Against:

1. Jpg only. I'm primarily a Mac OS X and neither OS X core graphics nor Adobe Lightroom accomodate the .rw2 raw file format. So all files are captured in RAW+jpg for the moment. There is SilkyPix, but it's not the standard of Adobe Lightroom. Update: I've just been using Raw Photo Processor as well.
2. Noise is an issue. Jpgs with a clear, Californian blue-sky end up around 2Mb-3Mb and the sky looks bitty. It's not a comfortable viewing experience. So for the rest of the honeymoon, I increased the noise reduction on the camera (still hoping to get the RAW file access to get around this). Now bear in mind that I haven't seen the images from other point-and-shoot cameras recently. This comment on image quality may only be valid against DSLRs and other cameras with larger sensors.
3. The colour balance was odd. The auto white balance didn't work out too accurate in some of the outdoor shots. Often the whites and greys had a bluish tint to them. This is partly what I wanted the access to raw files for.
4. Even worse colour balance when using the inbuilt flash. I'm not sure how much of that is down to me not figuring out how to use the camera to its best potential.
5. The self-timer resets after every shot. Now this was infuriating. Imagine setting up the camera and tripod so that it takes a photo of my wife with space for me to run around and fit into the picture, setting the timer, pressing the shutter, then running off to be in the camera. That was the scenario. But sometimes when you get to see the results, there's something you'd like to change, so you take another. In this case, you have to go into the timer settings for the each and every shot. You can't just keep it on self-timer until it's turned off.
6. Blown highlights. Better use of the most appropriate metering method helped a lot, you can't just leave it in face detection (which should automatically default to multi-metering in the event of no detected faces), you do have to select spot mode or whatever suits best. However, even with an appropriate metering mode, I still had to step the exposure down to avoid for blown highlights.
7. Tripod mount on the side increases shake when used with a Joby Gorillapod. Now this is nothing new about that particular tripod or point-and-shoot cameras, since most have the tripod mount off-centre. I noticed that, even with self-timer, pressing the shutter-release would move the camera, then it would spring back to its rest position. Sometimes, no matter how lightly I pressed the shutter release, the camera would still move and spring back. For shots where accurate focussing was more critical, I would have liked a more centrally-positioned tripod mount. Actually, the shots would have been improved more by a sturdier tripod. The Gorillapod enabled me to take shots that I couldn't have easily and quickly done with a normal small tripod. We paid for this by compromising with stability.
8. Lack of aperture priority. It's not a show-stopper for a point-and-shoot, but it's my preferred shooting mode. Not having it as a mode makes selecting depth-of-field much more difficult.
9. The LCD on the back of the camera was not strong enough for the California sun. Many times I had to shield the LCD so I could see what was on it. That's with the highest LCD setting, which drains the batteries quicker.
10. It's slippy. It's very polished and shiny. There's nowhere on the camera to grip. I remember an old 35mm point-and-shoot Nikon I had. It separated itself out from the rest of the cameras by having a simple indentation for the right thumb. It wasn't much, but worked well. The DMC FX-150 has nothing like that. You have to use the wrist-strap.

For:

1. It works. Simply put, the vast majority of the time, you point it, shoot and end up with a decent image.
2. You can step down the flash - great for controlling fill-in. I tended to have the flash stepped down a few part stops. This really did make the images better, almost to the point of not noticing that a flash was used.
3. Size. The small size was invaluable. It's almost pocket-size, depends on your pockets. But it easily fits into a small bag.
4. Detail in the image. The converse of the noise issue above, there is a lot of detail in the images. Look at some sample images at  First Use of DMC FX150 and f/2.8 images.
5. Easy to use. Could hand it to someone else with a setting and just let them get on with taking the photo.
6. Quick. It is very quick to use. From off-to-on and time-to-first-shot, it's really very quick. The most awkward thing is to get the camera out of the bag or pocket, hold it right way up and point at the subject. That takes longer than the camera itself does to take the shot.
7. The LCD detail is incredible for a camera of this size. The power settings generally work very well (the very bright sunshine excepted).

Comment:

I mentioned that I've only really got access to jpg in Lightroom for the time-being. I took a gamble buying the FX-150 figuring that Apple and Adobe usually get around to incorporating RAW support at some point after a product release. I also knew I'd have to wait a while for this support, since it hardly ever coincides with the product release itself. However, some of the articles (such as that at Serious Compacts and Adobe forums) have more disturbing news, indicating potential issues with future RAW support for the FX-150.

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