Review: Panasonic DMC-FX36 camera
By Terry Lane | smh.com.au | 10 April
Panasonic DMC-FX36 compact digital
RRP: $660
A little camera with a brilliant lens
The low-down: This is a 10-megapixel camera with a Leica 25-100 millimetre (film equivalent) lens. It is the latest version of the beautifully made FX pocket cameras. There is no optical viewfinder and the LCD screen is useless in bright sunlight. There is effective optical image stabilisation. Manual controls are limited and easily accessible. There is face recognition, which doesn't seem to work as reliably as in some cameras. A feature is made of iA - "intelligent automation". In this mode the camera recognises scene types - faces, landscape, flowers - and also a shaky hand and moving subjects and makes its own exposure calculations. Fortunately, it can be turned off. In many situations, the camera selects an ISO speed that is too high for clean results.
Like: The 25-millimetre wide-angle feature is a winner. We were astonished that it could take such wide angle shots with no barrel distortion. Expensive, dedicated wide-angle lenses on SLRs don't do as well. Combined with high resolution and clean images at ISO100, the results are impressive. Colour is good, if inclined to be cold, which is not flattering in portraits.
Dislike: Above ISO200, noise is a problem and so is noise reduction. We compared the FX-36 with the six-megapixel FX-9 and the results are intriguing. The appearance of noise in the new camera is greatly reduced. Blue skies at ISO100 have no obvious mottling. But when we do a bit of pixel-peeping in 100% view it seems that the noise reduction has been achieved at the expense of some loss of detail. But the average user won't notice this so, perceptually, noise is well handled.
Verdict: This camera is ideal for a European holiday. Avoid the iA and keep the ISO low and this is a good camera to take to Venice, Paris or Rome - or anywhere where the buildings are close together and gorgeous. Because the zoom range is a modest four-times the image quality is good from wide to its moderate telephoto. Bravo to Panasonic/Leica for daring to create a lens that looks pathetic in advertisements but works like a dream in real life. We like it.
First published by Smh.com.au on April 10 2008
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