| Panasonic DMC-FP8 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Last Updated
January 19, 2010 Editor's Rating 
 
Panasonic has released a new camera model, the Lumix DMC-FP8, and it has made some heads turn. A quick glance might impress casual customers and photographers with its rectangular, standard zoom compact style included with a 12 megapixel sensor resolution which is a mandatory feature for many photographers today. It has a very clean look and houses a flash, an assist lamp and a 4.6x Leica foldable optic zoom lens in the upper right front of the body. The lens doesn't protrude from the camera though the zoom has a 28 to 128mm range (35mm equivalent). Panasonic included their new POWER O.I.S. (optical image stabilization) system that doubles the power of their earlier system. The processor is the new Venus Engine V and there's a 2.7 inch LCD monitor with approximately 40MB of internal memory and 720p HD video capability. Panasonic includes the essentials: battery, battery case and charger, appropriate cables, CD-ROM software and hand strap. The rectangular aluminum body is the usual size template we're used to comparing itself to the size of a deck of cards or pack of cigarettes. It's slimmer than many of its competitors, but the power of the lens counterbalances that. The lens being on the corner is an interesting and distinguishing characteristic, but the camera has a very solid and well built look and feel. The color options vary between silver, black and red.
The wrist strap protrudes from the right front of the camera body and lies right under middle finger while shooting. It's an uncomfortable annoyance though in ways can provide as extra security in those of need of it. The location of the lens can also pose as an ergonomic issue for those who wrap their hands around it, as the left hand can easily cover the lens of the camera while the user takes photos. Control layout is very straightforward and typical on the backside of the camera. The power, zoom/shutter, and intelligent auto buttons are set across the top right of the camera, with the record/playback selector switch just below those. The 2.7 inch LCD takes up a large portion of the back of the camera, with the eight lighted control buttons sitting alongside. The buttons illuminate upon power-up and again when one is pushed, but the light is brief and very dim light, which doesn't help make button descriptions legible in times of darkness.
Menus in the FP8 are very intuitive, which makes sense considering the user's manual only describes the existence and how to enter into "my scene" and "motion picture" shooting modes, not any help on how to go about them properly. The shooting modes are simple - it can shoot in any mode so long as it is automatic. There are 4 distinct shooting modes: intelligent auto(full auto mode), normal picture(most common which uses auto settings but with major settings customized towards the user's preferences), scene(user selected from 28 different shooting options) and my scene(simple recall of two preferences scene shooting options at the user's discretion). One of the scene modes is a "photo-frame" which provides the user three options to overlay a frame-like border on their photos. The LCD display has a 230,000 pixel resolution and is adjustable to seven levels of brightness. The LCD mode available in the quick menu had three additional brightness settings. Any of those settings however could be overcome by the right combination of bright outdoor lighting conditions. Even the worst outdoor conditions didn't affect the screen's legibility too much. Panasonic claimed a 0.95 second start up time for FP8, though even after the screen goes live in about that time, it's a bit longer before the focus icon comes up. Single shot-to-shot times were about two seconds with a SanDisk 20MB/s card. The camera has a 3 full resolution, high quality stills at a 2.2 fps rate in burst mode and 5 at normal quality before the buffer took a break. The monitor blacks out briefly after the first two shots in burst and lags one shot behind, so shooting a fast moving object can be difficult and problematic. It can shoot at 10fps with a brief blackout at the start of the burst, but the resolution is then limited to 3 megapixels or less which is only a quarter of its potential power. There are still times when the camera struggles like the rest in really poor conditions, but overall the FP8 was faster to focus than the competition when lighting was good and even when it wasn't. Flash performance with the FP8 was also very good with regard to recycle times with a fully-charged battery. The most important part of the camera, however, is the part taking the pictures: the lens. The Leica DC Vario-Elmar lens in the FP8 is "composed of 10 elements in eight groups, including one ED lens and five aspherical lenses with six aspherical surfaces" not to mention the folding optics which does away with the fixed lens barrel. In general terms, the inclusion of the lens in an attempt to optimize image quality at the edges of the frame while the ED lens is aimed at improving contrast and sharpness. The FP8 was soft in the corners at wide angle, but pretty good along the edges otherwise. The lens on contrast was a bit slower than the competition. This is perhaps the price you pay for optical performance that's quite good otherwise. A slower lens means the camera will have to resort to increasing ISO sensitivity to maintain fast shutter speeds sooner than the competition. All in all, the FP8 is a friendly camera to novice photographers by virtue of its sparkling AF performance and quite speedy shutter lag alone. The camera acquire focus quickly across a broad range of lighting conditions and takes the shot with little delay. It powers up quickly, recycles its flash promptly and delivers a lens that takes photos with minimal distortion and defects. The 720p HD video capability is another nice bonus. For those of you interested in your first digital camera, this one will start you off in the right direction.
back to top
|
