Review Of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS15

A great looking compact that comes with nice features for the point and shoot photographer.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

A great package for the sub $180 price. Wide angle 5x zoom lens and an intelligent auto button.

Thumbs Down:

Average photo quality and performance.

Inside The Trunk:

An ultra compact camera, with a CCD type sensor. 12.1 megapixel resolution and ISO range of 80-6400 (on auto). 5x optical focus and 4x digital zoom. MMC and SD card support. The DMC-FS15 has 11 auto focus points. A Leica Zoom 5.2 mm – 26 mm aspherical lens.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

The Panasonic DMC-FS15 compact camera is a beautiful looking camera with strictly average performance. Depending on how you intend to use your pictures, you will soon see if it fits the bill. If you plan to blow up the pictures to large prints then I suggest that you stay away from this camera. In case you are fine with 5×7 prints than the DMC-FS15 is a good choice. The camera is very attractively priced and Leica has a reputation to contend with. A light weight camera comes packed with a lithium-ion battery and can also capture videos at 30fps. The shutterlag was bothering us and we found it impractical for moving objects.

Razzle Dazzle:

In days of cosmetic appeal, Panasonic offers its latest baby with three color choices. You can choose from blue, black or silver. Black and silver are the usual colors for cameras, although the dazzling blue version is a beauty and you’ll surely stand out of the crowd. The brushed aluminum finish looks great and the chrome highlights compliment the colors.

If you have used digital cameras before, you will get familiar with this baby in an instant. The buttons are intuitively placed and are well spaced out. The switch for switching on the camera is located on the top, alongside the shutter release. The zoom ring curls around the shutter release and helps the photographer maintain his grip on the camera. The intelligent auto function helps first time users to be trigger happy. It assists them in selecting modes, correcting blur and focusing. It can also set brightness to the optimum level. Virtually, it smoothens out all the bumps that would avoid you to get the shot.

The LCD screen at the back is bright enough in outdoor sunny conditions and quite large. Clustered around this screen are numerous dedicated and multifunction buttons. The playback/ shooting switch is located at the top right of the screen. To the right of the screen is the four navigation key cluster with the menu/set key in the center. The directional keys also can be used fot exposure control, flash, macro and timer controls whilst shooting.

Inside Dope:

If you like to control the aperture and the shutter speeds, than, sorry, this is not the camera you’d like! It is heavy on auto-focus, so newbie shutterbugs would prefer it to the amateurs. Whilst you can control the focus, light metering, color effects, white balance, exposure and ISO in Normal Picture mode, you can exercise limited control over the settings in other modes. The ISO settings help you click photos in very low light conditions although the pictures turn out too noisy and at ISO 1600 are almost unusable. A max ISO of 800 is recommended for low light shots.

The FS15 again asserts that it is a camera for those relatively new to digital photography by offering us 26 scene modes. Apart from the usual modes like landscape, portrait and night mode, there are some new modes to play around with. You can try the pin-hole and the film-grain modes, although you’ll be restricted to 3 megapixel in these modes. The movie mode helps you capture clips at VGA quality.

Keeping the price bracket in with the FS15 is placed, the performance and features it offers are competent. The camera boots in 2 seconds and you have a buffer of close to 3 seconds between each shot. Lighting conditions also affect the time it takes for you to focus and shoot. FS15 offers burst shooting at 1.8 frames per second.

There are some issues that could’ve been done without. When the pictures are viewed at 100%, they show noise regardless the ISO settings. There is also a slight yellow tinting to the pictures. As you progress through the ISO scale, you’ll notice noise getting out of hand. At ISO 1600, the photos are almost unusable as they are covered by yellow blotches and a lot of noise. If you are developing prints on a small frame, the details and coloring is pleasing, with fairly good exposure, but highlight have a tendency to be blown-out.

The camera performs best in Macro mode, with the sharpness good in the center and softer towards the corners. At the wide end of the lens, a slight barrel distortion was noticed, but is acceptable. Purple fringing was also well controlled.

Nitty Gritty:

The FS15 is almost perfectly priced and packaged. The performance is bracket matching and competition is stiff. For those who like to experiment with their photography, you could pass it up for something better. You cannot make prints larger than 8×10 and low light photography is a no-no with this camera. If you aren’t too serious with your photography, or like to have a compact camera for everyday photography, this is a good choice.

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