Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS20S Digital Camera

Photography has been my hobby since I was a teenager. My first camera was a Polaroid, but my first real camera was a Pentax K-1000. Somewhere along the way, the world of photography went digital, and although I resisted, the purchase of a small pocket sized Canon Elph changed my view of digital photography forever. The pint sized Canon was stolen, but I have been very happy with the second camera I purchased from Panasonic, the DMC FZ5. A 12X optical zoom, 5 megapixels, Leica lens, the only problem was, I couldn't just toss it in my pocket, it was just a bit too big.

I use my digital cameras to take pictures that I can PRINT. I don't mean 4 x 6s either, my favorite photos I enjoy turning into 8 x 10 or even 13 x 19 full color prints. A large printed photo requires a lot better image quality and resolution than an image being used to send via e-mail.

I received as a wonderful gift, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5 Digital Camera. It is an excellent camera for carrying along everywhere.

The Basic Facts on the Panasonic Lumix DMC - FS5 Digital Camera

1.) It's very small -
This means it's good to go, you can easily fit this in your shirt pocket, it's not much bigger than a cell phone.

2.) It has a 4X optical Leica Zoom lens.
If you are a photography buff, you know that the digital zoom isn't the one to look at, the optical zoom will focus all the pixels your camera has on a far off spot. While this doesn't compare with the 12X optical of my DMC-FZ5, you do have to accept some trade off for the size.

3.) The lens is wide angle.
50mm was standard on film cameras, with 28 being really wide angle. This camera can get to 30 mm wide angle shots, that will fit in a big family portrait or a panoramic landscape.

4.) It's 10 megapixels.

If the camera is used at it's maximum setting, you will get a lot of detail in your photos, so you can crop them, blow them up, or work with them without worrying about loss of resolution and detail. Even when I had a four Megapixel camera, I got very acceptable 8 x 10s.

5.) It has anti jitter, to help you keep the shot steady. This comes in very handy and prevents blur when using the 4 x optical zoom.

6.) Rechargable battery with long life means no spending money on AA batteries.

7.) Uses SD media, so you can buy SD cards anywhere from half a gigabyte to 4 gibabytes. (by the time you read this, probably more). I use a two gigabyte chip in this, and I usually download all the photos off the chip well before it is anywhere near full.


A couple of Cons to the Camera

Shutter Speed Although the initial shutter lag isn't bad, waiting to take the next photo takes a while.

No Manual Settings As a photographer, I often want to focus myself or set my own aperture or shutter speed. Although the camera has many automatic settings that give you settings based on what you want to do, it won't let you just set them by yourself.

Some various Scene Modes - My real life experiences

This camera has four basic modes of operation, Intelligent auto which second guesses what you want to do, normal photo which seems to also just set the best settings for the average picture. The only difference I noted between "intelligent auto" and "normal photo" is that the shutter speed displays before you take the photo in normal photo, but only displays after you have taken the photo with "intelligent". Frankly I am puzzled by what the difference is supposed to be.

There are also two scene modes, but each one has the same scene settings ; Portrait, soft skin portrait, self portrait, scenery, sports, night portrait, night scenery, food, party, candlelight, baby1, baby2, pet, sunset, high sensitivity, hi speed burst, starry sky, fireworks, beach, snow, aerial photo, and underwater. After much playing around I realized that the camera includes two "scene" modes so that you can set each scene mode to a particular favorite, and swap between them without going through the menu again.

As a photographer, I understand many of the automatic shutter, ISO (aka film speed), and apereture openings for the various scene modes, but some puzzled me.

Underwater Did I mention that this camera was waterproof? No, I didn't because it is NOT. So, this setting is obviously NOT for use underwater. It gives a shutter speed of 1/30 and an aperature of 3.3. I tried to take a picture of my fish in their fish tank, and I don't think this setting was particularly spectacular for that.

Scenery For anyone who does photography, you already know that scenery is typically wide open apeerature and infinite focus. It works just as I thought it would, and I've shot some great scenes around the lake I live near.

Burst Mode At a local concert, I decided to use burst mode. Burst mode gives you two or three quick shots in a row, so you can capture just the right facial expressions or poses as you shoot. Ever take a picture and find that you snapped a moment too soon, or a moment too late? This lets you snap three in a row at high speed. Since the camera takes a bit of time from photo to photo, this can be useful. My least favorite draw back was the fact that in burst mode, the quality is automatically compromised. You CANNOT shoot the maximum resolution on burst mode which I found quite disappointing. I was happy with 8 x 10s I shot at the show, but I was a bit disappointed with 13 x 19s. Not being able to shoot at maximum resolution also prevents being able to blow up small parts of the photo. I had expected to be able to do that with ten megapixels.

In short, burst mode gives you speed but at the sacrifice of maximum quality.

Macro Mode (closeups!)

You can't SET the camera to macro mode if you have the camera set to intelligent auto. You just click a little button in Normal mode and a flower icon appears in the LCD screen letting you know you are in close up mode.

Macro works very well, when you are right on top of a flower with 10 megapixels you will capture quite a bit of detail. I blew up one of my flower photos taken with this to 13" X 19" and the results were nothing short of stunning. (Epson 1400 wide format photo printer and Epson 13 x 19 premium quality matte paper) . However, the hit or miss quality of getting the camera into macro mode in so called "intelligent mode" is less than ideal.

Flash

This camera has a built in flash with three modes, auto, manual and none. Auto, the camera decides, but there are times that you want flash, like to give some fill, or other times when you don't want flash, such as shooting something behind glass. Flash will produce a huge glare on the glass, and instead of lighting up your subject, it will obscure it. I appreciate the ability to decide when I want flash and when I don't. The button is located on a DVD remote style selection of buttons on the camera face.

Self Portrait In addition to the self portrait scene button, which reduces flash so that when you hold the camera at arms length from yourself and blind yourself, you don't appear all washed out, there is an auto timer. You get a whopping 2 seconds to get into the frame. I could not find a way to adjust the time, until I realized that you only see the 10 second and two second options if you are in NORMAL mode. Whatever you selected last time is the only option you get when it is in INTELLIGENT MODE. Intelligent Mode doesn't give you both options, you have to go BACK to normal mode to adjust it. Intelligent? I think NOT!

The auto timer is also ideal for using the camera with a tripod however, because with an auto timer, your hand will not shake the camera at all for shots requiring absolute stillness. In my film camera days, I used a cable release to do that.

Other Menu Items

The menu is extensive and it does let you tweak many things, if not everything. You can auto bracket exposures, you can change the quality settings, you can adjust the white balance, you can adjust what appears on the photos (like dates etc.), you can even choose what aspect ratio to have your photos set at. This is handy for lining up a nice panorama shot. The LCD screen can be shut off to conserve power, but since this is not a single lens reflex, nor even a camera with a view finder, you would be shooting blind without it.

Movie Mode

Like most cameras today, you can also shoot short MPEG videos with this camera. It shoots at 30 frames per second in VGA quality. For those non tech people, that'll give you VCR VHS tape quality, but not DVD quality and certainly not Blu Ray. If you plan on being the next Stanley Kubrick, go get yourself a Panaflex or at least a professional HD VIDEO camera, this one is for taking fun short video clips, suitable for e-mailing or Youtube videos.

Summary

Although I haven't explored every last mode of this camera, I can say overall, I found the ease of use to be fair. The menus are somewhat quirky and it takes a while to realize that options available in one mode, are not available in another. The lack of a complete override frustrates me as someone who often wants to set it himself. However, the auto modes all do a capable job of capturing quality photos in various modes. I had no problem with the quality when I used the highest settings. Pictures can easily be blown up to large format sizes and capture an amazing amount of detail. Because of the quirkiness of the operation, I can't quite say this is an excellent camera, but I have no problem giving it 4 stars, Panasonic has made a very good easy to carry, high quality camera very capable of taking great shots. It just may take you some time to learn the quirks to get the most out of the camera.