Excellent Camera

I will preface this review with the statement that I am not a seasoned photographer but I have had quite a few digital cameras over the last 7 years. This is my 2nd "superzoom" camera, the first being a Fujifilm S3100. This camera surpasses the Fuji by quite a bit. You have at your disposal here a 6Mp sensor, a superb 12x optical zoom Leica lens, 2.5" LCD monitor, adj. diopter eyepiece with "thru the lens" view and a powerful (for a fixed type) pop-up flash.

On the subjective side of things, I love the styling of this camera. It looks for all the world like a traditional 35mm SLR. The first thing you notice is the fabulous lens. A Leica spec. Vario-Elmarit 12x zoom lens. For a fixed lens it is very fast at 1:2.8 - 3.3. My favorite lens prior to this was the excellent Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x on my Sony... but it cannot compare to this lens. Pincushion and barrel distortion are very minimal while images are very sharp and detailed. The zoom is very quick, taking approx. 3-4 seconds to go from full wide to full zoom. Easily the finest feature of this camera.

This would easily be considered a "prosumer" camera little more than a year ago. It has all the automatic features one could want in a digital camera but it is supplemented by a full set of manual features for the shutterbug. You can switch from full program AE to Aperture Priority to Shutter priority to full manual control so one can control exposure and depth of field or simply point and shoot with the fast and accurate auto mode. Even auto mode has choices as one can choose from 1-point, 1-point high speed, 3-spot high speed, 9-point and spot metering. I have not used them all, I typically leave mine in 1-spot AF mode. You can also choose continious autofocus as well. Only drawback I have found is that manual focus and exposure use a small joystick on the back of the camera. The joystick functions okay and seems accurate but I would much prefer a manual focus ring on the lens but, considering price I think this is a reasonable compromise. The camera features 15 different scene modes, I have not had the opportunity yet to use them. There are 6 white balance modes as well. I have had excellent results indoor and out in auto mode so have not used the additional white balance modes. For those even more basic than myself there is a "simple" mode denote by a heart icon the mode dial. In this mode the camera is simply point and shoot, you have no control over anything. It does a very good job in brightly lit situations but not so good in dim light which I will touch on a little further down. I use full program mode with the camera locked into 1-spot AE and 100 ISO. Speaking of ISO, there are 6 ISO settings for this camera ranging from ISO 80 to ISO 1600. I lock at 100 for the same reason I use program mode rather than simple mode. This camera shows signs of very aggressive noise reduction so anything other than optimal exposure will begin to show signs of noise reduction (some graininess or chroma harshness). It is the weakspot of this camera although it has more than enough features to compensate under all but the most extreme situations.

The Venus Engine II chip that controls things is very fast and this helps a great deal. One would think that locking at ISO 100 would limit what I can take pictures of but because the camera is very fast and the lens is sensitive it has not been an issue for me. Combine this with the excellent optical stabilization and pictures come out great. This camera has far more features than I am ever likely to use and, I will admit, probably ever understand.

The movie mode makes quicktime videos with sound and are limited only by memory space. The available resolutions are 640x480 and 320x240 in standard 3:2 mode and 848x480 in 16:9 widescreen. Main drawback is that the zoom does not function during recording, otherwise I found the results to be quite good. I will touch briefly on the remaining features/specs of this camera.

Both the EVF and the LCD monitor are bright and fast but both are somewhat low resolution. A minor concern but seems somewhat out of place considering how well the rest of the camera is made. The matt finish plastic body is very comfortable to hold and use. The entire camera is much lighter than one would expect and a joy to use. Uses a proprietary battery but it has good life and recharges somewhat quickly with the included external charger.

Image quality is very good compared to my previous cameras, a Fujifilm S3100, Sony DSC-S40, and even Panasonics own excellent DMC-LZ5. Considering the price I do not see how one can go wrong with this camera. Note tha this camera has no onboard memory and the included 16Mb card is essentially worthless. Plan on at least a 128Mb card and 512Mb to 1Gb would be ideal. Uses inexpensive Secure digital media and spring for name brand hi-speed cards as they will speed up lag time between shots. Camera will accept most 52mm filters.

It is hard to pick at a camera like this that offers so much but image quality at ISO400 and above is spotty at best although if you only print out at 4x6 it will certainly be useable at almost any ISO save 1600. Would've preferred a higher resolution viewfinder and LCD, manual focus and zoom rings, and the ability to use zoom during movie recording. all minor annoyances and certainly does not detract from this otherwise excellent camera.