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Simon Yates Photography
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Finally a decent camera that takes sharp photos,
I purchased this because I was very unhappy with the new Canon A3300 that I also purchased just a week before this one. I did extensive photo tests with both cameras because I felt the Canons overall sharpness was bad. Both cameras are 16mp and although i’m a Canon fan I have to say they failed on the A3300. Even with setting custom sharpness, contrast and saturation, the normal straight out of the box settings on the Panasonic were way better.
The two big problems with the canon were most photos even bright outdoors had way too much noise. The other problem was no matter what setting and focus type, only the center areas were in ok and i mean ok focus. All four corners of the photos were on the blurry side and that’s just unacceptable. Compared to this Panasonic…wow, much better and much sharper. When fully zoomed in there was a bit of noise but its expected. Night shots depending on how you take them also have noise but again depending on how and what you can work around it a bit.
There are minor differences with the two cameras like the zoom smoothness was a bit better on the canon and the user interface and menu screens were also a bit better on the canon. Not a deal breaker at all because I’d rather have quality over cosmetic things. The other minor things i found were that the Panasonic has the af assist light very close to the top corner of the camera where you put your fingers. Also the on off and photo/play aren’t buttons they are switches which i’m a little worried about breaking so we’ll see how they last.
One of the biggest differences is that this camera is faster. I found that saving photos is almost instantaneous on the FH25 but on the canon it was about a 4 sec pause to save before you could take another (a “busy” icon shows up. Most of all the functions on the FH25 are faster and i like being able to grab the camera and take photos quickly.
Overall i’m all about quality and sharp photos and this camera does that. If you don’t care about the spare battery cost or that the user interface and menus look like 20 years old, i think you’ll be happy with this camera.
Photos for the most part are well exposed and using the full Ai seem to always come out perfect. There will be a slight bit of noise in certain shots but sharpness is never an issue. The whole thing about higher mega pixels is better isn’t completely true, its all about the sensor size. Do some research about that as I did but believe me, this camera really does a great job. I’ve posted a few sample photos.
UPDATE 8-17-11
Still loving the picture quality of this small camera. I even tested out the new Canon SX230 and again this FH25 was sharper and photos were exposed better. The full iAuto setting is amazing and it really
does a great job, I’ve taken photos with it that I will be publishing in my second book next year. That’s how good I feel the quality is.
Update: there are batteries available for only $10.00 making this camera a great choice.
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|good basic camera for those who want to point & shoot,
I bought this for a family member who knows nothing about cameras or photography and who has no interest in learning more than just push the button. 🙂 So, when shopping for a camera for her, my criteria was – how good will it do on full auto. It needed to focus quickly and accurately and I wanted it to have reasonably nice image quality. I bought this and tested it out for a few days.
The focus is fast and accurate just as I was expecting on a Panasonic – they usually have very good focus (accurate) on full auto in the point and shoot camera category. On the widest angle setting, outdoors, the picture quality is very nice. Once you start to zoom, picture quality is not the greatest but still OK. Macros are very good on this too. It’s very easy to operate if you are a novice. You can set it on iA (intelligent auto) and the only buttons you have to operate are the shutter button (press half way down to focus; press the rest of the way down to take the picture) and the zoom toggle on the top of the camera.
I wasn’t super happy that there was no dedicated movie button (it’s in the menu) but I knew she would not likely use the movie function. I also knew that most of the photos she might take would be of her son and grandson, so mostly wide angle (better photo quality) would be fine for her and a little zoom on this still gets you a decent image in terms of quality. I liked the size and weight of this – slim and light weight. I liked the size and shape of it so much that I almost bought one for myself but I prefer different features and better image quality when fully zoomed out.
Bottom line is – she loves it and actually uses it! Before this, any camera was too complicated for her to even give it a try. This one is not intimidating. This camera has plenty of settings to try out too and I encourage you to try those (sports, portrait, landscape, etc) as you can often get even better results with those.
It was between this and Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS 12.1 MP CMOS Digital Camera with Full 1080p HD Video (Silver). I thought the Elph might actually be too small for her to be comfortable with AND you have to be willing to work the settings more to get the best photo. I find the full auto on the Elph does not consistently lock in on the right subject when focusing – so I knew any camera she had to “fiddle with” would not be the best choice for her. The image quality on the Elph is a bit better but ONLY if you work with the different settings and modes (it also didn’t have 8x zoom).
If you want a budget camera that you can put on full auto and get the right subjects in focus, this is the one I would recommend. 16MP is too many for this small sensor. 9 or 10 would be much better in my opinion in terms of image quality BUT, in terms of what I was looking for and the budget P&S camera category, it is a 4.5 star rating. In terms of all point and shoot cameras in the world, I would say 3-ish so I gave this 3 stars. I wish camera manufacturers would stop playing the mega-pixel race game and concentrate on image quality.
I’ve uploaded several sample photos taken on iA too, so check those and others out for more of a feel of what you can expect from this camera.
I try to make my reviews as helpful as possible so please let me know if this review was helpful to you by clicking the “was this review helpful” button – or ask a questions in comments. I am happy to answer if I can. 🙂
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