Hello there! I'm a white male, living in surburban Southampton (although I support Portsmouth FC!) ...
Hello there! I'm a white male, living in surburban Southampton (although I support Portsmouth FC!) who is married with 1 child! Have worked in retail for many, many years so customer service is very important and I am highly critical!!
Member since:27.12.2006
Reviews:10
Members who trust:2
OK. Let's get something straight out now before I continue. I love Panasonic. I have always been brand loyal. Hi-fi, DVD players, Video recorder, TV's, Sat System - god , I even went and bought a 3DO just because it was by Panasonic!! (for those of you who may not remember, a 3DO was the first ever "next gen" games console - trust me, it was...)
However, my experiences with this camera have questioned my loyalty - so from that you can best surmise I am not too pleased with this one... let me begin:
Reviews: like most, I always do hefty research into products before purchase - to be even more honest I do trust Panasonic as I have never, ever had a bad experience with their products. So, when my wife decided to upgrade her Canon Ixus
2, I thought I knew best and surprised her with a package I thought well researched in the Lumix DMC FX30. I was chuffed that this camera was getting good reviews - all my wife wanted was a point and click. Simple.
The DMC FX30 did get some good reviews, some average, the occasional poor, but I was prepared to accept the bad reviews as a "blip" as a Panasonic loyal person. So I purchased the camera along with a mighty fine Epson PictureMate 100.
Christmas day was met with whoops of joy as the new camera duly performed, taking pictures at every opportunity, inside and out the camera gleefully responding with a pleasing beep at every button press. Simple mode - just what we wanted. Just point and click. What more could you need?
Boxing Day came and the paltry memory card I purchased as an extra alerted us that it was bourgeoning from the frivolity of Christmas and needed to be downloaded. So, we hastened to the computer whereby we started to copy the photos from card to hard drive.
Inspection presented us not with joy and laughter, moreso painful expression of dismay and bewilderment. The photos were all over the place - out of focus, blurred, badly lit, poorly saturated in weird colours with purple haze and appallingly bereft of quality. There were the odd outside shots that looked good, but upon zoom were again not to expectations.
So, putting this down to the helpdesk "user error", the polite way of calling us imbeciles, we persevered and tried a multitude of settings and options. Quite frankly, a GCSE in photography was probably needed as the overabundance of options left us quite bemused.
A simple point and click camera should just take a picture - no fussing, no grey matter overload - just point, click, photo.
Don't get me wrong - this camera has so many options that you, like us will wonder why it has so many for just a point and click… Baby 1, baby 2, outside low light, night, day, lunch, brunch, punch. (so the last one we made up) ISO from 100 to 1600!! Red eye reduction that does not work!! But come on! This is a point and click - the manual is 155 pages long and all in English!! In a small font too!!
Flash: Average to poor in that it does not seem in sync with the camera.
Battery: OK. Did not last long. About 50-70 shots.
Quickness: unless you are fart arsing around trying to find the right mode, it's not too bad. Just a shame you have to fart around with it.
LCD Screen: exceptional. Pictures look awesome. Just a shame when you print them out they look completely different! Even viewing them on a PC they look different!
Features: Got a year? Got a degree? You're gonna need it.
Functions: See above
Lens: A saving grace. Widescreen is a boon. Pretty useless if your pictures look s**t though. Mind you that means you can take s**t widescreen pictures. And show off a bit cos your friends can't.
Recommended? By now you should have made your own mind up. You may also think that this may be a one off. We thought that. So we complained and got a replacement camera. No difference - in fact, shockingly, this one is worse. And it's the same darn camera!!
Some may completely disagree with me - the facts are there are too many fancy features when the R&D should have gone into making the camera take better pictures.
It breaks my heart to say - but this Panasonic is best avoided. My gut reaction is that I have had a bad camera. But two? No chance.
We have just ordered a Canon Ixus 960IS. I'll let you know how we get on.
(+) Ultra-compact dimensions, fun automatic tools, good performance for the asking price (-) Cluttered menu layout, camera buttons are scarce, specs are almost identical to the Samsung ES15
I have the same camera and do not experince any of the problems mentioned. If you read other reviews they too do not have these provlems. Seems you have a bad one.
manlybeach 08.07.2008 12:07
I have always liked Panasonic too but this camera doesn't sound up to their usual quality
Jul 7th, 2008
(Jul 8th, 2008)
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