Sunday, May 04, 2008
Bought a Panasonic FX36 (= FX35) white, with white 4GB SDHC class6 card and white leather case (yes, all white heh, I'm sick of silver and black)
The whole reason for buying this camera was to have something pocketable on top of my EOS dSLR. Out of all the other consumer cams out there, here's why the FX36 kills
1. 720p movie recording. Not a lot of cams can do that out there, the Canon TX1 videos are really soft (so soft that it looks like 640x480), the Kodak ones do not have O.I.S during recording (not sure about the newest Z series) 2. 25mm wide lens, which would have cost ~>HKD3000 on its own. Besides, the amount of barrel distortion on the FX36 is really really really acceptable, it won't make you look fat, I promise. Useful or group photos, architectural and landscape photos... or when you have someone random to hold the camera for you. 3. having high ISO plus O.I.S reduces the need for using xenon flash; that means less blinking photos and fat photos. 4. semi-auto low light compensation, not talking about the usual EV+-, which only washes everything, but what's found on the FX36 virtually widens the dynamic range (with some extra noise and extra processing time, of course), but very useful as it gives you less dark faces when you have a bright source behind your back (and when you just hate to use the flash) 5. acceptable noise level at iso400. For this camera size, this price, this sensor size, I would not complain. iso800 is still okay for 3R print if you took it at 10MP. You can always "hide" the noise by shrinking the picture if you are lazy (3MP is still very usable), or use photoshop... I would prefer noisy-sharp photos over blurry-clean photos anytime 6. on camera stills capture from videos, you can actually cut 1280x720 pics off your videos, picking them frame by frame, no need to spend time in front of the puter
Reasons I bought the FX36 (FX35) over FX520 (FX500) 1. HKD800 cheaper 2. focus speed is faster (try for yourself at the shop) 3. smaller, since I wanted to buy a pocketable camera on top of my dSLR 4. battery lasts longer with the smaller screen 5. more colors to choose from
All in all, I'm very satisfied with this camera, minor set-backs are listed below.
Cons: Not much options on flash comparing to Casio (e.g. soft flash) Relatively slow focusing speed comparing to Canon Ixus Average LCD visibility under the sun No optical zoom during video recording
Pros: 720p movie with optical anti-shake. 25mm wide lens with well above average barrel distortion. low light compensation for no-brainers, not talking about just the usual EV+- acceptable noise level at iso400
Will try to post up sample pics (flickr) and videos (rapidshare & youtube) soon.
If you have any questions, just ask, I'll try to answer but can't guarantee
trapped in the maze of time..6:07 AM
