I often ask myself whether or not digital camera manufacturers will ever let up from their constant onslaught of new products every few weeks. It’s impossible to keep up with the cameras on the market and trying to do so would just be a waste of time. Most people aren’t interested in the new XYZ technology that XYZ manufacturer has developed for their camera. At the end of the day people just want a camera that they know will take good pictures and sometimes video without having to fuss too much with settings and knobs. There was a period of time in the early part of the decade where camera manufacturers thought that by introducing many new features to their cameras people would be more inclined to buy them. The opposite was true. Consumers wanted cameras that took pictures, the entire purpose of a camera to begin with. Now that designers have realized this trend and have taken a step back to produce something that’s easy to use and takes great photos, we’re seeing some great products on the market. Enter the Panasonic Lumix.
Good:
- Pretty screen
- High megapixel count
- Long battery life
- Crisp photos in bright light
Bad:
- Poor low light photos
- Complicated and useless video function
- Slow transfer rate to the PC
The Lumix Shines
First of all, the picture quality on the new Lumix camera is fantastic. Boasting more megapixels than you could care to use, the Lumix’s 14 megapixels deliver great picture quality in most well lit settings. We’ll get to where it suffers in a moment. They’ve also added a new 8x optical zoom that holds up surprisingly well at full zoom level and pictures still come out clear. In addition to the newly remodeled zoom, Panasonic has also introduced a new feature that allows it to capture moving images with ease. Many digital cameras struggle because of poor shutter speed when trying to catch moving objects, but the Lumix catches thing in a flash (pun definitely intended).
The stock battery life is fairly impressive and can usually last for about two or three hundred pictures before dying, which is enough to snap photos of your kids as they fly down Splash Mountain at Disney. Panasonic offers an extra battery that is supposed to last twice as long, but honestly, when’s the last time you found yourself wanting to take more than two hundred pictures at one sitting?
How the Sun Sets
As with all digital cameras, there’s always a point that they fail. They never can quite get them right. The Lumix, despite deriving its name from the word luminosity, does surprisingly poor in low light situations. A few dimly lit shots with your wife or husband in a restaurant will probably be a no go unless you power on the flash, but then unless you have Photoshop, you’ll blow out the background, so it’s a lose lose situation.
Also, while the Lumix claims that it has video capturing capabilities, they’re poor at best. It’s not the video quality that suffers, it’s the difficultly of actually capturing and saving movies. Because they didn’t bother to include sufficient internal memory, videos that last only a few minutes are sure to fill up your space in no time. Add to that the fact that it takes what feels like an eternity to transfer all of your movies files to the computer and you have a dud feature. And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, there is no video option on the outside of the camera to simply switch to video mode. You have to navigate through the menu, which in their defense is very attractive, and find the video mode to switch to. If you’re going to have an advertised feature for a product, why hide it deep within a menu screen?
I often ask myself whether or not digital camera manufacturers will ever let up from their constant onslaught of new products every few weeks. It’s impossible to keep up with the cameras on the market and trying to do so would just be a waste of time. Most people aren’t interested in the new XYZ technology that XYZ manufacturer has developed for their camera. At the end of the day people just want a camera that they know will take good pictures and sometimes video without having to fuss too much with settings and knobs. There was a period of time in the early part of the decade where camera manufacturers thought that by introducing many new features to their cameras people would be more inclined to buy them. The opposite was true. Consumers wanted cameras that took pictures, the entire purpose of a camera to begin with. Now that designers have realized this trend and have taken a step back to produce something that’s easy to use and takes great photos, we’re seeing some great products on the market. Enter the Panasonic Lumix.
Good:
- Pretty screen
- High megapixel count
- Long battery life
- Crisp photos in bright light
Bad:
- Poor low light photos
- Complicated and useless video function
- Slow transfer rate to the PC
The Lumix Shines
First of all, the picture quality on the new Lumix camera is fantastic. Boasting more megapixels than you could care to use, the Lumix’s 14 megapixels deliver great picture quality in most well lit settings. We’ll get to where it suffers in a moment. They’ve also added a new 8x optical zoom that holds up surprisingly well at full zoom level and pictures still come out clear. In addition to the newly remodeled zoom, Panasonic has also introduced a new feature that allows it to capture moving images with ease. Many digital cameras struggle because of poor shutter speed when trying to catch moving objects, but the Lumix catches thing in a flash (pun definitely intended).
The stock battery life is fairly impressive and can usually last for about two or three hundred pictures before dying, which is enough to snap photos of your kids as they fly down Splash Mountain at Disney. Panasonic offers an extra battery that is supposed to last twice as long, but honestly, when’s the last time you found yourself wanting to take more than two hundred pictures at one sitting?
How the Sun Sets
As with all digital cameras, there’s always a point that they fail. They never can quite get them right. The Lumix, despite deriving its name from the word luminosity, does surprisingly poor in low light situations. A few dimly lit shots with your wife or husband in a restaurant will probably be a no go unless you power on the flash, but then unless you have Photoshop, you’ll blow out the background, so it’s a lose lose situation.
Also, while the Lumix claims that it has video capturing capabilities, they’re poor at best. It’s not the video quality that suffers, it’s the difficultly of actually capturing and saving movies. Because they didn’t bother to include sufficient internal memory, videos that last only a few minutes are sure to fill up your space in no time. Add to that the fact that it takes what feels like an eternity to transfer all of your movies files to the computer and you have a dud feature. And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, there is no video option on the outside of the camera to simply switch to video mode. You have to navigate through the menu, which in their defense is very attractive, and find the video mode to switch to. If you’re going to have an advertised feature for a product, why hide it deep within a menu screen?
