The Panasonic Lumix DMC FX550 offers something a little different to other small, compact digital cameras. The basic features are a 12 megapixel sensor and a 5x optical zoom lens, but these do not really tell much of the story.
Starting with the lens it has one of the widest angles available on a camera of this size. The wide angle focal length is equivalent to 25mm in 35mm format. This may not mean a lot to you, but the important thing to know is that the lens will pack more width into a photo than most cameras manage. This comes in handy for sweeping landscapes, groups of people, interiors etc. Another zoom related feature is a small button on the top of the Lumix DMC FX550 marked E.Zoom. If you press this the camera immediately zooms into to maximum zoom.
As is becoming more commonplace additional zoom becomes available when shooting at lower resolutions. 12 megapixels is certainly overkill if all you want to do is create snapshot size photos, so you do not lose very much by shooting at fewer megapixels. If you reduce the amount of pixels to 5 megapixels the amount of zoom available increases to 7.8x. Decrease the megapixels to 3 megapixels which should still be enough for snapshot sized prints and you have 9.8x zoom at your fingertips.
The LCD screen is large at 3 inches. I also found the screen easy to see in bright light. Some of the features such as the shooting mode are selected by touching the screen. In my view Panasonic give you the best of both worlds. Although you use touch to select modes such as movie mode or scene mode other selections are made through a more traditional menu interface. I find this speeds the process up.
The menus run to five screens and there are a similar number in the setup menu too. This gives you an idea of the number of controls available to you. Panasonic have set up some of the most important features on a separate menu. This is accessible through a button on the back of the Lumix DMC FX550. This helps with ease of use and also speed, but as you can imagine it will take a while to get used to all the features and take full advantage of what the Lumix DMC FX550 has to offer.
For anyone looking to shoot movie clips you will be pleased to know the camera is able to shoot High Definition movie clips.
If you like the idea of taking a bit more control over the way your photos will look there is a manual exposure mode available to you. This lets you control the shutter speed and aperture. I like the fact that the shutter sped and aperture size are touch controlled through the LCD screen.
Other features include image stabilization, the ability to select auto focus and exposure points through touch, aspect ratios ideal for 6 x 4 inch prints, wide screen TV playback and 6 x 4 inch prints, five auto focus modes, face recognition and a burst mode to fire off consecutive shots quickly. You can also adjust settings for contrast, sharpness, saturation and noise reduction. As you can see Panasonic has covered just about all the basis with the Lumix DMC FX550.
When it comes to picture quality the camera will not let you down either. I found very few issues outside of the few typical niggles here and there.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC FX550 is a digital camera that goes the extra mile compared with just about every other compact digital camera on the market. It is well worth taking a close look at this model before you decide what camera to buy.
Andy writes and reviews digital cameras for Cameras.co.uk. See his test shots and ratings for the Panasonic Lumix DMC FX550
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