At the end of last month Panasonic released its new flagship point-and-shoot camera, the Lumix FX-500. The camera belongs to a friend of mine, and I agonised briefly over whether or not to recommend a Canon G9 or Sigma DP-1. The Panasonic aims itself at an entirely different market - it’s a small, pocketable P&S, with no optical or external viewfinder and only shoots in jpeg instead of raw or a lossless format, though the resolution is 10 megapixels.

So it looks like Panasonic aims it new high-tech point-and-shoot at an entirely different market, but not the traditional point-and-shoot market either.

Amateur photographers I know go through a multi-fold phase of digital camera buying. They buy a dSLR to replace their 35mm SLR. Then they often realise the reason they stopped carrying the 35mm SLR was not the inconvenience of film, but the inconvenience of a bulky camera. They decide they need a point-and-shoot camera for convenience. Then they choose between highly portable, or a vaguely portable alternative to a dSLR such as the Sigma DP-1 or Canon G9. I chose the latter, but many of my friends prefer the former. I don’t blame them — there’s nothing nicer than having a fairly decent camera with you at all times that fits easily in any pocket. I end up shooting with my phone instead — my Canon G9 is a bit too bulky to carry around all the time. I think the folks who chose the former may have gotten it right. Mind, I don’t have an dSLR, so the Canon is my “big” camera in the digital world.

The Panasonic will appeal to the first group, and fit the bill very nicely indeed. It mostly features high gadget-value. It has a touch screen for one example of high gadget-value. I thought Panasonic might be going a bit gadget-gimmicky with the touch screen, but I was wrong. For one, the touch screen actually has a photographic use, and a very good one — perhaps my favourite thing about this camera. The camera features “motion detection.” It’s a great feature.

Touch an area on the screen you want the camera to expose correctly and either move the camera to compose your shot, or keep the camera still and let the subject move. The camera tracks the point you focused/exposed and keeps evaluating the focus and exposure as either you or the picture moves. I can’t think, without aid of a touch screen, how else you would make that work. It is a fantastic “gimmick” and a very helpful one. It doesn’t track fast-moving objects but I suspect in the future cameras will have the processing power to do that much better.

The fast Leica lens performs as well as you would imagine. The detail and sharpness of the optics stand out as being excellent, possibly better than on my Canon G9. There is almost no flare to speak of, very little fringing, and in spite of being a P&S, the wide end of the goes all the way to 25mm (equivalent) at F2.8.

Full-sized version of the above.

Full-sized version of the above.

The biggest limitation of the camera is the auto-exposure and post processing. It seems to have a tendancy to over-expose a bit, and it occasionally gets the sky colour wrong and the results are skies that are bit too cyan rather than natural blue.

The sky is more cyan than blue.

A good job with a difficult to expose scene but the sky is a bit over exposed and has a cyan cast.

But a slight adjustment of levels quickly fixes the exposure issues:

Full-sized version of the above.

Full-sized version of the above.

Fortunately the exposure mistakes are only occasional, and it does also get it right and produces excellent results, even with tricky unevenly-lit subjects.

Full-sized version of the above.

Full-sized version of the above.

Conclusion

In some ways I prefer carrying this camera to my Canon G9. It’s tiny, light and unobtrusive. Generally taking pictures raises a few eyebrows but I found using this camera went largely unnoticed by passersby, presumably because it wasn’t much bigger than a phone and people seem to have less reservations around phone cameras in my estimation. I enjoyed using this camera a great deal, though an optical viewfinder would have been nice. I still think like a film photographer and like to sanity check my LCD composition in a real viewfinder.

At a pound shy of £300 the FX500 is a very expensive camera, especially for one that only produces JPEGS. But I think the combination of a very-wide angle, fast Leica lens, the intelligent electronics and especially the motion-tracking feature make this an excellent camera, especially given it’s exceptional portability. Therefore it makes a great small backup camera for serious amateurs as well an good choice for anyone who just wants decent digital they can easily throw in a bag or a jacket pocket. In my estimation the thing that most often prevents people from taking good pictures is the fact they don’t feel like carrying a camera around. With such small cameras able to perform well there’s no excuse now.

More sample pictures are available here.