Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30 Full-Review

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30

Indoor ISO Cropped Images

Images below are all unmodified 100% crops from their respective cameras. A specific ISO was set for each picture on-camera but exposure and white-balance were fully automatic. Here the 7 megapixels Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30 is compared to the 6 megapixels Fuji Finepix F10. The F10 is another point-and-shoot ultra-compact camera. Note that because both cameras are completely point-and-shoot, the exposures vary quite a bit. Altough it does not have a wide-angle lens, it has a wide ISO range and was the previous image quality champion amoing ultra-compact cameras, just behind the Fuji Finepix F30 and its near identical twin the Fuji Finepix F31fd.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30	Fuji Finepix F10
	ISO 80 - 1/4s F5
ISO 100 - 0.7s F5.6	ISO 100 - 1/4s F5
ISO 200 - 0.4s F5.6	ISO 200 - 1/4s F5
ISO 400 - 1/5s F5.6	ISO 400 - 1/8s F5
ISO 800 - 1/10s F5.6	ISO 800 - 1/15s F5
ISO 1250 - 1/15s F5.6	Looking at all these crops closely, it is clear that the Fuji keeps noise-levels much lower than the Panasonic. There is also such strong loss of details in images from the FX30 that the ISO 800 shot from the F10 has more detail than the ISO 200 shot from the Panasonic. Color between the camera is similar as is exposure in most crops. The white-balance is more natural for the Fuji Finepix F10. Exposure is similar for most shots except the ISO 80 and 100 shots. The Fuji under-exposed those shots because it had reached its minimal shutter-speed for 1/4s. With the FX30, the minimal shutter-speed was configured to be 1s.
Overall, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30 turned out to be noisier than average. When it is compared to the F10, it is surprising that the FX30 is 2 years newer. Since then Fuji has advanced even more in terms of low image noise at high-ISO. Check out the samples from our full-review of the F30 and you will see that it is one step ahead of the F10, thus leaving the Panasonic FX30 in the dust.	ISO 1600 - 1/38s F5