Review 5 of 6
Price Paid:
$245.00
from Bel Air Camera, Los Summary: I am a Canon EOS 1DsII user, but needed a pocketable camera. I tested several cameras in store (well outside, in better light), and found this one to be the best for the price, quality, and handlability. Among others I tried were the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ2 (and Leica equivalent), Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX30, Canon PowerShot SD800 IS, Canon PowerShot SD900, and Olympus FE-240. The Olympus was clearly the worst in terms of image quality. The Canons are all similar in quality (whether higher pixel or not, viewed at 100% on a large Apple 30" display). The Panasonics are jewels of cameras, but all suffer from the well-known noise and smearing problems. That's really too bad because they would be my camera of choice otherwise, especially with RAW capability in the TZ2 model. Strengths: Fast focussing, responsive, small, easily carried everywhere, good quality files (but see problems below), cheap! Noise is quite well handled. Weaknesses: My first camera had noticable softness on the right side of the image (sensor alignment?) and I returned it. The lens is of course nowhere near as good a SLR lenses. There is some corner softness wide open at the 35mm equivalent, and some vignetting and color distortion for those images that are flatter in nature (skies, sand, etc). Similar Products Used: See summary Customer Service: Was able to exchange camera no problem.
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