Look For Panasonic Dmc Fx3s Digital Optical Stabilized at Amazon
Most helpful customer reviews 14 of 15 people found the following review helpful. 16 of 19 people found the following review helpful. 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. I needed a camera for work. It had to be fairly cheap and a wide angle lens was needed. The F3 was one of the few cameras I found that fit the bill, so I ordered one. Having been impressed by my LZ7, I had high hopes for the new F3 but was sorely disappointed. Here are my complaints with the F3 1) It gives you horribly over-processed photos. I would guess that they used a very low cost image sensor in this camera because they do A LOT of post-processing. The sensor seems to create a lot of noise and then the camera severely over-sharpens. This creates a terrible blurring-grainy effect that makes the photos only usable full size. Forget trying to do any advanced editing in Photoshop, as the blur-grain makes anything beyond basic color and brightness adjustments nearly pointless. I could go on but there is no need, just understand that the camera way over-processes the images it takes. 2) The macro mode is almost useless. With the camera in normal mode, the minimum focus distance is about a foot. With macro enabled it drops that to about 5-6in. With as wide of a lens as this camera has, that is terrible. All the other p&s cameras I have owned and used will focus down to the point where the lens almost bumps the object you are trying to photograph. This may not be a deal breaker for some people but one of the uses I bought the F3 for was taking photos of circuit boards and components. The best I can say is that it barely suffices for this. 3) Low light performance is terrible. The camera supposedly has an “electronic image stabilizer” but from what I can figure, it is utterly useless. Also the the camera is very noisy. Basically it is useless without the flash on unless you are in a very bright area. Understand that I know exactly how much this camera sells for, as I bought one, so I know it is not a high end model. But does that excuse the photos it takes? I don’t believe it does. After all it is a digital camera, so its first and foremost purpose should be to take usable/functional photos. It does this only barely, if ever. For illustration purposes I will try to take the F3 and LZ7 out for some comparison photos. |
Great Pocket Camera Value Priced
Great entry-level camera
A small camera with terrible image quality