Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30

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Performance
Depending on whether you prefer using the electronic viewfinder or the free-angle LCD, choosing the later will require you to flip the screen out before placing it back into its recessed space on the camera. So to capture that spontaneous shot, we would recommend using the EVF to shave off that precious few seconds. Time-to-first-shot was slightly under 2 seconds. You can continue shooting with flash every 2 seconds and without flash a little under that amount of time.

Shooting in RAW was zippy at approximately 4 seconds for every shot. The ArcSoft PhotoBase software that comes bundled with the camera allows you to adjust brightness/contrast, hue/saturation and sharpen/blur settings on your PC.

We didn't complain using the burst mode on the FZ30. The camera limits itself to five frames in both high- (3 sec) and low-speed (4 secs) settings. You can shoot till your finger tires or your memory card runs out of capacity (whichever comes first) at approximately 1.7fps. We captured a total of 107 images on our ultra-high speed Imation SD card in a minute during our tests. It was a pity, however, that the shooter cannot record continuously in RAW or TIFF file formats.

The focus ring on the FZ30 retains the merit of its predecessor: Responsive and precise. In addition, the camera magnifies the centre portion of your image to aid in judging sharpness. Autofocus was performed generally well at under 2 seconds in dim-light situations.

Image Quality
The FZ30 produces generally good images. Our test photos look vibrant and sharp though we did get some over-exposed pictures at the default settings. You can adjust for contrast, saturation and sharpness in-camera. The white balance on the camera works especially fine outdoors, and you can manually set the white balance when your pictures turn out off-color.

Noise was not too much an issue at ISO 80 and ISO 100 if you are not too picky, but gets noticeable at ISO 200 and above and is easily visible at high magnification. Images at ISO 400 were practically useless save for small prints. Do expect more noise at all ISO levels when light levels drop.

We didn't notice any purple fringing in our high-contrast shots which was good and barrel distortion was kept to a minimal at the maximum wide-angle setting.

One of the more notable improvements over the FZ20 is a jump from 320 x 240-pixel resolution to 30fps VGA-quality movie setting. Overall quality was good and being a manual shooter, you can zoom in while shooting motion images.