Product Reviews

In What's New: Photography, Shopper January 2006 we were quite taken by Panasonic's DMC-FX9, but put off by its price of £300. The FX3 reviewed here is similar to the FX9 in looks and specifications, so it's satisfying to find it available online for as little as £130. It's not often we see such an elegant camera at this price, especially considering that Panasonic's excellent optical image stabilisation is included to counteract blur from camera shake.

Low-cost cameras are often slow, but the FX3 is reasonably nippy at 2 seconds to shoot from startup and two seconds between shots. The 1.2fps

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continuous mode is better than average, but the camera is sluggish when browsing photos. The FX3 has a 2in screen, and although its 115,000-pixel resolution is disappointing, we're willing to forgive it at this price.

The controls are well laid out, but their etched labels can be hard to read in low light. The simple list-style menu includes options such as aspect ratio and maximum shutter speed, allowing you to decide the steadiness of your hand.

Image quality is this camera's strongest asset. Photos were exceptionally detailed with lifelike colours in a range of conditions. High-contrast scenes were particularly impressive, with subtle details captured in bright and dark areas. Our only criticism is that noise-reduction processing sacrificed detail in complex textures during low-light photography, although the top ISO 400 setting remained usable.

The price is fantastic for such a high-quality camera with optical image stabilisation. However, stiff competition comes from FujiFilm's FinePix F20, which lacks stabilisation but offers cleaner, sharper high-ISO performance. Ultimately, we find the F20fs high-ISO performance more valuable than the FX3fs stabilisation.