Typical price: £199
What is it: 6-megapixel compact camera with 6x optical zoom
What we think: Poor low-light performance hinders its useful features
Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5 Review
Reviewed on: 24 April 2006
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Time to first shot |
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Shutter lag (typical) |
Image quality
Image quality in good light is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ5's strength. Well-lit shots have a very pleasing look, with natural, accurate colour rendition and very few JPEG-compression artefacts. While the camera tends to underexpose sometimes and burn out highlights other times, flesh tones are very neutral and colours seem to pop with just the right amount of contrast and saturation. Those wanting to customise the colour look can select a Vivid picture setting with increased saturation and sharpening.
The DMC-LZ5 has pretty typical lens geometry for a compact model. There's a bit of vignetting (the darkening and softening of the corners of the image frame at the wide end of the lens's range), but it's negligible at the telephoto end. There's some barrel distortion at the wide end but little pincushioning when zoomed out. However, focus falls off sharply on the left side, which aggravates the otherwise modest amount of chromatic aberration (the coloured fringing often seen around heavily backlit objects, such as bare branches against a sky). However, photos look relatively sharp overall, especially in macro shots.
Flash performance is disappointing, with indoor pictures often coming out flat and unattractive. The sensor is extremely noisy at high sensitivities, making low-light shots all but impossible. Shots at ISO 80 and 100 are tolerable, but at ISO 200, images start to show noticeable noise and softness. ISO 400 shots have excessive noise as well as image problems such as softness, lower contrast and colour shift. Extended ISO settings of 800 and 1,600 are available, but noise above ISO 400 makes them all but unusable.
Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Kate Macefield
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