Good companion on the go

I bought the Lumix for the holiday because it was clear that I would I am a lot and stay in the water and I wanted to make a few snapshots and snorkeling times. In principle, good for the Lumix for course. It is robust, in fact, has done well in the water and the great concern that somewhere could penetrate water has subsided quite quickly with me. The display is indeed largely useless under water because the refractions in conjunction with the relatively small viewing angle quickly reveal nothing, but you quickly get where you must each strive to meet anyway.

The image quality in itself would be also acceptable, purely what resolution and presentation of assets built chip and the optics are concerned, although the latter for my taste even a small tick is likely to be wide-angle. However, it suffers from quite properly under the much too strong JPG compression, which brings very ugly artifacts into the picture. Here you can certainly expect from a current camera at this price point better. Also absolutely annoying behavior Lumix is ​​at least in video mode in strong highlights in the scene - ends in the video image sun reflections in the water as vertical dark and light stripes that make even the most beautiful shot unusable. Since there are quite favorable cameras that provide the effect better results.

That HD video can only be saved as AVCHD, I personally see as limiting who like someone had already announce me :-). Because I definitely researched enough. Unconverted format on the computer is indeed viewable with players such as VLC, but looks for bad decoding really ugly. Only the most recent video editing tools support AVCHD natively, who always up to date is not here, relies on Converter. At least for Mac users there is no viable free, PC users have it better there. Because I could not make any tests before the holiday and looked the AVCHD video in the player so ugly, I'm a precaution remained the small HD with photo-JPEG compression. Now I know that the fear had been unfounded, high to give the two formats hardly anything.

From the settings and various picture modes ago I was quite satisfied. The autofocus does useful work and the automatic exposure has not grossly misbehaved. I find it a pity, of course, nevertheless, that you can use to manually focus and exposure not - that have even the cheapest smartphones now it since this additional Comfort should like to prevail sometimes in consumer cameras.

I have fluctuated 3-4 stars. Because no matter how advanced the technology may be the Lumix, the picture quality has not convinced me. The fact that one gets entry-level DSLRs for slightly more money, has let me to the effect expected more. But in the end you hold it really just a Point'n'Shoot camera in hand, probably be the serious photographer with high demands on the quality anyway fingers. So a star deduction for the unnecessarily high JPG compression and the inflated price for my taste.