Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9

From the Lumix FX7 to FX8 and finally to the latest FX9, Panasonic continues its journey through the digits.

We see more improvements on this current shooter including a 6-megapixel CCD lens and higher-resolution LCD screen. The two extra scene modes are a give-and-take: You will probably appreciate it if you deploy these modes often, but from our experience, most people usually don't use it.

What remains?
The undiscerning eye would have mistaken the FX9 to be its predecessor. Truth is, both shooters look similar and you won't notice the difference until the unit is powered up. Measuring 94 x 51 x 24mm and weighing 155g (with its Lithium-ion battery and media), the pocketable FX9 is well-balanced in terms of design and build.

The Leica lens, which is almost flushed with the shooter's metallic body, stands in between the flash unit and the focus assist beam. The proximity of the flash unit to the lens would mean a high tendency for your subjects to suffer from red-eye effect unless you use the pre-flash mode.

Most of the major controls lounge prominently on the top edge of this ultracompact. Embedded within the 3x optical zoom rocker is the shutter release. Panasonic's Mega Optical Image Stabilizer (O.I.S.) gets a separate button to the right of the shutter and the power switch is on the left side.

The main mode dial which cycles between Playback, Record, Simple, Macro, Scenes and Movie is found recessed on the rear of the camera. Slightly further down, four directional buttons give access to exposure compensation (Up), flash modes (Right), review (Down) and timer functions (Left). Three other circular blobs activate the Menu, Display and Resolution/delete options.

Hiding on the right under a hinged snap-on metallic cover are the AV/USB and DC-in connectors. The base of the FX9 is home for a combined battery and SD memory card compartment and a metallic tripod receptacle.

What's new?
A high-resolution 2.5-inch LCD dominates the rear of the camera, squeezing the rest of the controls to the right. Panasonic took its cue from the previous models and nearly doubled the maximum pixel count to 207k from 114k on the FX8. With a refreshed LCD, the display appears bright and clear under most conditions, though it may falter a little under strong direct sunlight.

With a knock-up from the 5-megapixel FX8 to the current 6-megapixel FX9, we question the need for the increase in resolution. Will there ever be a need for such high resolutions for the mainstream market of snapshooters? How often are you going to print A3- or A4-sized photos? The general mentality that the more pixels the merrier is a fallacy.

Two extra scene modes -- Candlelight and Starry Sky -- are a welcomed addition to the current 12 scene modes available on the FX8. However, we would still recommend the use of a tripod when you use these modes. For that, you may wish to consider purchasing a mini-tripod for a start to take on those short trips to the wilderness -- you never know when you will need it to impress others with your captivating night shots.

Performance
Using the same 1150mAh Lithium-ion battery as the FX8, the FX9 performed well for approximately 250 shots on every full charge -- complete with zooming from wide to telephoto, shots intermixed with flash (and without), picture review and card formatting. The manufacturer claims' of 270 shots were, in fact, 30 less than the FX8 (300 shots). We believe this was a result of the higher-resolution LCD sucking up more juice.

Shutter lag in our tests were negligible when the optical image stabilisation was turned off. Even with the stabilisation kicking in when the shutter was released (Mode 2), shutter lag was barely noticeable. A fast startup of about 1.5 seconds means you won't miss that impulse shot again. However, turning off the camera took a sluggish 3 seconds until all activity ceased.

VGA (640 x 480) video recording at 30fps should please general photographers who want to take that occasional video. The only gripe we had was its inability to zoom during recording -- which hasn't been improved from the FX8. Otherwise, for still image shots, it took us 2 seconds to move from the wide-angle end to the telephoto end (3x optical oom).

Shot-to-shot performance came in reasonably well at slightly under 2 seconds when flash was forced off. It took approximately 1 second more when the flash was on and 2 seconds extra when the anti red-eye flash was activated.

Continuous burst mode at 6 megapixels (JPEG Fine quality) on our Imation 1GB Secure Digital card was limited to six shots at both High and Low speeds. If you happen to have a finger that never says die, the FX9 can record continuously at approximately 1.2fps until the capacity of your memory card runs out.

The built-in flash proved strong though our pictures tended to get blown out when shooting too close. However, this was easily solved with minor tweaking on the exposure values.

The FX9 produced images that were vibrant in colour and with good overall details. We noticed very slight colour fringing in some of our shots which were nonetheless unnoticeable in normal printouts.

In addition, there was mild vignetting -- darkening of corners of the frame -- in our shots with a large portion of blue skies or where there were big areas of flat tones.

The Lumix FX9 looks every bit like the promising upgrade from the FX7, bringing with it improvements which should have been on the FX8 but were surprisingly left out. This ultracompact shooter is nearly perfect for the casual snapshooter though not without its shortcomings. Perhaps the engineers at Panasonic might just announce the FX10 with an optical viewfinder, manual settings and zooming function in movie recording in another couple of months -- who knows?

A snapshot camera must fulfill its basic calling and the FX9 is as good as you can get from a 6-megapixel, 3x optical zoom ultracompact shooter. Canon's IXUS 700 (7 megapixels, 3x optical zoom) comes in as the closest competitor in the race for these pocket-sized units. We'll wait and see if the latest offering from the IXUS line -- IXUS 750 -- will inch the IXUS ahead of the Lumix.

Somewhere in this same league of dieters is Casio's Exilim EX-S500 giving Panasonic a run for its size at one-third slimmer than the FX9 -- for the same price -- but you will have to trade off at a smaller resolution of 5 megapixels. Just a couple of days ago, Fujifilm announced its FinePix F11, which may present another option in this 6-megapixel, 3x optical zoom category -- that is, if you are willing wait for it to arrive in the coming month. If you shoot a lot of outdoor pictures, Nikon's weather resistant Coolpix S2 (5 megapixels, 3x optical zoom) or its new Coolpix S3 (6 megapixels, 3x optical zoom) with a cleaner design may be a better alternative with its splash-proof body.

Amid all these rivalry for the fuss-free photographers' pocket, the Lumix FX9 still comes in top for its category. Its high-resolution LCD, above-average performance and essentially basic feature set encased in a chic and trendy body will attract trigger-happy individuals. At a street price of AU$829, you may also wish to consider purchasing a high-speed, high-capacity memory card and an additional battery as the retail package comes with only a measly 16MB Secure Digital card.