Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX33T 8.1MP Digital Camera with 3.6x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Brown)

I bought this camera when it first came out last year. It's been great - photos are good. Photos with flash (i.e. in the dark) could be of better quality - certainly not the daylight quality, but I'm happy nonetheless.

The camera is not incredibly light, but it is small and is reasonably good-looking. Easy to use and takes great photos in sunlight.

I gave it three stars because it falls short in one critical area - photo quality.

But first, the good stuff. Like an earlier review noted, the black rubberized finish feels good in hand. The "Intelligent Auto" mode works reasonably well - it was able to distinguish between macro, landscape, portrait and night modes most of the time. The wide angle lens really came in handy for group photos, landscape and architecture shots. Normal operation is fairly snappy, and the menu are easy to figure out. Lastly, the LCD screen's resolution is fairly high, and the gain can be adjusted with one button to aid viewing in bright environments.

However, the photo quality was underwhelming. I've owned a Canon Powershot S410 and Fuji Finepix F20 (both pocket-sized Point & Shoot cameras) and the photo quality in those cameras were superior to the Panasonic. Panasonic cameras have had the reputation of great lenses with mediocre noise reduction, and that's what I expected with this camera. However, the photos are very soft and the colors lack saturation. The noise reduction is noticeable at ISO 200, and is very apparent at ISO 400. This level of noise reduction is not unusual for this class of camera, though I prefer the Canon approach of more detail but more noise.

The camera also has an "Intelligent ISO" mode, which boosts the ISO if shaking or motion is detected in the frame. It sounds good, but it's very aggressive, and the resulting photos are usually shot at fairly high ISO where the detail is lost. There is a option to limit the highest ISO, though the option is not available in "Intelligent Auto" mode.

I haven't printed any photos from this camera, though I would suspect that regular sized prints would be fine. You can usually tell the difference in quality by zooming into a photo, but in this case, I was able to tell the difference even when shrinking the photos to fit in a web album.

It's not a bad camera. I actually enjoyed using it, but at the end of the day, when you sit down and look over the photos you took, that's where the camera underwhelms.

I bought this camera for my daughter and she found it a week later in Best Buy for the same price but 10 megapixels. What a deal!! But the camera itself is great.

I'm not one who needs to review things, but this camera is special. I have used many digital cameras over many years, each improved over the last model as technology improves and becomes more afordable. Having purchased the FZ18 I noticed the FX30 very is similar in menu and features which I have grown to like on the FZ. There are trade offs with the tiny cameras of optical quality(CCD size)and zoom. Looking at most all others they have similar limitations needing enough light to keep the noise down. Some have much worse quality issues, like so called "digital image stabilization" that automatically lower quality with increased noise to useless levels. The thing I wanted to share is this camera grows on you. I cannot leave it home or often worry it might loose it down the couch or worse! It is cute and needs TLC and just happens to take great pictures too!

I had the 5 megapixel version of this camera and it was great. When I lost that camera I knew that there was no other point and shoot that I would want to own. The image stabilizer is phenomenal for an amature photographer and it's 100 times better than the kodak cameras that I've owned. I won't buy any other camera for everyday use.