Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS42

If you’re looking for a budget camera, it can get rather confusing with the sheer number of options out there. Problem is, most cheap cameras come with the drawbacks of any cheap product - i.e. cheap quality. You usually end up sacrificing on performance in certain areas for others; so it can get rather tedious to weigh out each and every option in order to figure out what suits your needs the most. If you’re looking for an all-rounder though, we might have found you a match.

Build Quality

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS42 is a sleek looking camera that weighs a mere 132-grams, and measures just 98 x 55 x 22 mm. It’s small enough to make it fit in your pocket comfortably, but at the same time, big enough so that it can be gripped comfortably while taking shots. The body’s made up of matte finish plastic parts, with a nice balance between gray and black parts. Apart from Black, the camera’s also available in Silver and Pink.

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Button placement’s good too, with the power toggle switch and shutter button on top, which has the zoom toggle ring circled around it. The facing side of the camera has a preview/shooting mode toggle, along with a handful of the basic buttons, all of which have a low profile that enhances portability, and ensures that they don’t get pressed accidentally. At 2.5", the camera’s LCD screen’s slightly smaller than most others (that have 2.7" or 3" screens), but its pixel count is standard at 230,000, so it gave us nothing to complain about.

Where both aesthetics and sturdiness are concerned, the FS42 doesn’t falter one bit. Other than a slightly light weight, the camera doesn’t feel look or feel the way you’d expect a camera that doesn’t dent your pocket, to appear.

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Features and Performance

The Lumix DMC-FS42 comes with a CCD sensor that takes pictures of up to 10.1 megapixels. It features a modest 3x optical zoom, and the lens can go up to 33mm for wide shots. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

The FS series is known for its intelligent modes, be it with Intelligent Auto-ISO or its Auto Scene mode. So the first thing we wanted to check was just that, and we came out rather pleased, at least where Auto Scene Mode was concerned. For the lazy amongst us, the Auto Scene Mode works just perfectly and always picked the right mode for the right shot, be it night, low light w/flash, profile shots or landscape shots. It did tend to under-expose a few pictures every now and then though, so you might want to watch for that.

For those who prefer to stick to normal scene modes, you have quite a few options there too, ensuring that you don’t have to rely on the camera’s Auto Scene Mode all the time. The camera has a Normal Mode too, which is basically a completely stripped down manual mode, that’s not even worth mentioning.

The i.Auto-ISO mode on the other hand tend to overshoot the ISO sensitivity a bit, making shots more grainy than required. It’s better to adjust ISO sensitivity manually in this one, and for that you have access to ISO 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1000. ISO performance was slightly above average, and ISO 200 shots were very low and grain, which is fantastic.

Overall image quality on the other hand, was a bit iffy and camera didn’t capture details too well. Auto-white balance, on the other hand, was spot on and color reproduction was vivid.

Where night shots were concerned, the FS42 impressed us quite a bit and captured low-lit areas in dark scene pretty well, while keeping colors vivid. Macro performance was satisfactory too.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a quality point-and-shoot that doesn’t dent your pocket, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS42’s low price tag (Rs. 8,990) should undoubtedly enamor you. Bare in mind though, that image quality offered here isn’t that great and manual functionality is zilch. If you can live with that, the camera’s a great buy, especially for the lazy amongst us who’d rather use Auto Scene Mode over any other.