Opinions about Panasonic DMC-LC80
 

Has anyone got opinions (pros and cons) about the Panasonic DMC-LC80?

In article 1110473634.42dc08410b0ffac4e728f9400cb6c9c1@teran ews,
Fredrik Nilsson wrote:
Has anyone got opinions (pros and cons) about the Panasonic DMC-LC80?

I bought its 4MP predecessor for my wife, so my comments may be helpful.
She's used it for some family functions, and on 2 trips during the last
year.

It's small but a little chunky. Major plusses are the use of AA batteries
and standard digital media (SD cards). Exposure and focus accuracy are
acceptable. In situations where she's shooting pics of the same subject
side by side as others with digicams, the images look at least as good.
Comes with USB cable and functions either as mass-storage device or
PictBridge source ... so it's pretty much plug and play. There is an "Easy
mode" with limited choices and big icons for the non-techie; also a power
saving mode with reduced LCD brightness and shorter power-down times.

Minuses: flash too weak for anything over a few feet away. Image noise is
certainly higher in low-light than my Olympus 5050. Optical viewfinder is
nice, especially outdoors when the LCD gets washed out; however it's field
of vision is not accurate, and gets worse as you get closer to the
subject. Also it has no indication of where the autofocus "hot zone" is.

Uses the same socket for AV and USB connections; selection is by which
(provided) cable you plug into that socket - the camera connector is
proprietary.

Battery life suffers if you use flash a lot - manifest as longer recycle
times and (if I'm not imagining this) longer time to write the image to
the SD card. Of course, it's pretty easy to take along more cheap charged
AA cells for when that happens. We just bought a pack of four; keep 2 in
the camera and 2 in the case, and it's always been enough for a day (or
night) of shooting.

Fredrik Nilsson wrote:

Has anyone got opinions (pros and cons) about the Panasonic DMC-LC80?

Just to echo the previous poster's comments. I bought my wife an LC80
5Mpixel camera recently, and it is certainly compact, but seems to have
fairly advanced features. Provided you use half-pressure on the trigger
when setting up a shot, the shutter lag is almost non-existent when you
fire. Images are very good, at least up to 10x8 they are as good as
those from my 300D slr.

I have some reservations about the software supplied, Ulead version 8
seems flaky, overwriting some of Windows screen data, like obscuring the
Start button with a blank white block, and the minimize/maximize/exit
icons in the top right corner of programs being changed to a half-black,
half-white block - this for all subsequent programs after running Ulead
( running Win2000Pro). A reboot restores normal operation.

However, using a card reader, Canon's Zoombrowser (from my 300D) works
well.

Colin