Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32982 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Panasonic
• Model: DMC-FX33EB-K
• Released on: 2007-09-30

Customer Reviews

Point and Shoot
**Please regard this as a 4.5 star review**

I love photography, and I love to have control over the image-taking process. However, control over a compact digital camera is a rather fruitless affair because there is so much depth of field to the images. So, given the creative limitations that you naturally have with compacts, what should you be looking for? Well, sharp images, good colour, ease-of-use, compactness, good build quality and a nice field of view range.

The stand-out part of this camera is probably the Leica lens. 28-100 is the perfect range. A nice wide angle for indoor and landscape shots up to a very useable telephoto end. Range aside, the lens also has a very good Image Stablisation feature (far better in the lens than on the sensor!). The lens is superb, giving lovely sharpness and colour as well as perfectly reasonable light-gathering ability in low-light conditions. That, coupled with the Image Stabilisation means that the camera is very useful in parties and other low-lit situations - with or without the flash. Speaking of the flash, it does a nice job without washing out all features. No more eyeballs and nostril pics.

Also nice are the three aspects - traditional photoframe and two "widescreen" modes -- very nice for playback on TVs/monitors and impactful panaromas.

The Panasonic doesn't offer you much by way of control, but it does offer PIC modes. These help, but I found that the full-auto iA mode is very good at working out what you're trying to achieve - especially when you enable the face detection mode. The Image Stabilisation works very well and the high ISO noise, although not as well resolved as say the Fuji F31 or Canon models, is not as bad as previous Panasonics ("Venus as a noise" as Bjork once said -- but the Venus III engine is certainly better than previous incarnations). The noise is certainly there at ISO 400, but no more than if you used ISO 400 film. On a 6x4 print, the noise would be more than acceptable. Even upto ISO1250, the noise is perfectly acceptable - especially at sensible print sizes. An ISO1250 shot might not be the best option for a 12x10 print, but then no compact would really give you that without some PC-work (and probably turning to black and white). For real world situations, I'm not put off by the noise.

I bought this camera for my parents who wanted a simple to use P&S camera. This camera does tick all the boxes and provides very good images. The included software is more than adequate and also pretty easy to use.

I would recommend this model over the FX55, which is identical other than a 0.5" larger viewing screen. It's a lot of money to spend on little extra benefit.

If your photographic needs are to have a neat, stylish camera which takes excellent shots without any user-intervention, this is for you. If you want full creative control, I would say that you won't really get it without going for a DSLR. Depth of field control on a compact with a small sensor is not possible - fine if you want lots of DoF, but not so for shallow DoF. So, buy the camera in the knowledge that it has loads of good points, one so-so point in the noise.

If it's a compact you want, certainly put this on your shortlist and try it out against the competition.

Good at lower ISO
The Good:
Engineering & assembly quality is excellent. Stated "made in Japan". Battery life is good. Controls fall easily where they should, the
menues are logical & easy to navigate.
Wide angle & Macro work well. AF is acurate & fast.
Face detection generally accurate with good results.
On occasions can be confused if the subject(s) wearing glasses, or has long hair falling forwards. The LCD is big & bright, & auto adjusts to the prevailing ambient light.
The many scene modes are a bonus, and generally function as intended. The 7 frames per second mode is good for nature or sports shots.
No red-eye on any of the images taken using the built-in flash.
Results are very good in Auto mode, with the ISO fixed at Max 400, ISO 200 is better. I.S.functions well.

The "Not so Good"
8.1MP on a small CCD sensor results in a grainy/noisy image above ISO 400.
Insanely, the ISO can be manually adjusted up to 6'400! (HI ISO MODE)

Amazing!
I bought this camera a couple of weeks ago and am very very pleased. I have been used to a DSLR like Fuji camera and it came as a shock how small the FX 33 really is. It is tiny, will fit into a shirt/trouser pocket no probs, just don't forget when you sit down!

It is very light too and find all the controls in the right place. Some say the buttons are too small but I disagree. I find it very intuitive and have hardly needed to read the manual. The wide angle lens is brilliant, especially in movie mode as you can film in 16:9 widescreen, not many cameras do that but how many people have widescreen TVs nowadays. The screen on the camera is brilliant. It is so clear it is incredible.

I have opted for the 2GB Extreme 3 Scandisk memory card. This gives 500 pics in 8 megapixel mode or 805 in 5 megapixel mode (6 megapixel plus is only useful if you are to print beyond A4 size). 2GB gives around 15 minutes of movie in maximum quality. I am thinking of buying a 4GB SDHC (released after 18/02/08) for movie mode only.

The optical stablisation is good and have two settings. The sceen modes are endless and there is also and extra optical zoom (EZ) mode (that I did not notice when looking for the camera pre purchase). This means that when you take the camera down to 5 megapixel you get extra zoom, instead of 3.6 it becomes 5.7. On the lowest megapixel setting the EZ is 22.7x optical zoom!!!!

I opted for the Lowepro Apex 20AW pouch which fits it like a glove with a extendable pocket for charger/extra battery/memory card. It also have a water resistant cover and very small.