Weighing a mere 175g with battery, Panasonic’s new ultra compact FX500 is only 22mm thick. What makes the camera unusual is that it is the first FX series camera that includes full manual exposure control. In any of the manual exposure modes, aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation can be selected by dragging sliders across the touch screen. There’s even a degree of control over the auto focus: you can touch the part of the scene that the camera is to focus on. The camera will then even track the chosen subject if it moves across the screen. Image parameters such as contrast, saturation, sharpening and even noise reduction can be set individually in 5 steps. Other than the lack of an option to record RAW files, the FX500 gives the photographer a surprising amount of control. The lens also offers a versatile range, starting from a very wide 25mm and ending at 125mm (35mm equivalent).

Of course not much is known about how the FX500 performs in terms of image quality at this point. I suspect that its image quality will be very similar to the FX35, with which it shares the same 1/2.33” 10.7MP sensor. I’ll have a look at the FX35’s image quality when it arrives tomorrow.

All images courtesy of Panasonic.

Above: Manual control with on-screen shutter speed and aperture sliders


Above: Focus tracking