Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX90 (Black) review: Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX90 (Black)

With casual snapshooters opting more and more for a good-enough smartphone instead of a dedicated camera, it's not a big surprise that manufacturers are hungry for ways to get point-and-shoots similar functionality. Currently, that means putting Wi-Fi in and creating applications so you can connect your camera to your smartphone. And that's how we end up with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX90.

6.4

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX90 (Black)

$444 at Amazon

The Good

The <b>Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX90</b> has a bright f2.5 ultrawide-angle Leica lens and good shooting performance for its class. Its built-in Wi-Fi lets you back up photos and movies to your PC, send them to your smartphone or Panasonic AV device, and upload to sharing sites.

The Bad

The FX90's convoluted Wi-Fi setup made me want to smash the camera to bits. For its price, its photo quality is disappointing.

The Bottom Line

While adding Wi-Fi to a point-and-shoot is a solid way to compete with smartphones, Panasonic fumbles it a bit with the Lumix DMC-FX90.

The FX90 is a nice ultracompact camera with an f2.5 ultrawide-angle 24mm Leica lens with a 5x zoom, a 12-megapixel high-speed CCD sensor, and a 460K-dot-resolution touch screen. It also has a one-touch record button for capturing clips at resolutions up to full HD in AVCHD format. But really, it's all about the wireless functionality, which sadly just isn't great. I mean, it does everything Panasonic says it does, but setup and use seem way more complicated than they should be. That's not good if you're trying to convince consumers that the FX90 should be the camera they reach for instead of their always-connected smartphone.

The other thing is, if you're going to put down your smartphone and use a point-and-shoot, it should probably turn out great snapshots that are significantly better than what you get from the phone's camera. The FX90 is capable of doing that, but really only if you have a lot of light. At and below ISO 200 you can get some very good shots. However, as soon as you get above that, the color noise starts to make things look mottled with yellow blotches. Plus, the noise reduction makes subjects look very soft. If you're after great handheld indoor and low-light shots without using a flash, you'll probably want to skip the FX90.

Even though most of the cost of this camera goes to its lens, LCD, and Wi-Fi features, it's not unreasonable to expect decent low-light shots for the money. Photos taken at ISO 400 might be good enough for 4x6 prints and Web use at small sizes, but quality drops noticeably above that sensitivity.

Sample photos:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX90

Again, though, if you shoot with plenty of light, you'll get very good results. Colors are nice and pleasing, vivid but not unnatural. With the ultrawide-angle lens, you may notice some barrel distortion in photos and movies. Also, while the center of the lens on my review camera was sharp, it does soften out to the sides and in the corners; the left edge of my lens was noticeably softer.

Video quality is slightly better than you'd get from an HD pocket video camera: good enough for Web use and undemanding TV viewing. Panning the camera will create judder that's typical of the video from most compact cameras, and you may see some ghosting with fast-moving subjects. The zoom lens does function while recording and is quiet while moving so it won't be picked up by the mic.

The FX90's shooting options are geared for people who prefer to shoot in auto, which definitely makes sense. In the Mode menu you'll find Panasonic's Intelligent Auto, which handles just about everything for you, as well as a Normal Picture mode that gives you the most control over results, with settings for focus, color effects, white balance, ISO, and exposure compensation. If you like scene modes, the FX90 has 27 of them. The list includes familiar modes like Portrait, Sunset, and Night Scenery, as well as High-Speed Burst for action and High Sensitivity for low-light photos (both capturing images at 3 megapixels and below). You get a few creative shooting modes such as Pinhole and Film Grain to experiment with.

Beyond that you get 3D photo and Cosmetic modes. The 3D mode creates MPO files for playback on 3D-enabled HDTVs. You just pan the camera as it takes a series of shots and then it compiles them in camera into a 3D image. The Cosmetic mode lets you adjust skin tone for portraits. From there, you can enter playback and access Beauty Retouch options, including adding foundation, lip and cheek color, and eye shadow. You can also remove blemishes and shine, whiten teeth, give yourself a face-lift, and emphasize your eyes. Given the direct-sharing capabilities of the FX90, these are nice options to have, but you have to be careful not to overdo it with them, which is difficult to tell on the camera's screen.

One of the few things in the FX90's favor is shooting performance. While it's a little slow to start up and shoot at first--about 2.1 seconds--its shot-to-shot times are very good at 1 second without flash and 2 seconds with flash. Its continuous shooting speed is good, too, at around 3 frames per second at full resolution. If you're willing to drop down to 3 megapixels, you can get up to 10fps. Shutter lag is very good for its class as well. From the press of the shutter release to capture is approximately 0.3 second in good light and 0.6 second in dim conditions. These speeds might not be the best for regularly shooting active kids and pets, particularly indoors, but with practice they're good enough to hit a moving target.

The FX90 is easy to shoot with, but the Wi-Fi setup needs to be simplified.

The physical design of the FX90 is simple and attractive. As with many touch-screen cameras, the FX90's interface can be a bit trying if you change settings a lot, simply because it can take several taps to get anything done. But if you're not the type to tinker with shooting options then this certainly isn't a deal breaker, and if there are a couple of things you want fast access to, such as ISO, white balance, flash, or exposure compensation, you can add two of them to the left side of the screen. The right side has icons for shooting modes, playback, and a zoom control (which is cooler to look at than use).

The rest of the touch-screen experience is pretty solid. The screen is responsive (unless you're comparing it with the performance of a high-end smartphone) and can be calibrated to better respond to your touch. Being able to focus on a subject with a single tap is definitely a plus and tapping to focus and shoot is nice as well--just be careful not to shake the camera too much with your tap. In playback you can use the screen to flip through your photos and movie clips, make a quick crop, or tag them for sharing.

And then there's the Wi-Fi. Once you've got the wireless set up, it lets you back up photos and movies to your PC (once you've installed Panasonic's Windows-only software on your computer), send them to your iOS or Android smartphone (once you've installed Panasonic's free Lumix Link app) or Panasonic AV device (if you have one), or upload to sharing sites (once you've started up a Panasonic Lumix Club account and added information for your Facebook, Picasa, YouTube, and Flickr accounts).

Getting everything set up and running and then using it will be too difficult for a lot of people. Even as tech-savvy as I am, I'm still not sure I understand how to use the Wi-Fi after weeks of testing. To put it another way, Panasonic spends 24 pages of the FX90 manual explaining how to set everything up and use the features. That should make clear what the Wi-Fi experience is like with this camera.

Conclusion
While adding Wi-Fi to a point-and-shoot to compete with smartphones is a solid idea, Panasonic fumbles it a bit with the Lumix DMC-FX90. A big reason you'd want to have this Wi-Fi camera would be to have better photos than you'd get from your smartphone. And while they're better outdoors in good lighting, indoors, or in low light, the difference will be negligible for a lot of people, making the DMC-FX90 lens and image stabilization the only real advantages. Add to that the difficulty of setup and use of the wireless features, and overall it's a disappointing execution.

Find out more about how we test digital cameras.