Panasonic Lumix FT3 Review- Part 2 & India Price

Part 2 of 2 of Panasonic Lumix FT3 product review. Read part 1 here

Image quality and Zoom:

The 12 mega pixel CCD sensor offers some great photos. You get 4.6x optical zoon at 12 MP. Reduce the image quality and turn on the digital zoom - you can get much closer photo of your subject, at the cost of image quality. There’re no moving lenses, hence less electro-mechanical problems.

Flash and LED light: Besides the flash which is common in digicams, FT3 comes with an LED light, which can serve as a torch or can provide additional lighting on your subject.

Menu and navigation: Is well planned but may take some time to get used to. There’s a mode button just to select modes (auto, standard, underwater, beach, 3D, snow, sports) This button is ideal when you’re not aware of technical settings ideal for these situations. Scene mode has about 30+ sub modes for portraits, food, outdoor, kids and so on. Each of the mode has a text description too. Camera gives mode specific alerts

Then there’s main menu for settings specific to video recording, still recording, GPS and other general settings.

Then there’s a quick menu (the same button that serves for deleting in playback mode) which lets you select white balance, image size, burst, autofocus, ISO,  turn on/off LED light, GPS, ISO and so one. You can select modes like black and white, sephia etc, adjust LCD brightness and so on

Some buttons may have more than one functions.  For example, clicking on display button once shows setting details, clicking again shows the grid, clicking again shows GPS, altimeter and compass information.

I also like the autofocus feature in the camera. You can select from multiple options- from focusing on single point to 30+ points. Ability to take 3D images is another feature, but I couldn't view the 3D image for which I would need a 3D TV. Fuji also had come up with a 3D image taking camera several months ago.

Price of Lumix FT3 from Panasonic

With all the features listed above I’m sure you’re not expecting the camera to come cheap. US price for this model is about 300 US$ and India price of Panasonic Lumix FT3 digital camera is Rs 22900

Battery:

Battery charges in about 2 hours and can use the camera nonstop for 3 hours. This means you can use one battery for about half a day at a stretch if switched off when not required. Buying additional battery is advised for multi day trips. Impact of GPS and such features on battery life yet to be studied. May be battery will last longer if they're turned off. Package involves two types of power plugs, one with round edges for India and another with rectangular edges which works in other countries. No need to buy universal adapter for this camera.

Available in 4 colours: Orange, Silver, Blue and Red. Refer Panasonic India official page for more information

What’s missing in Panasonic Lumix FT3 camera?

• Memory card is not part of the standard kit. Hopefully the reseller will give a card free


• Built in memory of 20MB is too less (Panasonic official response is this: "We are already supplying  4GB mem. card with all our cameras & mem. can be expanded up till 32GB using an additional card. Customer's now adays doesn’t really look  for internal memories in such high end digital camera's "


• User Manual doesn’t explain usage of many features such as GPS, 3D imaging etc. Panasonic said they'll be including updated manual


• No viewfinder

All in all Panasonic Lumix FT3 is an ideal component for outdoor adventure loving people. Price is still reasonable for the goodies loaded into it.

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