Panasonic Lumix FZ48 review

Panasonic Lumix FZ48 - Image Quality

The FZ48's images are well-exposed and vibrant in colour. The Auto White Balance can slip between colour casts rather quickly, however, even when shooting the same scene under subtly changing light.

Detail is reasonable at low ISO settings but the level of processing does give pronounced texture to edges and details can appear over-compressed even at the lowest ISO 100 setting. This isn't surprising for a sensor of this size, though the downscaled 12.1MP sensor (the FZ45's 14.1MP sensor has more pixels) hasn't had as huge an impact on final quality as could be expected.

Exceed ISO 200 and there's a notable increase in softness; ISO 800 becomes considerably soft, edges lost definition and detail is diminished; while ISO 1600 is particularly noisy and lacks detail. In real world images using up to ISO 800 translates to decent enough images with relatively few problems, however.

The biggest qualm with image quality is the omission of a Raw shooting function. Although a rarity for superzoom cameras the previous generation Lumix FZ45 had this very feature and that made it stand out of the crowd. The FZ48's lacking here means limitations to fine-tuning pictures, although the Photo Style modes do provide +/-2 adjustments for noise reduction processing, colour saturation, sharpness and contrast.