Panasonic DMC-FS25

Manual Controls

The FS25 lets you manually choose the ISO level, set up a custom white balance, set exposure compensation and choose an image stabilization method. You also have minimal shutter speed control: in Starry Sky Mode, the shutter speed can be slowed down to 15, 30, and 60 seconds. Regardless, this is still a small set of manual controls. Some point-and-shoots will offer a few more manual controls, like aperture- or shutter-priority shooting.
 

Focus

The FS25 has a quick autofocus mode, which will pre-autofocus whatever is in frame. The range for the autofocus is from 5.2 to 26mm (29-145mm in 35mm equiv.). In macro mode, the focusing area tightens to 5cm for wide and 100cm for telephoto.

ISO

You can set ISO to automatically adjust, or manually set it to somewhere between 80 and 1600. If you enable high sensitivity mode, you gain access to ISO 3200 and 6400.
 

White Balance

In addition to the automatic and custom white balance modes, there are only four presets available: daylight, cloudy, shade, and halogen. This is pretty bare bones for a point-and-shoot, though we were pelased to see the option to set a custom white balance settting, a feature often missing from cameras in this class.
 

Metering

Metering defaults to Intelligent Multiple mode, which will attempt to automatically balance out the light levels across the image. There are no manual controls for metering.
 

Shutter Speed

The FS25's shutter speed runs from 8-1/2000 sec. If you turn on Starry Sky mode, you can slow shutter speed down to 15, 30, or 60 seconds.
 

Aperture

The maximum aperture settings are  f/3.3 (wide) and f/5.9 (telephoto).

 

Image Stabilization

The FS25 has an optical image stabilization system that lets you choose from automatic implementation or one of two special modes. Mode 1 will stabilize the picture to insure a smooth viewfinder picture and mode 2 will attempt to achieve the most stable finished photo.

 

Picture Quality & Size Options

The FS25 offers multiple picture sizes in 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9 aspect ratios. The largest image size is 4000x3000, the smallest is 640x480, and there's a wide setting that's 4000x2248.

 

Picture Effects

There are a few different color effects available: Standard, Natural, Vivid, Black & White, Sepia, Cool, and Warm. There is no custom color effect mode.