Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH20

Design & Appearance

There's nothing particularly striking about the camera design itself: it's your basic rounded rectangle, with a bit of shape on the back thanks to the way the LCD is raised slightly. The brushed metal surface and sparkly paint job is a grabber, though, especially for the red model we photographed.

Size & Handling

The DMC-FH20 measures 3.94 x 2.22 x 1.09 inches (100.0 x 56.5 x 27.8 mm) and weighs approximately 5.6 ounces (160g) with battery and SD memory card installed. It feels slender, and wouldn't take up much room in a pocket or purse.
 

Handling is straightforward. One nice touch is the little raised dot pad on the top right back panel, meant to provide a bit of extra grip for your thumb. All in all, we found the surface shiny without being slippery and, using the pincer grip typical when holding a camera like this, had no difficulty maneuvering the FH20.

The FH20 is quite compact and pocketable.

Menu

The Q. MENU button on the camera back brings up the Quick Menu overlay, as shown below. Options available here include image stabilization, burst mode/self-timer, focus mode, image size and LCD display mode.

The quick menu provides fast access to admittedly limited controls.

The main menu system has three tabs: scene mode, record and setup. Each division includes multiple menu screens, and you have to cursor all the way down through each to reach the next.
 

The scene mode menu is icon-based, as shown below, but a text label for each appears underneath when you cursor over it, and the icons themselves are easily identifiable.
 

There aren't a ton of record mode controls available on this highly automated camera. You have access to settings for picture size, white balance, autofocus mode, burst, digital zoom, image stabilization, autofocus assist lamp, red-eye removal and clock setting in the record menu.
 

 Setup includes time and camera audio settings, LCD brightness and display controls, power saving settings, USB mode and language options.
 

The main menu system provides on-screen captions when icons might confuse.

Ease of Use

Panasonic led the way in developing 'intelligent' automated systems that use scene recognition to go beyond taking a simple light reading and identify movement, faces and other factors when adjusting camera settings. We weren't able to test the specific performance of these features with the pre-production FH20, but the system is familiar from other Panasonic models, and overall we find the results impressive. Point-and-shooters increase their odds of getting the results they expect when the camera brings its own smarts to the party.
 

Beyond camera settings, the controls are straightforward and clearly labeled, the menu system well organized and the camera is easy to handle.