Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580

Manual Controls

The Panasonic DMC-FX580 has lots of manual controls for a compact digital camera. Aperture priority, shutter priority, and manual exposure mode each allow for a varying amount of manual control. Unfortunately you must use the LCD touchscreen to fine-tune both aperture and shutter speed manually. The camera cannot perform a manual focus.

Focus

There are five autofocus modes on the camera as well as face recognition capabilities. You can also use the LCD touchscreen to touch the part of the frame you want the camera to put into focus. The camera doesn't have an option for manual focus, which is one of the few manual controls absent on the FX580.

ISO

ISO can be set to Auto, 100, 200, 400, 800, or 1600. An ISO limit can be set so the camera won't exceed a certain sensitivity when in auto mode. There's also the high sensitivity scene mode that extends the range out to 1600 - 6400 ISO (auto only).

White Balance

There's a number of white balance presets on the camera, but they are only represented as icons on the LCD screen. They appear to be auto, daylight, cloudy, and indoor light. There's also a preset that is represented by a strange collection of triangles that may be an attempt to portray a house, but we're unsure as to what the preset is meant for. Panasonic should really include more information along with the ambiguous icons.

A manual white balance setting and a Kelvin control option (ranging from 2500 - 10,000) are also featured.

Metering

There are three auto metering modes on the camera, but they are again only labeled with icons. There is manual exposure control with a range of -2 to +2 increments. An auto bracketing feature is also present on the camera.

Panasonic's i-Exposure feature can be set to low, standard, or high depending on how much contrast you want in your image.

Shutter Speed

In shutter priority or manual exposure mode the shutter speed can be manually adjusted using the LCD touchscreen. The shutter speed can be set from 60 seconds to 1/1600 of a second. Manual shutter speed and aperture are the only settings that must be controlled using the LCD touchscreen.

Aperture

In aperture priority and manual exposure mode aperture can manually set using the LCD touchscreen (just like shutter speed). The range for manual adjustment is f/2.8 - f/8.0.

Image Stabilization

The DMC-FX580 has optical image stabilization that can be set to auto, mode1 or mode2. It is unclear as to what the difference between the three modes actually is.

Picture Quality & Size Options

In 4:3 aspect ratio images can be captured at 4000 x 3000 (12M), 3264 x 2448 (8M), 2560 x 1920 (5M), 2048 x 1536 (3M), 1600 x 1200 (2M), and 640 x 480 (0.3M). All size settings under 12 megapixels can utilize the extended optical zoom feature to varying degrees.

The 3:2 aspect ratio has the following size options: 4000 x 2672(10.5M), 3264 x 2176 (7M), 2560 x 1712 (4.5M), and 2048 x 1360 (2.5M).

At 16:9 pictures can be taken at 4000 x 2248(9M), 3264 x 1840 (6M), 2560 x 1440 (3.5M), and 1920 x 1080 (2M).

All sizes offer two quality options, fine and standard.

Picture Effects

All the picture effects on the FX580 are either located within specific scene modes (like the transform mode) or exist as color controls (like black and white, sepia, etc.).