THE Lumix DMC-FS5 is just one of the six new digital cameras launched by Panasonic earlier this year. The tiny 10-megapixel camera is an easy-to-carry point-and-shoot gadget and can be slipped into the pocket easily.

The FS5 comes with a metal-finish panel body. All the control buttons and switches can be found on top, or to the right of the 2.5-inch liquid crystal display screen.

The controls are well thought out so any settings that need to be changed can be done quickly and easily.

For example, an Easy Zoom fully activates the optical zoom, while pressing it a second time activates the digital zoom to the maximum. There’s still a regular zoom dial to control your zoom though, and shooting at three-megapixel gives you an option of a higher 7.1X optical zoom.

There is a switch to change from camera mode to playback mode. Additionally, the flash, exposure, macro and self-timer has their own button.

There’s also a Quick Menu button for you to change to mostly accessed settings such as stabiliser mode, focus area, white balance, ISO settings, picture size and LCD mode.

An interesting feature is the “Intelligent Auto”, or iA mode, which allows you to just point and shoot – the camera is supposed to be intelligent enough to apply the right settings automatically, depending on your shot. It takes care of hand-shake, ISO, focus and can apply the right scene and detect faces.

The iA mode works most of the time, correctly choosing the right settings for the picture I was taking.

The camera starts up in about two seconds, and if you don’t have an SD card, the pictures will go into the internal memory. The internal memory can store up to nine 10-megapixel pictures, 51 two-megapixel pictures, or 103 seconds of Quarter Video Graphics Array video.

Using the FS5 to take pictures is very easy, and the pictures and videos came out looking quite good too for a point-and-shoot camera. However, I found that I couldn’t zoom in once I started recording a video.

So, the FS5 was actually a joy to use simply because it was easy to carry, easy to use and easy to get a nice picture or video out of it.

Product: Lumix DMC-FS5

Manufacturer: Panasonic

Price: RM1,099

Enquiries: Customer Care Centre (Tel: 03-55422288)

Specifications

Dimensions: 94.9mm by 53.4mm

by 22.5mm

Weight: 141g (including battery and SD card)

Camera effective pixels: 10.1MP

Lens: 30mm-wide Leica DC

Vario-Elmar

Image sensor: 1/2.33-inch CCD

Optical and digital zoom: 4X, 4.1

Extra optical zoom: Up to 7.1X

LCD display: 2.5-inch TFT, 230K dots, with Intelligent LCD function

Recording format: jpeg (still image), QuickTime Motion jpeg (video)

Image size: Up to 3,648

by 2,736 pixels

Video size: Up to 848

by 480 pixels, 30fps

Other features: Intelligent exposure, 21 scene modes, unlimited consecutive shooting, PictBridge-compatible, slideshow mode (with music), microphone, speaker, Text Stamp function, compatible with optional marine case for underwater shots