Hello Canon SD870 IS, Farewell Panasonic DMC-FX30

Personally I love the Panasonic FX series of cameras. I’ve had a few (in part because one of them was stolen) and I was always impressed because of their slim size, great image stabilization, and, recently, ability to specify photos in a 3:2 ratio. This was after owning a few Canons – which always seemed kind of chunky, and back then, didn’t have image stabilization.

But one thing always bugged me about the Panasonics: picture quality. There always seemed to be a lot of noise, which degraded the PQ.

After a few wedding photos that I thought were blurrier than should be, I decided to take a look at the Canons again now that they have image stabilization. Personally, I love the design of the Canon SD1000 – it’s exactly the size and shape that I want. But it doesn’t have image stabilization. Doh!

In the end, I decided to give the SD870 IS a try. Frankly, I’m not liking the chunkiness of it, nor the weight, nor the lack of 3:2 ratio – but there’s definitely an improvement in PQ. Here’s a sample:

With the SD870 IS, you can clearly see the ruffles in the ribbon vs the FX30. This is minor, but it’s something that’s really bugged me.

Now, to be fair, the FX30 is an older model – right now Panasonic is up to the FX33. Reviews on the web seem to indicate that PQ is better, but still noisy.

In summary, I’d love to see a camera that’s slim like the FX33, be squarish like the SD1000, have image stabilization, and have great PQ. Personally, I find the megapixel war pretty silly. What good is 12309 petapixels if the PQ isn’t all that great?