While the Panasonic FX30 really didn’t manage to shake up the hierarchy in the mid-level compact market, the surprise could come from the Panasonic LS75 in the category of "compacts with stabilization (optical) for less than 200 Euros".  This is another slot on the market where Canon, Nikon, Fuji and Panasonic are all trying to swallow up market shares.

The transition from the FX30 to the LS75 is a bit surprising and we now have something more compact and imposing. Although heavier than the FX30, the LS75 also takes us off guard by its size/weight ratio. Indeed, it seems a little too light and thus gives a false sense of robustness. While construction is not as good as the FX30’s, it is still satisfactory with exception to the rather fragile sliding door for the memory card. There is a good size screen (2.5''), but its 115,000 pixels are barely enough to display detailed images. In addition,  it’s not perfectly fluid and the High Angle function (intended to increase viewing angles) wasn’t too impressive.   In practice, the LS75 is rather pleasant to use with satisfactory startup time, quick shooting, an intuitive interface (« Func » button for rapid access to parameters), and high end capabilities (sensitivity of 1250 ISO, motion detector, and optical stabilization).   This should be enough for both the starting and amateur photographer.

The most impressive, however, is image quality which leaves little to be desired even compared to that of the Lumix FX30.   The lens is of good quality and produces excellent sharpness which is also almost equivalent.   We only noticed slight defects as chromatic aberrations are well controlled and deformation is more than acceptable. With the Venus Engine III processor and the latest image processing algorithms, increases in noise are basically equivalent to the FX30, which is, however, much more expensive. In this domain we were already impressed by improvements and these two compacts are more or less identical here.  Colored pixels are barely noticeable at 400 ISO, and smoothing is strong at 800 ISO and beyond.  At 1250 ISO, this is very strong and the loss of detail significant.   The High Sensitivity mode should only be used as a last recourse. Finally, compared to the FX3, which this camera replaces, we lose a bit in compactness while gaining in image quality. 

Compare its photo test results with the competition’s in the Product Face-off section.