Panasonic Lumix DMC-FH27: Video and Image Quality

Video Quality
The FH27 shoots adequate HD videos with realistic color and monaural sound. Activating the movie mode requires three taps on the touchscreen menu, which is not as quick and easy as with cameras that have a dedicated movie button. Focus and zoom are set when the camera begins recording and cannot be changed. HD movies are shot at 1280 x 720 pixels at 24 frames per second, to a maximum of 2GB on the memory card.

The movie shot below was taken of a stream that was swollen to about three times its normal width due to heavy rains. Color and animation came out well, though I would have liked the ability to zoom in.

Image Quality
As is the case with other Panasonic cameras I've used, the FH27 creates sharp, well-exposed images with realistic colors - punchy, but not overly saturated.

The FH27 has white balance settings for auto, daylight, cloudy, shade, incandescent, and custom. I used auto white balance in all of my pictures with good results.

Auto White Balance, 5500k fluorescent light

The flash has settings for auto, auto and red-eye reduction, slow sync and red-eye reduction, forced on and forced off. Flash range is 0.6 - 5.8 meters (1.97 - 19 feet) at wide angle and 1.0 - 3.2 meters (3.28 - 10.4 feet) at telephoto. The flash did a very good job, brightening the image to the extent appropriate for the scene, without blowing out the subject.

The ISO table below shows images with good color and minimal noise through 400 ISO, with noise becoming more of a factor at 800 and 1600 ISO. These are very good results, especially considering the fact that the FH27 is packing 16.1 megapixels into its tiny 1/2.33-inch sensor.

ISO 100	ISO 100, 100% crop
ISO 200	ISO 200, 100% crop
ISO 400	ISO 400, 100% crop
ISO 800	ISO 800, 100% crop
ISO 1600	ISO 1600, 100% crop

Additional Sample Images