Veterans Day Shrine - London (Inset enlarged from frame)
Review: The Panasonic FX100 Digital Camera
by Russell Johnson
I have never been
very much for boxy things: Humvees, large suitcases, Wagnerian
contraltos. I own two boxy cameras, both antiques: a 1950s Brownie
movie camera and a vintage Crown Graphic, a bulky machine with
bellows once favored by cigar chomping, flashbulb-popping guys who
sat at the edges of boxing rings and Eisenhower-era CSI agents. In
fact, the Graphic was given to me as a teenager by a friend of my
father, an ex-boxer turned photographer named Ed, deaf from too many
blows to the head and always reeking of stogie. My mother hated him,
thought he was a bad influence. Ed taught me photography and a couple
of punches with which I wasted the neighborhood bully. I hung up my
gloves at age twelve but stuck with photography. I have always
favored precious little Leicas with squinty viewfinders handmade by
the Good Elves of the Schwartzwald, cameras with smooth, precision
gears, burnished surfaces and shutters that click with the uninvasive
self-confidence of European maitre d's.
 I now use two
digital cameras: a Nikon D80 single-lens-reflex that announces the
capture of an image with a serious thwunk, and a new Panasonic FX100
with the caresseable feel of a vintage Leica, a delicate, digital
click that almost passes for mechanical and millions and millions of
pixels. Nikon has been my image-maker of choice since the late 60s..
I own five of them, film and digital. They are like Volvos, boxy but
good. I trust my Nikon, as always, for assignments but I don't want
to lug it around with me everywhere I go. But the little Panasonic
is, like the little rodent in Ratatoille, by shirt pocket buddy.
True, it doesn't have a viewfinder, even a squinty one, and some of
its low light pictures look like I feel after a night in Cancun, but
it is sharp, 12 million pixel Leica lens sharp. It is, in short, a
slight trade off in quality for the joy of taking a picture on a
whim, anywhere, without a heavy yoke around my neck.
This little beauty
also has a lens that widens out to the equivalent of 28mm on a
standard 35mm camera, great not only for interior shots but for
creating depth in pictures by putting objects in the foreground. Back
in the dinosaur days of film, 28mm was my favorite fixed lens.
The FX100 is also
an almost perfect home movie camera. It shoots good standard
resolution video and the optical image stabilization is so good, I
can use my arms as a camera crane. It is almost equal to the
Steadicam I have used with professional video cameras. I only wish
the sound were better, so I could use it for video interviews.
If you can possibly wait, don't buy one yet. This week at the Photo
Marketing Association convention, Panasonic announced a successor, the FX35 ,
with a lens that widens further to 25mm and HDTV video at 30 frames
per second. No announcements about the crappy sound, however. If they
got that fixed, this would be the perfect do-it-all little media device.
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