Compared to... Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200

Below you will find a studio comparison between the Panasonic FZ30 and the similarly-specified Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200. We have included samples for the lowest and highest ISO settings for the FZ30 (80 and 400). Note that the DiMAGE A200 also has an ISO 800 setting click here for the relevant page in the A200 review.

Studio scene comparison (FZ30 @ ISO 80, A200 @ ISO 50)

• Panasonic DMC-FZ30: Aperture Priority mode, ISO 80, Default Image Parameters,
  Manual white balance, +0.66 EV
   
• Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200: Manual exposure mode, ISO 50, Default Image Parameters, Auto white balance
   
• Lighting: Daylight simulation, >98% CRI

Note: the Konica Minolta A200 shots were taken before we changed the lights in our fixed studio setup. This explains the different exposure values and pattern of reflections.

Panasonic DMC-FZ30	Konica Minolta A200
ISO 80, 1/40 sec, F5.6	ISO 50, 1/80 sec, F5
3,241 KB JPEG	2,852 KB JPEG
Noise, std dev: 2.9	Noise, std dev: 2.7

Sharp, detailed results with excellent, natural (though fairly vibrant) colors from both cameras, though both are exhibiting a little more luminance noise than we'd like to see at the lowest ISO setting (we found 'real world' shots in lower light showed much more chroma noise on the FZ30).. Of the two the FZ30 is capturing marginally more detail across the frame, but for 'real world' photography it's not a significant difference. The FZ30's default settings produce images that are verging on the over-saturated, but you can tweak this using the in-camera image parameters, or by shooting RAW. Note that in our tests there was little, if any, discernible advantage to shooting TIFF over High Quality JPEG.