Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580

by Jeff Keller, DCRP Founder/Editor

Originally Posted: September 5, 2009

Last Updated: September 5, 2009

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580 ($399) may look like Just Another Ultra-Compact Camera, but it has two features that most cameras in its class do not. The first is a 3-inch touchscreen LCD display. While many camera manufacturers have touchscreen cameras, the FX580 is somewhat unique in that it doesn’t force you to use the touchscreen for everything — there are “regular” controls too. This, in my opinion, is a big plus. Naturally, you can do the usual touchscreen things too, such as Touch AE/AF and photo browsing with your finger.

But the touchscreen isn’t the main reason why I chose to review the DMC-FX580. What really makes this camera stand out from the ultra-compact crowd is that it has full manual controls. I don’t know who decided that ultra-compacts can’t have manual controls, but kudos to Panasonic for finally breaking the mold.

Other features on the Lumix FX580 include a 5X, 25 – 125 mm zoom lens, optical image stabilization, an Intelligent Auto mode that does just about everything for you, and an HD Movie mode.

Sound appealing? Keep on reading — our review starts right now!

The Lumix DMC-FX580 is known as the DMC-FX550 in some countries.

What’s in the Box?

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580 has an average bundle. Inside the box, you’ll find:

• The 12.1 effective Megapixel Lumix DMC-FX580 camera
• DMW-BCF10 lithium-ion rechargeable battery
• Battery charger
• Wrist strap
• Stylus pen
• USB cable
• A/V cable
• CD-ROM featuring PhotoFunStudio 3.0, ArcSoft Media Impression and Panorama Maker
• 143 page camera manual (printed)

Like most manufacturers, Panasonic has built memory right into the DMC-FX580. It has 40MB of built in memory, which holds just 6 photos at the highest quality setting. That means that you’ll want to buy a decent-sized memory card right away. The FX580 supports SD, SDHC, and MMC cards, though I’d recommend sticking with the first two. I would suggest picking up a 2GB or 4GB card for use with the camera, and it’s worth spending a little extra for a high speed model, though there’s no need to go overboard.

The FX580 uses the DMW-BCF10 lithium-ion battery for power. This compact battery packs 3.4 Wh into its plastic shell, which is typical for a camera in this class. Let’s see how that translates into battery life:

The DMC-FX580 comes in second place here, no thanks to the impressive numbers put up by the Casio Exilim EX-Z450. In the group as a whole, the FX580′s numbers are well above average.

There are a couple of issues to mention about the proprietary batteries used by the FX580, and all the cameras on the above list. First, they’re pricey, with a spare FX580 setting you back at least $38. Also, you cannot use an off-the-shelf battery in emergencies, as you could with an AA-based camera. One issue specific to the FX580 is that it requires the use of Panasonic batteries — third party models will not work!

When it’s time to charge the battery, just pop it into the included charger. It takes about 130 minutes to fully charge the battery. This is my favorite type of charger, too  it plugs directly into the power outlet.

As with all ultra-compact cameras, the FX580 has a built-in lens cover, so there’s no lens cap to deal with.

There are just a couple of accessories available for the Lumix DMC-FX580. They include:

And that’s about it! Let’s talk about the FX580′s software bundle now.

Panasonic includes a couple of software products with the Lumix DMC-FX580. First up is PhotoFunStudio 3.0, which is for Windows only. After you’ve imported photos from the camera or a memory card, you’ll end up with the standard thumbnail view you can see above. From here you can view a slideshow, e-mail or print a photo, and upload videos to YouTube. You can also use a new “face recognition” feature that lets you identify people in your photos, which allows for easy searches later on. Speaking of searches, PhotoFunStudio lets you search through photos by all kinds of things, whether it’s by camera model, scene mode, baby name, date, and more.

Choose the “retouch” option from the toolbar and you’ll get the editing window you see above. Here you can adjust things like brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness. Images can be changed to sepia, black and white, or “negative color”, and redeye can be removed with the click of your mouse. There’s also an auto enhancement feature, for those who want to keep things simple.

Another option for basic image editing is ArcSoft MediaImpression software, which is for both Mac and Windows. MediaImpression can be used to import photos from the camera, with the unique option of removing redeye during import. The main screen looks just like every other image browser, though you’ll get to the fun stuff when you go to the edit screen.

Here you can see the edit screen in MediaImpression, where you can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, sharpness, and color balance. You can also remove redeye, straighten photos, blur backgrounds, and touch up blemishes.

Another piece of the ArcSoft suite is Panorama Maker, which helps you combine photos that you’ve taken side-by-side into a single panorama. It’s easy to use, and the results can be really impressive.

The manual that comes with the DMC-FX580 is very much average. It’s like a manual from any big consumer electronics company: confusing and cluttered, with lots of fine print. You’ll find the answer you’re looking for — you’ll just have to work harder than you should. Documentation for the included software is installed onto your computer.

Look and Feel

The DMC-FX580 is an ultra-compact camera made of a mix of metal and plastic. While the design is pleasing, it definitely won’t stand out in the crowd. Build quality is decent, though the plastic door over the memory card and battery compartment is very flimsy. I found the camera easy to hold and operate with one hand, and your fingers don’t end up resting on anything important. Since this is a touchscreen-based camera, expect lots of fingerprints on that 3-inch LCD.

It would be a travesty to have a camera available in just one color, so Panasonic produces the FX580 in both silver and black. In some countries, there is a gold model available as well.

Now, here’s how the FX580 compares to similar cameras in terms of size and weight:

The FX580 is one of the larger cameras in the group, but that doesn’t mean it’s big — it’ll still fit into your jeans pocket with ease.

Let’s start our tour of the camera now, shall we?

The DMC-FX580 features an ultra-wide 5X optical zoom lens that carries the Leica name. This F2.8-5.9 lens has been used in several other Panasonic models of late, including the FX37, FX38, and the FX500, which is the predecessor to the FX580 I’m reviewing here (a mouthful, I know). The focal length of the lens is 4.4 – 22.0 mm, which is equivalent to 25 – 125 mm. For those of you who want to capture interior scenes in their entirety, this lens is a dream come true. As with all compact cameras, it’s not threaded, so you won’t be able to attach conversion lenses or filters.

Inside the lens is Panasonic’s “Mega” optical image stabilization (OIS) system. The OIS system detects the tiny movements of your hands that can blur your photos, especially in low light, or at the telephoto end of the focal range. The camera shifts a lens element to compensate for this motion, which (in theory, at least) will produce a sharp photo. Now, image stabilization won’t work miracles — it can’t freeze a moving subject or allow for handheld multi-second exposures — but it will allow you to use slower shutter speeds than you could otherwise. Want proof? Have a look at these:

Image stabilization off

Image stabilization on

I took each of these photos at a shutter speed of 1/6 second. As you can probably tell, the OIS system works as advertised! You can use image stabilization in movie mode as well, but since you can’t turn it off, I can’t show you the usual comparison video here.

To the upper-right of the lens is the camera’s AF-assist lamp. The FX580 uses this lamp as a focusing aid in low light situations. It also serves as a visual countdown for the self-timer.

To the left of that is the FX580′s built-in flash. This flash puts up impressive numbers, but a lot of that is due to its wide-angle focal range. The working range is 0.6 – 6.0 m at wide-angle, and 1.0 – 2.8 m at telephoto (both at Auto ISO). As you might expect, you cannot attach an external flash to the camera

The main event on the back of the FX580 is its 3-inch, touchscreen LCD display. This screen has 230,000 pixels, like the majority of its peers. The screen could be a bit sharper, but most folks won’t mind. I found outdoor visibility to be very good, and in low light situations the screen brightens up nicely, so you can still see what you’re trying to take a picture of.

The icons on the LCD in aperture priority mode; the three at the button can be touched

So what can you do with the touchscreen on the DMC-FX580? You can control menus, adjust manual controls, select the area of the frame on which to focus, browse through photos you’ve taken, and more. For most things, you can use the regular buttons to do these things, as well. You can use your finger, or the included stylus to make selections. I have fairly large hands, and didn’t find it necessary to use the stylus.

While I’ll cover the other touchscreen features throughout this review, I want to mention Touch AE/AF right now. When this feature is turned on, you simply touch your finger on the object in the frame on which you want the camera to focus. If you’re in Intelligent Auto mode, the camera will select a scene mode based on whatever you touched. Regardless of the shooting mode, the camera automatically turns on AF Tracking, so if your subject moves, it’ll follow them.

As you can probably tell, there’s no optical viewfinder on the FX580. In fact, there aren’t any compact cameras with a 3-inch screen that have one.

Now let’s go over the physical buttons on the back of the camera. At the top is the switch that moves the camera between record and playback mode. Underneath that is the Mode button, which brings up the screen below:

Yes, it’s a virtual mode dial of sorts, and you can select an item with your finger or the four-way controller. The options here include:

There’s plenty to talk about before we can continue the tour! First I want to mention the point-and-shoot modes on the FX580. The Intelligent Auto mode does just about everything imaginable. It detects faces, tracks motion, reduces blur, brightens shadows, and even picks a scene mode for you.

Want to pick your own scene mode? There are plenty to choose from, so here are the most notable of the available scenes:

• Transform – makes people thinner or wider (oh brother)
• Panorama Assist – helps you line up photos side-by-side for later stitching into a single image
• Baby – stores the name and age of up to two children, and saves that info in the photo metadata
• Pet – same as above
• High sensitivity – cuts the resolution to 3MP and raises the ISO to 1600 – 6400; best to avoid this
• Hi-speed burst – takes anywhere from 15 to 100 photos at either 6 or 10 frames/second; resolution is lowered to 3MP or less and ISO sensitivity is increased
• Flash burst – take up to 5 flash photos in a row; resolution is lowered and ISO is boosted as high as 3200
• Starry sky – allows you to take 15, 30, or 60 second exposures
• Pin hole, film grain – Panasonic’s version of Olympus’ art filters

One of the nicest features on the DMC-FX580 is its full manual exposure controls. These are adjusted using the touchscreen interface only, and it works fairly well. The camera puts one or two sliders (depending on the shooting mode) on the right and bottom of the screen, and you simply drag your finger to change settings.

Alright, back to the tour now. Under that Mode button is the Display button, which toggles the information shown on the LCD. Under that is the four-way controller, used for menu navigation, image playback, and adjusting most (but not all) of the settings found in the touchscreen interface. The four-way controller also lets you adjust the following:

• Up – Exposure compensation + Auto bracketing + flash exposure compensation + color bracket
• Down – Macro (Off, AF macro, macro zoom)
• Left – Self-timer (Off, 2 or 10 secs)
• Right – Flash (Auto, auto w/redeye reduction, flash on, slow sync w/redeye reduction, flash off)
• Center – Menu + Set

Adjusting exposure compensation is a bit of a challenge since the touchable area is small — at least you can use the four way controller

You can adjust each of those items using either the four-way controller or the touchscreen (though my big fingers had a bit of trouble with some of these options). For both exposure and flash exposure compensation, the range is -2EV to +2EV, in 1/3EV increments. Auto bracketing takes three shots in a row, each with a different exposure value. The interval between each shot can be 1/3EV, 2/3EV, or 1EV. Color bracketing also takes three photos: one in color, one in black & white, and the third with a sepia tone.

There’s just one more thing to talk about on the back of the FX580, and it’s the Quick Menu + Delete photo button. Press this in record mode and you’ll get the Quick Menu, which is a shortcut menu of sorts. Panasonic had to make everything big enough for the touchscreen interface, so the menu is more cluttered than on Panasonic’s more conventional cameras. Here are the options in the Quick Menu:

• Stabilizer
• Burst mode
• AF mode
• White balance
• Intelligent ISO
• ISO sensitivity
• Intelligent exposure
• Image size
• LCD mode

I’ll explain all of those in more detail later in the review.

And that’s all for the back of the DMC-FX580!

On the top of the FX580 you’ll find its speaker, followed by the microphone. Continuing to the right we find the power switch, shutter release button, and zoom controller. The zoom controller moves the lens from wide-angle to telephoto in a rather sluggish 2.6 seconds. I counted at least eighteen steps in the camera’s 5X zoom range.

That last button is for the Easy Zoom feature. Press this once and the lens moves to the full telephoto position. Press it again and the camera drops the resolution to 3 Megapixel or less (depending on the aspect ratio) and uses the extended optical zoom feature to give you more zoom power. For example, at the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, you’ll have 9.8X total zoom power. If you have regular (lossy) digital zoom turned on, pressing the E. Zoom button a third time will give you an additional 4X of zoom power (at the expense of image quality). Pressing the button a final time returns the lens to the wide-angle position.

Nothing to see on this side of the camera.

On the opposite side, you’ll find the camera’s I/O ports, which are under a plastic cover of average quality. The ports here are for component video (cable not included) and USB + A/V output (cables included).

The lens is at the full telephoto position.

On the bottom of the FX580 you’ll find its metal tripod mount and the battery/memory card compartment. The plastic door (with locking mechanism) is quite flimsy, so be careful. You may be able to get at the memory card slot while the camera is on a tripod — it really depends on your setup (it worked for me).

The included DMW-BCF10 lithium-ion battery can be seen at right.

Using the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX580

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