PANASONIC has been in the compact digital camera market for awhile now, although you wouldn't really know it from the relatively low profile the company keeps with regards to its cameras.

Don't think that that's because it makes poor cameras. Far from it. Panasonic's digicams have fast response times where it matters - in autofocus and shot-to-shot times, as well as reasonably high-quality lenses.

However, the one area it seems to be lacking in is the sensor department. While Panasonic can boast that it makes its own imaging sensors, these have been plagued by digital noise issues.

And we are not talking about noise in high ISO situations; recent Panasonic cameras have had evident noise even at the lowest ISO setting, or have had to depend on strong noise-reduction algorithms.

Into this comes the latest slew of Panasonic cameras, of which the FS5 is the entry-level product. Also, it has the new Venus Engine IV system, which we hope sorts out the image issues.

In hand

The FS5 has a very solid feel to it, with nice rounded edges that fit well in the hands. The controls are run-of-the-mill for a compact, with all the usual buttons and a zoom ring around the shutter release.

What's nice about this camera in particular is that it has a 4x zoom lens that is equivalent to 30mm at the wide end - this is a lot wider than most cameras which have a 35mm equivalent at the widest.

With the 4:3 aspect ratio on the FS5, we found the side-to-side coverage of the lens to be close to a 28mm lens in 35mm film format, which means that this lens offers quite a wide angle and should be great for large group shots and landscapes.

In terms of usability, the FS5 is adequate. Notably, there is no mode dial and all modes need to be switched by hitting the mode button first, then navigating to the correct mode using the navigation buttons.

However, in shooting mode, the FS5 does not have a quick review button to quickly bring you into playback mode. Instead, if you want to look at the images you've taken, you have to use the slider to switch the camera over to playback mode. This isn't too bad but it is a drag when you just want to take a quick look without actually getting out of shooting mode.

One interesting new feature incorporated into the FS5 is an Intelligent Auto mode, which automatically switches program modes and autofocus modes depending on the scene you're shooting.

So for example, if you're shooting a landscape shot, the camera will choose the appropriate program mode and switch to wide autofocus mode. And if you're shooting a group of people, the camera will automatically choose Face Detect autofocus and pick the mode for best portrait shots.

In practice, the FS5's Intelligent Auto mode works very well and switches between the appropriate shooting and autofocus modes nearly instantly.

Performance

Panasonic Lumix compacts have always had a reputation for fast response times and the FS5 is no exception. Autofocusing takes about a second and the camera can shoot bursts of up to 2.5 frames per second continuously until the memory card fills up.

Once switched on, the camera is ready to shoot in about three seconds - about the time it takes for you to bring the camera up to eye level.

Battery life is good. The camera is rated at about 300 shots per full charge and we got between 200 and 300 shots depending on usage. This is not bad for a compact camera and should be enough for a typical day of shooting.

The lack of more exposure modes (not counting the Scene modes) is not really an issue for this class of camera, IMHO, since the camera is targeted at point-and-shooters.

One thing worth highlighting here is the Mega Optical Image Stabilisation feature. Panasonic has had a lot of time to perfect this feature and in the FS5 it works very well, giving us shake-free shots in most situations where we didn't think we'd get good pictures. Great job, Panasonic.

Picture quality

Ahh, here's the rub. Is the FS5 any good in terms of picture quality?

As far as metering and exposure go, the FS5 performed very well and we were quite impressed by the camera's ability to cope with all kinds of lighting situations.

The FS5's lens is good, producing excellent sharpness at all focal lengths, and even at the corners. There was very little chromatic aberration present, perhaps thanks to the Venus Engine IV, which probably does some automatic corrections in that respect.

Now we move on to noise issues. After extended shooting we found that these issues are still present in the FS5. Even at ISO 100 and 200 settings, there is a hint of noise reduction (NR), especially in the dark areas, which causes a slight smoothing of detail in our shots.

However, Panasonic's new noise-reduction engine seems to have gotten a little smarter. While there is quite a bit of noise reduction going on at all ISO settings, it's clever enough to smooth out detail in plain and dark areas while leaving bright areas with fine detail largely intact - instead of applying it generally all over the photo.

Overall, the FS5 is usable all the way to its ISO 400 settings, while at ISO 800 there is heavy NR going on, although images are still usable if you're not shooting anything where detail is critical.

However, forget about using the camera at its top setting of ISO 1600 (or the extended High ISO settings of 3200 and 6400 which are available when you enable High Sensitivity mode and turn on Auto ISO) because the NR really kicks in hard at these settings.

Conclusion

With the FS5, Panasonic has finally attained a delicate balance between noise reduction and the overly smoothing out of detail by NR algorithms.

While we would like to see a bit more work going into making the sensor itself more efficient in order to reduce noise (instead of applying noise reduction on an already noisy image), the FS5 performs quite well in this respect.

Couple that to its fast response times and good battery life, and you get a very useful digicam. If you're looking for a small and fast compact camera, consider putting this one in your pocket.

Pros: Fast response times; noise reduction less intrusive than on previous models; Intelligent Auto feature works well.

Cons: No quick image review button.