Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30By: Dave EtchellsPanasonic's latest in the Lumix lineup, with an eight-megapixel sensor and high quality long-zoom Leica optics. <<Camera Modes & Menus :(Previous) | (Next): Video, Power, Software>> Page 11:Image Storage & InterfaceReview First Posted: 01/18/2006 |
Image Storage and Interface
The DMC-FZ30 uses SD/MMC memory cards for image storage. A 16MB SD memory card is supplied with the camera (far too small for a camera like this), so you'll want to immediately purchase a larger capacity card to accommodate the eight-megapixel maximum resolution. Entire SD cards can be write-protected to guard against accidental reformatting, but in this mode you won't be able to save any photos to the card either. The DMC-FZ30's Play menu does allow you to write-protect individual image files though, protecting them from accidental erasure, unless the card is formatted.
Still images can be saved at one of six resolutions (3,264 x 2,448; 2,560 x 1,920; 2,048 x 1,536; 1,600 x 1,200; 1,280 x 960 pixels or 16:9: 1,920 x 1,080 pixels), while movie images are recorded at 320 x 240 pixels. Still images also have two JPEG compression levels available: Fine and Normal, plus an uncompressed TIFF setting that records the RGB image with no compression at all, and a RAW option.
A full complement of interface software comes with the DMC-FZ30, as does a USB cable for speedy connection to a PC or Macintosh computer.
Following are the approximate resolution / quality and compression ratios for the furnished 16MB card. (Compression numbers are based on my own computations.):
Resolution/Quality 16 MB Memory Card |
Fine | Normal | |||
| 3,264 x 2,448 | Images (Avg size) |
3 4.1 MB |
7 2.1 MB |
0 26.9 MB |
0 19 MB |
| Approx. Compression |
6:1 | 12:1 | - | 1.3:1 | |
| 2,560 x 1,920 | Images (Avg size) |
6 2.5 MB |
12 1.3 MB |
0 16.5 MB |
- |
| Approx. Compression |
6:1 | 11:1 | - | - | |
| 2,048 x 1,536 | Images (Avg size) |
9 1.7 MB |
18 849 KB |
1 10.7 MB |
- |
| Approx. Compression |
6:1 | 11:1 | - | - | |
| 1,600 x 1,200 | Images (Avg size) |
15 1.0 MB |
30 533 KB |
2 6.5 MB |
- |
| Approx. Compression |
6:1 | 11:1 | - | - | |
| 1,280 x 960 | Images (Avg size) |
23 683 KB |
43 366 KB |
3 4.1 MB |
- |
| Approx. Compression |
5:1 | 10:1 | - | - | |
Download Speed
The Panasonic DMC-FZ30 connects to a host computer via a USB interface. Downloading files to my Sony desktop running Windows XP (Pentium IV, 2.4 GHz), I clocked it at 770 KBytes/second. (Cameras with slow USB interfaces run as low as 300 KB/s, cameras with fast v1.1 interfaces run as high as 600 KB/s. Cameras with USB v2.0 interfaces run as fast as several megabytes/second.)
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