Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ15By: Dave EtchellsPanasonic introduces a four-megapixel digicam with the high quality optics of a 12x Leica lens. <<Camera Modes & Menus :(Previous) | (Next): Video, Power, Software>> Page 10:Image Storage & InterfaceReview First Posted: 10/30/2004 |
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Image Storage and Interface
The DMC-FZ15 uses SD/MMC memory cards for image storage. An 8MB SD memory card is supplied with the camera (a total joke, the smallest I've seen shipped with a digicam in the last 3-4 years), so you'll want to immediately purchase a larger capacity card to accommodate the large four-megapixel maximum resolution. Entire SD/MMC cards cannot be write-protected, however, the DMC-FZ15's Play menu allows you to write-protect individual image files, protecting them from accidental erasure, unless the card is formatted.
Still images can be saved at one of five resolutions (2,304 x 1,728; 1,600 x 1,200; 1,280 x 960; 640 x 480 pixels or "HDTV," 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.
A full complement of interface software comes with the DMC-FZ15, 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 8 MB card. (Compression numbers are based on my own computations.
- You can see how pointless the 8 MB card is, able to hold only four images
at the camera's best JPEG size and quality setting.):
| Resolution/Quality 8 MB Memory Card |
TIFF | Fine | |
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| 2,304 x 1,728 | Images (Avg size) |
none 13.4 MB |
4 1.8 MB |
8 921 KB |
| Approx. Compression |
- | 7:1 | 13:1 | |
| 1,600 x 1,200 | Images (Avg size) |
1 6.4 MB |
7 1.0 MB |
15 526 KB |
| Approx. Compression |
- | 6:1 | 11:1 | |
| 1,280 x 960 | Images (Avg size) |
1 4.1 MB |
12 656 KB |
22 361 KB |
| Approx. Compression |
- | 6:1 | 10:1 |
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Images (Avg size) |
7 1.1 MB |
37 213 KB |
131 KB |
| Approx. Compression |
- | 4:1 | |
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