We set each lens to their widest and longest focal lengths and tested them at various apertures. The crops are taken from the extreme lower left corner of the chart and presented here at 100%. Note the TZ3 only has two aperture settings.

Zoomed-out to wide angle, the Panasonic Lumix FZ8 delivers pretty sharp results in its corners, even with the aperture wide open. It doesn’t suffer from the coloured fringing of its rivals here.

Zoomed-into its longest focal length, the FZ8 exhibits some fringing, but again the results are superior here to its main rivals. To be fair though, despite offering a powerful 12x optical zoom, the FZ8 neither zooms as wide or long as the Olympus SP-550UZ or Sony H9. To see how it compares against Panasonic’s own FZ50, check here.