The crops are taken from the original images, saved as High Quality JPEGs in Photoshop CS2 and presented here at 100%. Each number represents 100 lines per picture height (lpph), so a figure of 20 means a resolution of 2000 lpph.

In terms of resolving power, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX35 delivers 2050 and 2100 lpph of horizontal and vertical resolution respectively, which gives it a small but measurable boost over its predecessor. This additional resolution won’t however be noticeable in the vast majority of real-life images, so don’t buy the FX35 over the FX33 just for an extra two Megapixels. That said, 2050 and 2100 lpph is what we’d expect from a 10 Megapixel compact, so there’s nothing to worry about in this test.

We’ve also included results from the two highest resolution compacts we’ve yet tested – the Fujifilm FinePix F50fd and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200, both of which sport 12 Megapixels.

Resolution is of course only one part of the image quality equation, with noise and processing playing a major role. So now let’s look at how the camera handles different sensitivities in our FX35 noise results.