Our first sample image was taken on a very bright day with the FX33 zoomed-out to wide angle and set to its lowest 100 ISO sensitivity. As such this represents perfect conditions. The crops contain lots of detail, and there’s no fringing despite the high contrast areas of the yacht. Look closely though and there’s evidence of noise even at this lowest sensitivity. It’s minimal, but pixel-peepers will see it.

Landscape: 3.69MB, Normal mode, 1/800, f5.6, ISO 100, 4.6-16.4mm at 16.4mm (equivalent to 100mm)

						Another sunny day at 100 ISO, but this time with the FX33 fully zoomed-in to its maximum equivalent of 100mm. Again there’s lots of detail and no coloured fringing to mention, but viewed at 100% on-screen, there’s evidence of noise. Again to be fair, this is becoming par for the course on modern compacts, but it’s still worth mentioning.

Landscape: 3.57MB, Normal mode, 1/10, f2.8, ISO 100, 4.6-16.4mm at 4.6mm (equivalent to 28mm)

The camera’s auto mode selected a relatively slow shutter of 1/10, which has allowed the water to blur. The FX33’s image stabilisation has however allowed us to handhold this shot without camera shake.

If you compare this shot against our other compact reviews, you’ll also notice the 28mm of the FX33 capturing a noticeably wider field.

There’s no control over aperture on the FX33, but here it’s selected the smallest f-number anyway. The resulting depth-of-field is still quite large though, so if you were hoping for blurred backgrounds, you may be disappointed.

Despite the increase in sensitivity though, the crops still retain a decent amount of detail.

The crops reveal an increase in noise when viewed at 100%, although it remains acceptable for most situations or normal-sized prints.

Here’s another shot taken at 400 ISO, this time taken in dimmer indoor lighting conditions.

As before, there’s visible noise when viewed at 100%, and this is apparent in both shadow areas or those with solid colours.

Again though within this noise is a reasonable amount of detail which makes 400 ISO on the FX33 acceptable for smaller-prints.

This shot was taken with the FX33 increased to 800 ISO and there’s an inevitable increase in noise as you’d expect.

The impressive thing though is there’s still a decent amount of detail in the crops and the colour balance hasn’t been adversely affected.

Compare it against the same shot taken with other compacts and the FX33 comes out quite respectably.

The crops for this image reveal a big increase in noise and loss of fine detail as a result.

You’d only want to use this in emergency situations, but again that’s par for the course for compacts these days.