I have always like mega-zoom cameras from Panasonic. I have started using them beginning with the 2-Megapixel FZ1 and went through the FZ3, FZ4 ,
5-Megapixel Panasonic FZ5 and 6-Megapixel
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7. Now, the new 7.2-Megapixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 is out and I just had to try it out.
Mega-Zoom and Optical Image Stabilization
Consumers like cameras that provide high optical zoom numbers (e.g. 5x and higher). I like them too. Having a camera with an optical zoom over 5x lets you magnify images far away without loss of sharpness. But not all mega-zoom cameras are created equal. Some of them have no optical image stabilization, which makes images shot at high magnification or in dim light blurry.
Optical image stabilization lets you have substantially sharper images in low light or at high zoom levels. It lets you shoot handheld in many situations that would otherwise require a tripod. I would never buy a camera with high optical zoom unless it has optical image stabilization (see exception below). All mega-zoom cameras of Panasonic FZ (including this FZ8) line have optical image stabilization.
One exception to this rule is the S-series of Fuji cameras, which are equipped with Super-CCD sensors that have very low noise at high ISO settings. This lets you increase ISO and thereby shoot at faster shutter speeds decreasing blur.
Why not Canon S3 IS?
There are several advantages the FZ8 has over the Canon S3 IS. As usual lately, the FZ8 has higher resolution: 7.2 MP vs. 6 MP in S3 IS. Just as the FZ8, the Canon S3 IS uses
SD cards, but it uses four AA-sized batteries, meaning you have to get your own rechargeable NiMH batteries and a
charger, recharge them removing them one by one (inconvenient).
The 4 AA batteries are heavier than the battery pack used in Panasonic FZ cameras (including the FZ8), are more prone to reduction of power output in cold weather and take up more space. In addition to the power dilemma, there is an issue with filters.
You have to purchase an adaptor to be able to use filters with the S3 IS, whereas the cameras of Panasonic FZ line include a lens/filter adaptor and a lens hood. The FZ8 comes with both, just as the predecessors.
The FZ line ships with a real travel charger that can charge the battery pack from 110-240V, which means you can use it in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Furthermore, the FZ8 ships with a compact charger that has no cables and plugs into the wall directly.
I also like the Panasonic menu system better than Canon's. At the same time, Canon has an articulated LCD screen whereas Panasonic FZ8 has a fixed one. But the Panasonic has a larger screen (2.5 inches vs. 2 inches of S3).
FZ8 vs. FZ7
The difference between 6-Megapixel FZ7 and 7.2MP FZ8 is rather small. The resolution is higher, the noise reduction of the Venus III engine should reduce noise better, new scene modes are added. The LCD has higher resolution and the camera can use high-capacity SD cards (SDHD -Secure Digital High Capacity).
About Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 is a 7.2-Megapixel digital camera with Leica optics (12x optical zoom: 36-432mm in 35-mm equivalent), optical image stabilization with maximum apertures of f/2.8 at wide angle and f/3.1 at full telephoto (minimum aperture is f/8.0 at both ends).
It stores images on
SD cards. The camera features a 2.5-inch LCD screen. The FZ8 is relatively compact and lightweight, features USB 2.0 connectivity and has a very easy-to-use menu system. You can output video and sound to your TV (be it your pictures or video clips) using the supplied audio/video cable in NTSC or PAL format.
The filter adaptor and the lens hood to fight flare are supplied. The camera is powered by a rechargeable proprietary Li-Ion battery (charger included).
Features
The camera features selectable ISO between 100, 200, 400, 800, 1250 and 3200 as well as Auto. The White Balance can be set to Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Halogen, Flash, White Set (custom, using a white/grey card). The camera's auto white balance mostly works well and I left it in Auto most of the time. It has occasional problems with halogen light, but since I do not use it in halogen-lit environments, it does not matter to me.
The exposure modes include Program AE, Aperture and Shutter Priority mode, and even full Manual mode. The shutter speed can be set between 8 and 1/2,000 sec (up to 60 sec in Manual mode) and the aperture between F2.8 and F8 (wide angle) or F3.1-8 (telephoto). Be advised that, as is usually the case, aperture values in the middle work the best in terms of the lens’ sharpness (around F5.6).
The lens is sharp and the image stabilization allows you to take
handheld pictures at shutter speeds you wouldn't think were possible e.g. 1/8 sec at wide angle or 1/30 at full telephoto (420 mm equivalent focal length). The image stabilization works best in Mode 2. Be advised that in
Simple mode, the stabilization is fixed to Mode 1 and cannot be changed, unless you use P, A, S or other mode.
The camera has a focus assist light for better and faster focusing in low-light conditions. It works well in dim light. The FZ8 has a built-in microphone for recording notes or recording sounds while filming short video clips and a speaker, which can be used for operational sounds or to play back the sounds recorded. The camera can record short movie clips at high resolution of 848x480 or 640x480 pixels at 30 or 10 fps with sound.
The rotary main mode control at the top deck has positions for the easy mode (red heart pictogram), playback, P (program AE), A (Aperture priority), S (Shutter Priority), M (Manual Mode), macro, movie and scene modes. The zoom rocker, shutter release button, image stabilization mode button and burst mode button are located close to it. I rarely use the burst mode or stabilization mode buttons (I keep stabilization in Mode 2). The top deck looks exactly like the one on the FZ7, but the mode wheel is now nice-looking metallic color.
There are scene modes as well, including Portrait, Sports, Scenery, Night Scenery, Panning, Night Portrait, Fireworks, Party, Snow, High Sensitivity and more. The camera has an orientation sensor, which records if the picture was taken vertically or horizontally and this makes your pictures display in the correct orientation on your computer.
The camera is powered on and off by a simple sliding switch on the rear panel, that I find convenient. The green LED above it shows you if the camera is on or not. The flash is open by a mechanical button and closed by pushing it down. There is no external flash connector. The flash mode and output can be adjusted manually.
The menus are controlled by a little joystick on the rear panel. The camera is very fast in operation. The image stabilization has two modes - Mode 1 and Mode 2. In Mode 2, the stabilization is engaged only when the shutter release is pressed, which makes the stabilization more efficient and less power-hungry. The images turn out to be sharper when the Mode 2 is used, but it makes it slightly less easy to confirm focus.
LCD
The camera has a 2.5-inch LCD with 207,000 pixels (an improvement in resolution over the previous models) that covers 100% of the view. You can also use the electronic viewfinder (EVF) with a diopter adjustment. The LCD screen is fluid, has pleasing colors and good resolution. The LCD is well-visible in regular conditions, but in sunlight, visibility decreases and you have to use the EVF, which works well in sunlight.
The optical viewfinder would be better, but it would not have been possible to make an optical viewfinder that would fit in such a small space and work with such a monster 12x optical zoom.
In the shooting mode, the "Display" button cycles through the image with no information, image with basic shooting parameters and a live histogram, image with lines that split the screen in nine areas and help you compose the shot better or image that is slightly decreased in size and the area around it filled with shooting parameters, etc.
At any time you can see the estimated remaining amount of pictures that will fit on the memory card as well as the battery status. The icons are descriptive and the information is displayed in easy to understand format.
Operation
The camera is well built, has a solid feel yet to be lighter than what you would expect. The menus are easy to use. The camera is convenient to hold. The initial battery charge takes about 1 hour.
The camera comes with a 27 MB of built-in memory. I use my Sandisk 512-Mb card with this camera. A new feature is the camera's ability to use high-capacity SD cards (SDHD -Secure Digital High Capacity). Also included are the USB cable, the A/V cable, CD-ROM with software (I haven't installed it and probably never will), the battery pack and charger, lens hood, lens filter adaptor, lens cap with a strap and a shoulder strap, manuals.
Performance
The FZ8 is very fast and seems to operate even slightly faster than the, already fast, FZ7. The power-up takes only about 2 seconds (mostly taken by the lens extension). The camera seems to focus very fast as well, especially in its High-Speed autofocus modes (well under a second, almost instantaneously), slightly less so in its 9-point autofocus mode (still less than a second).
The AF illuminator helps with faster focusing in dim light, but even if it cannot reach its target, the camera still focuses fairly fast. This is in contrast with many other cameras that try to focus in the same conditions for several seconds, at times successfully, at times failing to focus at all. The competitor from Sony (Sony H1) is especially poor in this department.
Overall, the focusing performance of the FZ8 is probably the best I have seen so far, even better than the already excellent FZ7 or the FZ5.
The FZ8 has focus confirmation - it shows you a small or larger rectangle around the area where the camera is currently focused. The shutter lag when pre-focused is virtually absent and the picture is taken almost instantaneously. You can select to have the taken picture appear on the screen for 1 or couple of seconds after it's taken to confirm if it is good or you can select not to have this, so-called, quick preview at all. In the latter case, the LCD goes blank only momentarily.
Overall, depending on the focus mode, the shot-to-shot delay ranges between less than a second (High-Speed Autofocus) to a little more than a second (9-point autofocus). Since RAW images are much large than JPEGs, the delay is longer, depending on the SD card speed. Obviously, the times above are with no flash use.
Shooting with flash is slower since the flash needs time to recharge. Depending on battery condition and the subject distance, you can expect the flash recharge time of 2-5 seconds, which is still very good.
Zooming is smooth and responsive. The battery lasts more than 300 pictures (I took 250 so far) and the supplied charger can recharge it in less than 90 minutes. I consider this excellent.
The supplied lens hood is easy to attach and works well to fight flare.
Picture Quality
The camera features excellent lens design by Leica, which helps it produce excellent pictures. The photos are well-saturated, properly exposed and sharp from wide angle to telephoto. With the exception of soft edges at full telephoto, which is normal for a mega-zoom camera and does not matter much, since the edges are usually cut-off during printing.
The fine details are fairly sharp, provided the noise reduction is set to LOW. Otherwise, the Venus III noise reduction tries to fight characteristically-high Panasonic chroma noise and blur the fine detail. Still, the images look very good at reasonable ISOs (100-200, less so at 400).
The colors are true-to-life. The image stabilization works well (especially in Mode 2) and let me take handheld photos at full telephoto at 1/60 and sometimes at 1/30 and at 1/8-1/2 at wide angle.
This is much better than the rule of the recommended handheld shutter speeds (1/equivalent focal length) suggests. Without image stabilization I wouldn't be able to take pictures at the above shutter speeds. 1/500 at telephoto and 1/50 at wide angle would be the slowest I could use.
There is just a small amount of barrel distortion in wide angle shots (not visible in regular shooting) and no pincushion distortion at telephoto. I could find only small amounts of chromatic aberration in normal shooting - most of it seems to be suppressed by the Venus III engine and good lens design, but some is still visible. In high contrast scenes there is an occasional (very minor) chromatic aberration, but it is so minor.
There seems to be no vignetting at all, even at wide angle. The images are generally sharp from corner to corner. But at full telephoto, the corners of the frame get slightly soft, which is a general trend with mega-zoom cameras. The photos are still highly usable.
I mostly used the lowest ISO available (100) and see only small amounts of noise in the shadows, nothing to complain about (invisible on the resultant prints). At ISO 100 or 200, you can see noise appear in the shadows/darker areas and ISO 400 is so noisy that I would only use it for smaller prints (6x4 and 5x7). The noise reduction is set to LOW. If you set it to NORMAL or HIGH, the noise is absent, but the detail level gets lower than I would like and some small detail or textures can be lost.
Fortunately, you can avoid having to use ISO 400 at all in most situations by simply using a slower shutter speed and/or larger apertures (F2.8 or F3.1). The OIS makes it possible.
Computer Connectivity
I was able to connect the camera to my Windows 2000 SP4 Professional computer with no need to install any drivers or software. After that, the camera appeared as a removable drive in my system and I could copy the files from it. But the speeds were slow and I usually remove the SD card from the camera and just use my memory card reader, which accepts SD cards and is fast.
Panasonic FZ8 vs. Panasonic FZ7
The 6-Megapixel Panasonic DMC-FZ7 is about the same in size as the FZ8. The FZ8 has a higher-resolution LCD and higher resolution CCD, more scene modes, looks slightly better, supports SDHC, is slightly faster.
FZ8, FZ7, Canon S3 IS or Sony H5?
The FZ8 would be my first choice, followed by the
Panasonic FZ7,
Canon S3 IS and the
Sony DSC-H5. Panasonic cameras are more compact, provide better value and are easier to use than Canon or Sony. They are also faster in operation (especially than Sony H5) and produce excellent photos. The Canon S3 IS is my third choice (too expensive and uses 4 AA batteries). And the Sony H5 would be the last. It looks good on paper, but is large, heavy and too slow in operation.
Bottom Line
If you want a 7.2-Megapixel responsive "monster zoom" camera, this Panasonic FZ8 is an excellent choice. With 12x optical zoom, optical image stabilization, fast f2.8-3.1 Leica lens and responsive Venus III engine, for less than $310, The FZ8 clearly outperforms its current competitors. I highly recommend it. But if you need wide angle optics, check out the Fuji FinePix S6000fd.
