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John_Reed
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Opinion: I bought this camera to force myself out of the "birding" mode. My other two
cameras, the FZ30 and TZ1, both have long zooms, and most shots I take are at full
zoom. But using this camera is a real treat! First of all, I invoked the "i-ISO" mode,
curious to see where its limits are. It seems like as long as there's more than a
candle lighting the scene, there's enough light! It's taken many low-light shots,
from ISO 250 through 800, and noise doesn't usually crop up at all. The only time I
see noise is when the light is REALLY low. Much as I love my TZ1, I think the FX50
does better with noise (no watercoloring, good detail preservation) at high ISOs.
OIS seems to be really great too. I took it to an event yesterday and got some really
cool photos of the dancers & singers there, including a movie with decent sound
too!
If you got the impression I like this camera, you're RIGHT! ;-)
Problems: I wish there were separate metering modes, but the one used seems to be pretty good
at figuring out the right exposure for the scene. I wish you could zoom while taking a
movie (like my TZ1), but you can't. I took a flash photo of two women about 5 feet
away, and one of the women showed a little redeye, not much. It was easy to fix, but
still... (I have to say the flesh tones were great, if a little over-saturated)
Opinion: I've taken about 1800 snaps with my TZ1 already - I LOVE it! Outdoor shots, indoor
shots, shots with/without flash, it does its job very well. I'm especially impressed with
its high-ISO capability. When I took some flash shots at a party and sent the images to
the husband of the guest of honor, he commented that he'd "never seen such true eye
and flesh color" before in a photo of his wife - a flash shot taken at ISO 400, with no
NR applied. And a Canon dSLR user I met while bird-shooting asked me to send him
some images, which I did. He commented: "Such sharp shots from such a tiny little
camera - Amazing!" Typically 300 shots/charge is good! That's it.
Problems: I still have trouble seeing the LCD in bright sunlight, when there's a lot of glare
around.
Opinion: I LOVE this camera! I come from the more complex "Manual
menu" kind of camera (i.e. Nikon 4500), which still has its merits,
but when you want to pick up the camera and catch that bird
flying over, the DMC-FZ1 is QUICK! Yes, it's "point and shoot," but
that also means it's READY. It's light and very intuitive to use. My
wife loves it, and won't use my 4500 anymore! I took hundreds of
photos on a recent trip, and found that the image stabilization and
the fast lens gave me frozen subjects at any zoom, hand-held.
Problems: Haven't found a U.S. source for batteries yet, though on my trip,
the battery usually held up for a 100 photos or so, including
editing along the way. I use the EVR exclusively for framing, and
review via the LCD display. And yes, the 8 MB included SD card
isn't much.
Los Altos, CA, United States
