FZ30 - what a shame

After looking at the samples from the new 5D that Minolta posted on their website, vs. photos from the Panasonic FZ30 that phil posted, I was more impressed with the results from the Panasonic.

The story may be different at higher ISOs, but with AS, that may not be an issue for the majority of situations.

The Panasonic is not a shame. A bigger shame is when someone buys a beautiful piece of camera gear, and lacks the talent to do it justice.

This camera represents the leading edge of technology in a point and shoot ultrazoom camera. I have not read all of the remarks up to this point, but what a narrow minded thing to say. I have owned the FZ20, and currently own the Canon 20D. At 100 asa, the Panasonic is awesome! Pixel peep all you want, but the prints are great! It does not match the DSLR in quality completely, but in a travel album, and up to 11x14, pictures look proffesional (if you know how to use the point and shoot).

Big sensor = big lenses. Small sensor = small lenses. My DSLR back pack weighs a ton! Lenses, flashes, battery grip, filters, etc. I went to Mexico with the FZ20, an Olympus WCON 07 wide eye, and pola, that all fit in a mini bag and weighed almost nothing. I shot close ups that I cannot get with my 70-200 canon. Think what you like, but the ultrazoom has its place in photography, and the FZ30 happens to be the best there is right now. Don't slam it.
Cheers, Ted

I agree, you hit the nail on the head!

why is the shutter speed only at 2000 compared to other ones 8mp at 4000. Looks not good don't you think? What about night vision like sony's?

As a newcomer, I simply do not understand why people get so emotional over toys.

I also find the discussion misunderstood, - this is obviously not about dslr's vs. point and shoot, but about the choices panasonics made when squeezing all those pixels down on that tiny sensor.

I have a FZ20 which also is barely usable at ISO 80, so the loudmouth has a point.

I would have loved panasonics for keeping it at 4MP, - 8MP is even far too much on a 2/3" sensor, - never mind the even smaller one at FZ30.

It's not unreasonable to demand freedom from noise at ISO 200, but many users here seems to think, that their purpose in life is to remain uncritical guineapigs for whatever whimps the manufacturers might have.

It's fine to increase the MP's, but the current trend of doing it on the expense of S/N shows dismal regard for the image uality.

What was the temperature of the sensor
when the pictures were taken?

Just a thought ...

Just my two öre
Erik from Sweden
F Z 5

roughtrade said:

snip
With new and dirt cheap low-end DSLR's coming out all the time,
that offers infinetely better imaging quality

Click to expand...

only one problem in your argument: dSLRs are still out of reach for most shooters. You also forgot to factor in the lenses equation; a dSLR body gets you nowhere without a lens, and most bundled lens kits are low-quality stuff. A good lens costs more than $100, and that doesn't even include the bags required to hold the precious glass without breaking them.

A good long-range 100-400mm telephoto lens, to get anywhere near what the FZs can do these days, cost a whopping half-grand and up.

Well, I disagree with you, baby. For a digicam the nosie is fine, and even low end DSLRs are much more expensive than this, once you add in lenses.

I'm tired of all these noise-phobes.
There's plenty of software choices out there to remove noise in post processing.

ANY camera can be a point and shoot, it depends on it's user. I've seen so many owners of high end DSLR's that use them as point-and-shoots. They set them to auto-focus, auto-exposrue, and if there was a setting for auto-composition, they would use that too.

They don't shoot in RAW, and the most post-processing they do is remove the red-eye from their baby pics so they won't look like Rosmary's Baby.

On ther flip side, a good artist can produce excellent photographic images with a pinhole camera made from a cardboard box. Too bad there's no digital version out there.

I put forth that as soon as ANY camera features RAW mode, it no longer is a simple point-and-shoot. (Unless the user treats it like one.) You have the ability to apply so many of your choices into the picture, just like the old days of darkrooms.

Applications like Pixmantic that does an excellent job of removing noise during RAW> JPEG conversion makes my above statment more true.

A camera is what the user makes it. Owning a DSLR system with all the accessories does not make you a photographer. No more than simply wearing a white collar makes you a man of God, or owning a Harley make you a outlaw biker.

Stop trolling and start shooting.

rant

Aint that the truth! I hate it when my friends do that with there little 4MP Canon Ixus Digitals, and just by shear chance they manage to take a picture that I like (at a party for example) and I find out that the resolution was set to 640*480!

I blame the whole camera phone craze for making the public ignorant of what a reasonable quality picture looks like. Even the days of single-use Kodaks were better!

\rant

Laurens

zigg said:

They'll simply get the biggest megapixel camera and then set it to
the lowest resolution - "to fit more pictures in" - and they'll get
angry if you try to explain.

Click to expand...

...being "stupid" or being an a$$hole, you make a really strong case for choosing "stupid."

Since context is everything, and not understanding that context could be called downright idiodic, I'll do you a favor and explain it for you (don't worry, I'll type r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w so even you can keep up):

Occasionally, the Earth doesn't revolve around you, it just revolves. Not every product was intended for you. That doesn't automatically make it stupid.

I agree with this comment totally. There are too many DSLR elists, who think their pounds of expensive equipment makes them a good photographer. They term any non-DSLR, even high end prosumers known for excellent image quality (there are many out there), 'point and shoot' even those these cameras can have as much photographic control as DSLRs. Apparently, this is a tactic to minimize others, and in the process (at least in their minds), boost their own egos. Enough already. Many of us played the equipment game years ago with 35mm, got tired of it, and now like the high quality images that can be made with these top prosumers.

Seems like you don't have much of a choice?

I can't recalll any other forum where people become so emotional over their toys.
Seems childish to me.

Opinions rhat can't be substantiated by facts are irrelevant.
I's also besides the point.

It's still NOT about X vs. Y, but ONLY about whether it's a good idea to choose such high resolutiom that the key audience don't need anyway and be punished by very higl levels of noise and a reduction in the allready limited dynamic rane.

Of course it's not a good idea, - but it appears than any rational criticism are met with the usual suspects screaming bloody murder in their misguided brandloyalty.

Remember, I said "if." I posed a narowly-focused hypothetical situation but, personally, I have many choices. It seemed to me that r-trade was reducing evrything down to just two categories:

1) what r-trade likes

and

2) all the other "stupid" stuff.

I think there is actually a lot of neat stuff out there, some that suits me, some that suits you, some that suits somebody else, maybe some stuff that doesn't suit anybody.

Also, you need not vest observations with emotions. R-trade was (I think) deliberately abrasive and has been treated surprisingly gentle here (I think).

You are entirely correct, -this is not about cams vs. dslr's, but about the MP-sillyness.

With perhaps 4MP on the extremely tiny sensor, it would have been a usefull sweet little toy.

Getting outrageous noiselevels and much reduced dynamic range just to achieve resolution that 99% of the target audience do not need anyway is a very bad trade off.

Why the usual suspects are screaming bloody murder over this irrefutable fact must be one of the greater mysteries of irrational human behavior.
It's just another toy, so why get so out of control emotional?

xxl

It's good that you hold the importance of facts in such high regard.

I can't speak for the particular camera in this debate but I can speak from experience about two cameras I do own - the 8 MP Minolta A200 and the 8MP Canon 350D DSLR.

At base ISO in reasonable light there simply isn't a noticeable image quality difference between them on a 10 x 8 inch print and only a small one in an A3 print.

And that's a fact.

xxl said:

Opinions rhat can't be substantiated by facts are irrelevant.
I's also besides the point.
It's still NOT about X vs. Y, but ONLY about whether it's a good
idea to choose such high resolutiom that the key audience don't
need anyway and be punished by very higl levels of noise and a
reduction in the allready limited dynamic rane.
Of course it's not a good idea, - but it appears than any rational
criticism are met with the usual suspects screaming bloody murder
in their misguided brandloyalty.

Click to expand...

Choices are good, but if you find the message "abbrassive" why take the bait?

Personally I find no need to get so emotional on either side of the issue, I think everyone can see noise is as usual the Achilles heel of cams with tiny sensors if they insist on unneccesary high MP-numbers purely for marketing purposes.

Unfortunately they all do these days, - and that unfortunate trend is not likely to chance if people go on autopilot whenever justified criticism are raised.

There really can't be much doubt that it would have been a far better camera if they had made it with fewer but larger photosites.

As a newcomer coming from an entirely different tech. world, I find the level of emotional and irrational brandloyalty very strange.

Well, there's facts, but the application of said facts is diminished by the hyperbolic conclusion of worthlessness.

Like you said, why should r-trade get so emotional about his dislike of this particular camera?

WOW, you can't see much of a difference if you restrict yourself to shooting at ISO 64 in perfect light.
That's incredible.

I always wondered why cameraes have more than a ISO 50 setting since that is more than enough for 99.99% of all situations.