FZ20 limitations.

Hello.

I'm new so apologies for asking a question which I'm sure has been discussed many times. Feel free anyone, to point me in the direction of an existing thread.

ok so I have the FZ-20 and I've used it a lot in the past 9 months that I've had it. I find it brilliant for macro and daytime shots but find it really struggles in low light-is this a common problem or am I doing something wrong? Also I find it struggles to focus on high zoom.
These are a few examples of shots taken with it last night:

Well, as I don't own FZ20, I don't know much of its limitations.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that these are very beautiful low light images. Well done.

--
Jarkko

Cymbeline said:

Hello.
I'm new so apologies for asking a question which I'm sure has been
discussed many times. Feel free anyone, to point me in the
direction of an existing thread.
ok so I have the FZ-20 and I've used it a lot in the past 9 months
that I've had it. I find it brilliant for macro and daytime shots
but find it really struggles in low light-is this a common problem
or am I doing something wrong? Also I find it struggles to focus on
high zoom.

Click to expand...

I like you images and no you are not doing anything wrong - these are limitations of the FZ20 although it was improved somewhat on the FZ30. The new FZ50 may be better but I haven't tried it yet.

Some suggestions for low light:

• Try using the manual focus.
• Focus on a brightly light and contrasty object in the scene.
• Use on of the scene modes that focuses to infinity.
• Others have written about a technique to force the camera to focus to infinity.
• Moving objects such as people use the flash.

--
Neil

Hi Cymbeline,

It is true that the FZ20 is not the king of low light photography. But you seem to be doing pretty well with it. I particularly like the last two pictures for the quality of light you have captured. The FZ20 is capable of nuanced lighting, but usually at the expense of dynamic range. I have my exposure comepensation set at - 2/3's in order to avoid clipping the highlights. But I'm usually torn on whether to go with a darker picture in order to preserve the subtle highlights, or to do selective PP to round it out. Below are two pictures that illustrate my point. I acutally like the first one better, but it prints out fairly dark.



In the second picture, I selectively lightened the darker areas.



Recently, I have been experimenting with a technique I read about on one of these forums in which you set the ISO to 400, and the exposure compensation to - 2. This effectively pushes the ISO upward. You have to have some good anti-noise software, but it can be useful for action shots. Here is a link I posted showing reults of this technique:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=19853991&q=iso+400+fz20&qf=m

One can also use the lemons/lemonade theory and create something new on the basis of if it looks good, why define it?



And sometimes you(I) get lucky.



Hope this helps.

Regards,
SBS

Thanks for the tips, comments and compliments. I have written down all the tips and will be trying them next time I go out with my cam. SBS-I agree with you, I much prefer your first pic. I'm having the same prob with my low light sunset shots-whilst they look fine on screen, they print out too dark

I have paintshop pro (old copy) but really am not too familiar with it other than for cropping, resizing etc. When I try and experiment with it I make the pics worse.

Overall I have really loved this camera, it's only after 9 months of lots of photographs (and my skills improving) I am noticing some limitations.

HI,

I think the problem with the first two is mainly that you have "blown the moon". It is incredibly difficult to take a long exposure when something that bright is in the picture. Consider using a graduated filter (something like a ND8) to filter the bright object.

I am discussing the low-light capabilities of the FZ20 in another thread and have posted some of my own low-light pics
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=19972061

The one of the Dock and Office blocks in the distance gave me just that problem..The lights on the top "blew out" whenever I tried a long exposure...until I used a graduated filter!

And here are a couple from my Smugmug gallery!





No magic tricks..just trial and error...and that's half the fun!!

Keep up the good work.
--
Regards

John

Panasonic FZ20 & FZ50
http://www.jcorbett.smugmug.com

John,

Your photos are excellent. The idea of using a ND filter is a useful suggestion. I'm wondering if an ND (lower rating) wouldn't be useful in general in that the FZ20 is so prone to over exposure?

Regards,
SBS

That's interesting to hear you mention FZ20 being prone to overexposure-I always underexpose my photos because they were just too light otherwise.

I've made a note of the filter, the only one I've used so far is a polarising one so i'm really unfamiliar with types of filter.

Agreed that Johns photos were fab. I especially loved the London eye. I was there yesterday, but not in the evening unfortunately.
Am appreciating your comments.