What a surprise! FZ50

Just before our trip to Bucks County (PA, USA) today, my husband handed me a brand new FZ50! He even charged the battery. It's a gift for me taking care of his very ill relatives over the last few months. He knew I was getting frustrated with the FZ20 as a general purpose, travel camera. (And, yes, I still have and love my DSLR). So he bought this for me, not knowing I had some reservations about the FZ50 from the review.

Well anyway, off we went and I had a really good time using the camera. It's fast, quiet, easy to use. I didn't have enough time to really get to know it yet but I have some pix to illustrate some of my early findings. Please see a few samples below and the rest are in the gallery:

http://katerk.smugmug.com/gallery/2092597

-- Kate

First of all, I took some pretty challenging pix with the FZ50, numerous low light, some high contrast, some long zoom, others close-up. Overall, my results were mixed.

One poster mentioned a definite blue cast to his/her pix and I would have to agree with this (all settings defaults except NR set to low). It can be corrected in post-processing but it is rather annoying:



If you look at just the first page of the gallery, you will really see it.

On the other hand, the indoor, no flash pix were really pretty good for a non-DSLR:





High contrast, also quite good (except for the blue cast):



Here's one that came out well, a miniature horse trotting over to us hoping for a carrot, I guess:



And, sadly, we didn't have any carrots. I wouldn't feed an animal without permission anyway:



But the real disappointment in these first results is that the smearing problem is real. I have an example below in an indoor picture but I also saw it is bright, sunny outdoor pix at 100 ISO. So far, it doesn't seem to be consistent or I could find ways to avoid it. Any suggestions? I think correct exposure is really critical, for one.

Indoor, no flash:



Close-up:



Outdoor:



Close-up:



If anyone has any other suggestions for how to make the image quality better and more consistent, I'm open to it. I have 30 days to test it.

Thanks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.
-- Edward W. Bok

What you think may be "smearing" at ISO 100 may instead be over-sharpening? I think at ISO 100, the "smearing" algorithm, such as it is, hasn't cut in yet. Check your level of in-camera sharpening.
I'm glad you "like" your new camera. What a nice husband, to do that for you!
--
Just cruisin' ...



EffZeeOneVeeTwo, EffZeeThirty, Tizzy (who captured the Eagle)

If you didn't have any carrots for the horse....How did you know it came for a carrot ? It might have come over to look at your new FZ50 ?

--
FZ forever

Hi Kate! Just wanted to say I love the horsie! They are amazingly small. I like that house! The stonework is gorgeous. Is that yours. Is that a xmas tree up already? I also like carousels.
You put all may faves in one post!

Good luck with the camera. Sounds like you deserve one. Caregiving can burn you out.......but it is something caring people choose to do!
May you good deed come back round to you in a stronger way!

--
CJ N SC
Big Big Love. That's my boy!

I let your Smugmug account do a slideshow of all the pics. Overall I say you and your camera did quite well. I saw a few shots that may have been just a touch out of focus. The two closeups you posted to this thread were the worst of all. The macro of the flower in the centerpiece of the table looked like it was taken as extremely high ISO without a flash. Maybe after some PP to remove noise that pic would be acceptable. The pic where you zoomed in on the rock house window looked about the same, high ISO with lots of noise. However, if you go back and look at the 70 pics you put on your account, only those two I mentioned are unacceptable (in my opinion) straight from the camera. But with a lil PP they would be good captures that the average non-DSLR camera would have never gotten. Forget about those couple pics and concentrate on the 60+ that are wonderful.
--
My FZ10 was replaced by the FZ50.
http://img42.photobucket.com/albums/v130/rbbnet/

KateRK said:

If anyone has any other suggestions for how to make the image
quality better and more consistent, I'm open to it. I have 30 days
to test it.

Click to expand...

You can do 2 things.

1) Play with camera settings. Set the noise reduction and sharpness to LOW.

2) Do what the reviewer here suggest. Rezise all your shots to 6 megapixels before touching them. This downsizing will eliminate most of the problems, leaving you with much better shots (pixel-to-pixel wise).

As for the blue color cast, always set the white balance manually, based on actual conditions. When not in AUTO mode (i.e. camera set to sunny, cloudy, fluorescent tube etc.), FZ50 will give you the option to manually shift the white balance towards RED. Just press the up arrow key few times (applies to FZ30) and push the slider to the left.

I think you will grow to love your FZ50. The venus lll engine is not all bad. My TZ1 has the same engine and in everyday photography the problems everyone is talking about, like color smearing aren't as evident. I know this. My TZ1 is the fastest digital camera I've used. It has quick startup, quick focus, quick focus in difficult lighting.

So give hubby a big hug and thank him for his thoughtfulness. At least your generous spirit doesn't go unnoticed or taken for granted.

I find the auto white balance fabulously good on my FZ50 - often better than the presets for cloudy, sunny, flash, etc. However, if your camera seems to have a blue cast you can fix all WB settings to your liking in afour-way colour matrix in the menu (menu item below WB). Here you can reduce the blue cast you dislike and it will keep this setting at all times unless you decide to change it again. I have a warm reddish cast on flash photos so I have tweaked the WB preset for flash and added blue and green some three-four notches and it makes a big deifference.

As goes settings you might want to put everything low and then use a good pp program to touch up your photos. If you want to minimize pp at least keep sharpness and contrast no higher than standard and NR at low. I keep contrast and NR low and I am going to try to set sharpness at low also and see if I get better result in photoshop with USM as there are too much sharpening artifacts in shots at full zoom of far away subjects, especially when a tad underexposed.

those are great pics... but the rabbit scares me...

My question: where can I find woman who prefer FZ50 over jewelry?
(just kidding)

The shot with the house, are those real pumpkins? That's a lot of pumpkins...

Can't really see the colour cast you're talking about, but, to my eye, most of the pics seem underexposed.

Anne G has already posted some of her superb pics which I certainly can't compete with, but here are some of the very first shots I took with the FZ50 for comparison:-





(Highlights slightly burn't out because too high a dynamic range)





(Full original size versions available in my Pbase gallery)

Don't know what to suggest without seeing the original full size jpeg/raw files, but I feel the camera should be performing better than it seems to.

--
Colin

http://www.pbase.com/cdyckes

with it! Your interior shots are great - the light is great. (Lovely house you have there.)
Hope it works out for you.
Cheers
Joel
http://www.Joel-Canada.smugmug.com

Are the WB adjustments specific to each setting or is the same offset applied to all presets?

ngari said:

I find the auto white balance fabulously good on my FZ50 - often
better than the presets for cloudy, sunny, flash, etc. However, if
your camera seems to have a blue cast you can fix all WB settings
to your liking in afour-way colour matrix in the menu (menu item
below WB). Here you can reduce the blue cast you dislike and it
will keep this setting at all times unless you decide to change it
again. I have a warm reddish cast on flash photos so I have tweaked
the WB preset for flash and added blue and green some three-four
notches and it makes a big deifference.

Click to expand...

They are specific to each preset so you can change those you want to adjust and leave others as they are

Today, I took John Reed's advice and set all but the saturation to low. That has seemed to help some. I also read the manual last night and discovered the fine white balance adjustment and used that to (mostly) remove the blue cast from the pix. Still needs some tuning, IMHO.

The more I work with the FZ50, the more I think that Panasonic really tuned this camera to be better indoors than previous models and thus lost some resolution on outdoor pix. This is particularly noticeable in foliage.

However, my results today were much better. Some needed a little pp tweaking as a result of the lower settings. But the stonework I took today was much better.

See what you think.

I'm still "earning" this camera, had to rush to the ER again this afternoon. Fortunately it was a false alarm and the relative was OK.

-- Kate

Chapel door:





Mums:



Foliage not so great:



Indoor (without flash), less blue cast:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.
-- Edward W. Bok

John_Reed said:

What you think may be "smearing" at ISO 100 may instead be
over-sharpening? I think at ISO 100, the "smearing" algorithm, such
as it is, hasn't cut in yet. Check your level of in-camera
sharpening.

Click to expand...

I set the sharpening to low and that has helped some except on foliage. See my latest post later in this thread. Thanks for your suggestions.

John_Reed said:

I'm glad you "like" your new camera. What a nice husband, to do
that for you!

Click to expand...

Yup. Lucky in love, I am.

Thanks.

-- Kate

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.
-- Edward W. Bok

--
Thanks.

-- Kate

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.
-- Edward W. Bok

Hi Kate,

I've been runnin' with all settings to standard and NR to low with good success with my FZ50. Good luck and have fun with your new cam!
--



Regards,
Kirwin
http://timebandit.smugmug.com

RIVERFOOT said:

Hi Kate! Just wanted to say I love the horsie!
They are amazingly small.

Click to expand...

Yes, I think that one was about 3 1/2 feet tall only. Such cuties.

RIVERFOOT said:

I like that house! The stonework is gorgeous. Is that yours.

Click to expand...

No, just one that we passed. I liked the pumpkin decorations.

RIVERFOOT said:

Is that a xmas tree up already?

Click to expand...

I didn't notice a christmas tree?

RIVERFOOT said:

I also like carousels.

Click to expand...

The carousel was "rescued" from oblivion and is now one of the main attractions in that area. I love carousels, too!

RIVERFOOT said:

You put all may faves in one post!
Good luck with the camera. Sounds like you deserve one. Caregiving
can burn you out.......but it is something caring people choose to
do!
May you good deed come back round to you in a stronger way!

Click to expand...

That's all we can ask for, to have people around you who care.

Thanks.

-- Kate

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.
-- Edward W. Bok

I too use all STD except NR at low.

The latest pics seem to have much better saturation and exposure and really look good!

Personally, I think the FZ50 is much better outdoors at ISO 100, so that is where I do most of my shooting.

--
Colin

http://www.pbase.com/cdyckes

Robby said:

I let your Smugmug account do a slideshow of all the pics. Overall
I say you and your camera did quite well. I saw a few shots that
may have been just a touch out of focus. The two closeups you
posted to this thread were the worst of all. The macro of the
flower in the centerpiece of the table looked like it was taken as
extremely high ISO without a flash.

Click to expand...

ISO 200, F 2.8, 1/30, no flash.

Robby said:

Maybe after some PP to remove
noise that pic would be acceptable. The pic where you zoomed in on
the rock house window looked about the same, high ISO with lots of
noise.

Click to expand...

ISO 100. F11, 1/800.

Now you can see why I worried about the noise at the lower ISOs.

Robby said:

However, if you go back and look at the 70 pics you put on
your account, only those two I mentioned are unacceptable (in my
opinion) straight from the camera. But with a lil PP they would be
good captures that the average non-DSLR camera would have never
gotten. Forget about those couple pics and concentrate on the 60+
that are wonderful.

Click to expand...

Ah, but I took 194 pix. The ones I posted in the gallery were, for the most part, the better ones. You should see some of the rest, they are very disappointing. But the jury is still out, I will continue testing.

Thanks.

-- Kate

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it.
-- Edward W. Bok