FZ1 field review

• Small, new-type battery lasts a LONG time, especially if you use the EVF.
• Both EVA and rear TFT screens are clear and bright
• Fast shot to shot. Shot write times are about 1 second at the highest quality.
• Good build quality. Camera feels well made and the balance is good with the battery and card in - otherwise he's a little tippy to the front - that's how big the lens is.
• Magnificent zoom. I really can't think of any other word. Wait until you try it. It is smooth, fast (no rattling, like my LC-5) and stabilization let me get sharp shots at full zoom at as low as 1/50th of a second. And the review mode's zooming is fast and easy too.
• Fast and accurate focus. Seems basically the same speed as my S602 (actually the lock at full zoom seemed to be faster than my 602 - which is just 6X!). The nicest thing for me was the quality of the focus lock, which helped to bump up the keeper rate. Continuous focus is available, but will eat up the battery a bit.
• Great colors. With the occasional exception of a saturated yellow, colors were very accurate. I did not feel I had to do any color correction in Photoshop, just a bit of sharpening and some grey point adjustments.
• Amazing printouts! These shots printed out beautifully on my cheapo Canon S500 printer at 240mm x 180mm (240dpi). No posterization, no low-res dots - just clean detail. (I especially liked #100's leaves.) Beautiful 8 x 10s seem to be no problem. Again, the detail is embarrassingly close to what my S602 can do. I could NOT believe these were from a 2Mpix camera. (Rich tells me this may have something to do with the sensor's diagonal interpolation.)
• Easy to learn The use of shooting modes helps keep things simple, which some may like. I stayed mostly in Macro and Standard modes.
• Good metering. Matrix metering worked well and I did not seem to have any problem with blowouts.
• ISO 50 is very clean.

• No manual control. I'm used to having it and it was a pain at times not being able to simply choose the aperture I wanted. But once I saw the camera's colors and metering were good, I didn't feel it was such a handicap. Possible workarounds: portrait mode gives you larger apertures than standard mode, and the panning mode gives smaller ones. Of course, + -2EV of compensation is there too. But I can imagine some would be frustrated by this.
• That 1.5 TFT is so small its hard to tell if the shot is sharp or not,so you'll need to go to review mode. But other cameras have the same problem.
• Night shots - whoops! This is another area where manual mode would be great. The manual says that Night mode is designed for taking night time pictures of a person (off the bow of a ship with the night harbor as a background, for example) who is near. I couldn't find any way to work around this in the 3 days I used it, but it might be a problem for some folks.
• ISO 400 is pretty noisy. Like most small cameras, 400 is not very usable. A kind of worst-case, can't get the shot any other way type of mode in a way, though Iimagine if you were good with NImage, you could get some good shots. would love to hear from others about this.

Jeffrey Knapp said:

This is a review by an amateur/weekend shooter after 3days of
shooting with Panasonic's new FZ1. I can't compete with Phil, so
please just think of this as information. (pbase shots:
http://www.pbase.com/fujioriginals/fz1_samples
Overall: I felt he was a fantastic litle camera. A real "keep it
with you all the time" type, cause he does so many of things well
and is so easy to use. Would he replace my 602? - not really, but I
was very pleased with the shots I got. The rate of keepers was
higher than I was expecting and it made deciding which to put up on
pbase fairly difficult. The camera is very easy to learn and use.
He's light and at first feels a bit "toy-like", but I got used to
him pretty quickly. I have big pockets so he fit easily inside, but
his lens is pretty large. Not a shirt-pocket type, but not too
obtrusive either.

Strong points:

• Small, new-type battery lasts a LONG time, especially if you use

the EVF.

• Both EVA and rear TFT screens are clear and bright
• Fast shot to shot. Shot write times are about 1 second at the

highest quality.

• Good build quality. Camera feels well made and the balance is

good with the battery and card in - otherwise he's a little tippy
to the front - that's how big the lens is.

• Magnificent zoom. I really can't think of any other word. Wait

until you try it. It is smooth, fast (no rattling, like my LC-5)
and stabilization let me get sharp shots at full zoom at as low as
1/50th of a second. And the review mode's zooming is fast and easy
too.

• Fast and accurate focus. Seems basically the same speed as my

S602 (actually the lock at full zoom seemed to be faster than my
602 - which is just 6X!). The nicest thing for me was the quality
of the focus lock, which helped to bump up the keeper rate.
Continuous focus is available, but will eat up the battery a bit.

• Great colors. With the occasional exception of a saturated

yellow, colors were very accurate. I did not feel I had to do any
color correction in Photoshop, just a bit of sharpening and some
grey point adjustments.

• Amazing printouts! These shots printed out beautifully on my

cheapo Canon S500 printer at 240mm x 180mm (240dpi). No
posterization, no low-res dots - just clean detail. (I especially
liked #100's leaves.) Beautiful 8 x 10s seem to be no problem.
Again, the detail is embarrassingly close to what my S602 can do. I
could NOT believe these were from a 2Mpix camera. (Rich tells me
this may have something to do with the sensor's diagonal
interpolation.)

• Easy to learn The use of shooting modes helps keep things

simple, which some may like. I stayed mostly in Macro and Standard
modes.

• Good metering. Matrix metering worked well and I did not seem to

have any problem with blowouts.

• ISO 50 is very clean.

Weak points:

• No manual control. I'm used to having it and it was a pain at

times not being able to simply choose the aperture I wanted. But
once I saw the camera's colors and metering were good, I didn't
feel it was such a handicap. Possible workarounds: portrait mode
gives you larger apertures than standard mode, and the panning mode
gives smaller ones. Of course, + -2EV of compensation is there too.
But I can imagine some would be frustrated by this.

• That 1.5 TFT is so small its hard to tell if the shot is sharp

or not,so you'll need to go to review mode. But other cameras have
the same problem.

• Night shots - whoops! This is another area where manual mode

would be great. The manual says that Night mode is designed for
taking night time pictures of a person (off the bow of a ship with
the night harbor as a background, for example) who is near. I
couldn't find any way to work around this in the 3 days I used it,
but it might be a problem for some folks.

• ISO 400 is pretty noisy. Like most small cameras, 400 is not very

usable. A kind of worst-case, can't get the shot any other way type
of mode in a way, though Iimagine if you were good with NImage, you
could get some good shots. would love to hear from others about
this.

Conclusion: I can't believe Panasonic USA isn't going to sell this
camera. It is wonderful. Even though I have the LC-5, I may buy one
just to have as a second camera. He does a LOT of things very well
for a very reasonable price. Again, I can't believe he's just
2Mpix. That is one amazing sensor.
--
Mr. Osaka

Click to expand...

Jeffrey Knapp said:

This is a review by an amateur/weekend shooter after 3days of
shooting with Panasonic's new FZ1. I can't compete with Phil, so
please just think of this as information. (pbase shots:
http://www.pbase.com/fujioriginals/fz1_samples
Overall: I felt he was a fantastic litle camera. A real "keep it
with you all the time" type, cause he does so many of things well
and is so easy to use. Would he replace my 602? - not really, but I
was very pleased with the shots I got. The rate of keepers was
higher than I was expecting and it made deciding which to put up on
pbase fairly difficult. The camera is very easy to learn and use.
He's light and at first feels a bit "toy-like", but I got used to
him pretty quickly. I have big pockets so he fit easily inside, but
his lens is pretty large. Not a shirt-pocket type, but not too
obtrusive either.

Strong points:

• Small, new-type battery lasts a LONG time, especially if you use

the EVF.

• Both EVA and rear TFT screens are clear and bright
• Fast shot to shot. Shot write times are about 1 second at the

highest quality.

• Good build quality. Camera feels well made and the balance is

good with the battery and card in - otherwise he's a little tippy
to the front - that's how big the lens is.

• Magnificent zoom. I really can't think of any other word. Wait

until you try it. It is smooth, fast (no rattling, like my LC-5)
and stabilization let me get sharp shots at full zoom at as low as
1/50th of a second. And the review mode's zooming is fast and easy
too.

• Fast and accurate focus. Seems basically the same speed as my

S602 (actually the lock at full zoom seemed to be faster than my
602 - which is just 6X!). The nicest thing for me was the quality
of the focus lock, which helped to bump up the keeper rate.
Continuous focus is available, but will eat up the battery a bit.

• Great colors. With the occasional exception of a saturated

yellow, colors were very accurate. I did not feel I had to do any
color correction in Photoshop, just a bit of sharpening and some
grey point adjustments.

• Amazing printouts! These shots printed out beautifully on my

cheapo Canon S500 printer at 240mm x 180mm (240dpi). No
posterization, no low-res dots - just clean detail. (I especially
liked #100's leaves.) Beautiful 8 x 10s seem to be no problem.
Again, the detail is embarrassingly close to what my S602 can do. I
could NOT believe these were from a 2Mpix camera. (Rich tells me
this may have something to do with the sensor's diagonal
interpolation.)

• Easy to learn The use of shooting modes helps keep things

simple, which some may like. I stayed mostly in Macro and Standard
modes.

• Good metering. Matrix metering worked well and I did not seem to

have any problem with blowouts.

• ISO 50 is very clean.

Weak points:

• No manual control. I'm used to having it and it was a pain at

times not being able to simply choose the aperture I wanted. But
once I saw the camera's colors and metering were good, I didn't
feel it was such a handicap. Possible workarounds: portrait mode
gives you larger apertures than standard mode, and the panning mode
gives smaller ones. Of course, + -2EV of compensation is there too.
But I can imagine some would be frustrated by this.

• That 1.5 TFT is so small its hard to tell if the shot is sharp

or not,so you'll need to go to review mode. But other cameras have
the same problem.

• Night shots - whoops! This is another area where manual mode

would be great. The manual says that Night mode is designed for
taking night time pictures of a person (off the bow of a ship with
the night harbor as a background, for example) who is near. I
couldn't find any way to work around this in the 3 days I used it,
but it might be a problem for some folks.

• ISO 400 is pretty noisy. Like most small cameras, 400 is not very

usable. A kind of worst-case, can't get the shot any other way type
of mode in a way, though Iimagine if you were good with NImage, you
could get some good shots. would love to hear from others about
this.

Conclusion: I can't believe Panasonic USA isn't going to sell this
camera. It is wonderful. Even though I have the LC-5, I may buy one
just to have as a second camera. He does a LOT of things very well
for a very reasonable price. Again, I can't believe he's just
2Mpix. That is one amazing sensor.
--
Mr. Osaka

Click to expand...

Jeffrey-at-home said:

BTW - I took well over 200 shots on one charge, using the TFT quite
a bit and basically just walking around with it turned on most of
the time. And the battery itself is not much bigger than two
microdrives stacked on top of each other.
Oh, and the tripod mount is a threaded steel sleeve. Worked very
well and felt secure.

Click to expand...

twg said:

Jeffrey-at-home said:

BTW - I took well over 200 shots on one charge, using the TFT quite
a bit and basically just walking around with it turned on most of
the time. And the battery itself is not much bigger than two
microdrives stacked on top of each other.
Oh, and the tripod mount is a threaded steel sleeve. Worked very
well and felt secure.

Click to expand...

I am from Hongkong, nikon 5700 user.

I have tried the FZ-1 and played a little and feel exactly
what Jeffery's written in the review. Really a great and
lovely DC.

I would like to add, it's the most STYLISH DC I've ever seen !

In Hongkong, it costs hk$3900 and around. Im thinking about
swopping it with my 5700( ???!!)

twg

Click to expand...

some1 said:

twg said:

Jeffrey-at-home said:

BTW - I took well over 200 shots on one charge, using the TFT quite
a bit and basically just walking around with it turned on most of
the time. And the battery itself is not much bigger than two
microdrives stacked on top of each other.
Oh, and the tripod mount is a threaded steel sleeve. Worked very
well and felt secure.

Click to expand...

I am from Hongkong, nikon 5700 user.

I have tried the FZ-1 and played a little and feel exactly
what Jeffery's written in the review. Really a great and
lovely DC.

I would like to add, it's the most STYLISH DC I've ever seen !

In Hongkong, it costs hk$3900 and around. Im thinking about
swopping it with my 5700( ???!!)

twg

Click to expand...

you got to be joking....

i have been monitoring fz1 since panasonic announced it. quite
impressed by its spec and have been trying to find enough reason to
justify another purchase. so far, only Jeff's review provide
sufficient details.

it does seems to have the potentials to be a good dc, but i really
think the 2 cameras are of different leagues. 2mp replacing 5mp
??!!

what make you want to do that???

Click to expand...

pc1 said:

pc1 said:

pc1 said:

In Hongkong, it costs hk$3900 and around. Im thinking about
swopping it with my 5700( ???!!)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

pc1 said:

Now, if you have a choice, which one would you pick? BTW, I just
start to pick photography up as my hobby. Would you say FZ1 is
quite enough for a beginner who wants a powerful zoom dc?

Click to expand...

some1 said:

twg said:

Jeffrey-at-home said:

BTW - I took well over 200 shots on one charge, using the TFT quite
a bit and basically just walking around with it turned on most of
the time. And the battery itself is not much bigger than two
microdrives stacked on top of each other.
Oh, and the tripod mount is a threaded steel sleeve. Worked very
well and felt secure.

Click to expand...

I am from Hongkong, nikon 5700 user.

I have tried the FZ-1 and played a little and feel exactly
what Jeffery's written in the review. Really a great and
lovely DC.

I would like to add, it's the most STYLISH DC I've ever seen !

In Hongkong, it costs hk$3900 and around. Im thinking about
swopping it with my 5700( ???!!)

twg

Click to expand...

you got to be joking....

i have been monitoring fz1 since panasonic announced it. quite
impressed by its spec and have been trying to find enough reason to
justify another purchase. so far, only Jeff's review provide
sufficient details.

it does seems to have the potentials to be a good dc, but i really
think the 2 cameras are of different leagues. 2mp replacing 5mp
??!!

what make you want to do that???

Click to expand...

twg said:

some1 said:

twg said:

Jeffrey-at-home said:

BTW - I took well over 200 shots on one charge, using the TFT quite
a bit and basically just walking around with it turned on most of
the time. And the battery itself is not much bigger than two
microdrives stacked on top of each other.
Oh, and the tripod mount is a threaded steel sleeve. Worked very
well and felt secure.

Click to expand...

I am from Hongkong, nikon 5700 user.

I have tried the FZ-1 and played a little and feel exactly
what Jeffery's written in the review. Really a great and
lovely DC.

I would like to add, it's the most STYLISH DC I've ever seen !

In Hongkong, it costs hk$3900 and around. Im thinking about
swopping it with my 5700( ???!!)

twg

Click to expand...

you got to be joking....

i have been monitoring fz1 since panasonic announced it. quite
impressed by its spec and have been trying to find enough reason to
justify another purchase. so far, only Jeff's review provide
sufficient details.

it does seems to have the potentials to be a good dc, but i really
think the 2 cameras are of different leagues. 2mp replacing 5mp
??!!

what make you want to do that???

Click to expand...

Don't be over-reacted. May be I was joking but
the leica's 420mm in 2.8max aperture really a killer !

I am very addicted to LONG FOCAL LENGTH
and the CANON's 400mm 2.8..was my dreams
in the bad old days...

In fact I am thinking of purchasing it as my
2nd DC.

You will love it when you see it live !

Warm Regards,
twg

Click to expand...

some1 said:

hi twg,

has fz1 been launched in hong kong? when was it launched?

so far there is no news of it launching in singapore, where i live.
tried contacting panasonic (singapore) several times through email,
but not a single reply from them.

olympus offers much better service. they even called me personally
after i left a message at their website, querying about their c-730
launch. but that's another story.

love it when i see it? yes, i am betting on that, alrite !!!

by only concern is whether there will be a fz-2 a few months down
the road. esp if it comes with manual overrides

cheers

Click to expand...

twg said:

some1 said:

hi twg,

has fz1 been launched in hong kong? when was it launched?

so far there is no news of it launching in singapore, where i live.
tried contacting panasonic (singapore) several times through email,
but not a single reply from them.

olympus offers much better service. they even called me personally
after i left a message at their website, querying about their c-730
launch. but that's another story.

love it when i see it? yes, i am betting on that, alrite !!!

by only concern is whether there will be a fz-2 a few months down
the road. esp if it comes with manual overrides

cheers

Click to expand...

The ones which being sold at Hongkong are directly imported fm
Japan. It's gonna tobe popular here very soon.

The one which I tried today was in black - took my breath away!

If I were you, I would prefer fz-1 to 730, no question.

However, I am also very much looking forward to seeing
a fz-xx in near future with all the manual controls and at least....
3mp, at least. I will buy it instantly even it is of the same
price as my 5700!

Warm Regards,
twg

Click to expand...

Rich said:

Sure it's great that the 5700 has an impressive 5mp, but if you're
not going to make a lot of large prints then the 5mp is overkill.
Some people say "well, 5mp will let you crop" but with a 12x zoom
you should be able to get enough of your subject in the frame that
there's no need for cropping. Add to that the faster longer lens
plus (and this is crucial) image stabilization, and it should let
you take pictures that just aren't possible with any other digicam
(unless maybe you spent several thousands on one of Canon's
stablilized L lenses). I see the camera as being an excellent
companion to someone who already has something like a G2 or Coolpix
or even a d30.

Rich

Click to expand...

Jeffrey-at-home said:

jeff-at-work said:

jeff-at-work said:

jeff-at-work said:

In Hongkong, it costs hk$3900 and around. Im thinking about
swopping it with my 5700( ???!!)

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

jeff-at-work said:

Now, if you have a choice, which one would you pick? BTW, I just
start to pick photography up as my hobby. Would you say FZ1 is
quite enough for a beginner who wants a powerful zoom dc?

Click to expand...

Hands down I'd pick the FZ1 - he's got everything you need as a
beginner. Please remember the night shot limitation - that may put
some people off. But if that's not such a big deal, I'd go for it.
You can practice framing your shots and working with different
subjects. After you get good with him, you can move on(up) to more
manual control - and I'll bet you'll still want to keep him as a
backup camera.
--
At-home-in-Osaka

Click to expand...

some1 said:

fz-xx? my constraint here is i cannot keep buying new 'toys', my
wife will kill me !!! hahahah ....

looks forward to your review of fz1 when you purchase one. for me,
i would have to wait patiently for it to be launched here. sigh.

cheers,

Click to expand...

pc1 said:

Some more questions for you Rich, do you find 2M pixels adequate?
Will panasonic use this FZ1 as testing the water before releasing a
more up market dc?

Click to expand...

pc1 said:

than CF card.

Click to expand...

pc1 said:

for a 256M SD card? (256/2 = 128 pic ?)

Click to expand...

some1 said:

yes, IS is the major plus point here. without it, i might not even
consider fz1. one reason why c2100 has such a large following is
its IS. my hope is fz1 proves to be as popular and comparable to
c2100. then we would be sending a strong signal to the
manufacturer to bring back IS

cheers

Click to expand...