You can produce some very fine images with this camera. The operation is smooth and logical, and the great zoom range helps you compose your picture just the way you want. There is simply no comparison; a mechanical zoom is far preferablle to a motorized one. I'm not exactly sure why motorized ones exist, to be blunt about it. Engineers with too much spare time. Anyway. YES the images can be noisy in low light, and sadly, even when using ISO 80. You will get some pictures that you think "Wow, this'd make a great 11x14" print" and come to find out you can't because of noise. But noise can be fixed. There are several excellent programs that can do it. Panasonic might have done better by including one.
The colors are rich and vibrant but not oversaturated. I like the look. Some of the images remind me of Kodak Portra 160, the flesh tones are that awesome. Focusing is pretty good too, even in low light, but there are a few misses. The EVF is good enough to manually focus with, a real fault of the earlier FZ20 - manual focus was a joke. This camera has 2 different focus assist modes for manual focus and both are excellent.
Weaknesses? You already know the big one. Noise. Oh, and EVF type cameras are not good for action sequences - that's why they usually have movie modes.
I've found the continuous AF tracking to be useless for a subject moving towards the camera at a good speed, but even my 20D has that problem, just to a lesser degree.
All in all a worthy upgrade to the FZ20, but if noise bothers you and keeps you up at night, don't buy one. I have a strong suspicion that Panasonic's FZ40 will be a *killer* camera if they try hard enough - and that all their resources aren't all sucked into the DSLR venture!
Problems:
My camera is working perfectly.
The colors are rich and vibrant but not oversaturated. I like the look. Some of the images remind me of Kodak Portra 160, the flesh tones are that awesome. Focusing is pretty good too, even in low light, but there are a few misses. The EVF is good enough to manually focus with, a real fault of the earlier FZ20 - manual focus was a joke. This camera has 2 different focus assist modes for manual focus and both are excellent.
Weaknesses? You already know the big one. Noise. Oh, and EVF type cameras are not good for action sequences - that's why they usually have movie modes.
I've found the continuous AF tracking to be useless for a subject moving towards the camera at a good speed, but even my 20D has that problem, just to a lesser degree.All in all a worthy upgrade to the FZ20, but if noise bothers you and keeps you up at night, don't buy one. I have a strong suspicion that Panasonic's FZ40 will be a *killer* camera if they try hard enough - and that all their resources aren't all sucked into the DSLR venture!
Problems:
My camera is working perfectly.