Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 Superb !

Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ-8





Out of the box: The camera comes with all the accessories to get you going, except a SDHC memory card ( you can re-use your old SD card up to 2 Gb).





The battery must be charged ( takes 2 hours...not bad ) on panasonics' charger ( included ). The 2 hours can be well spent attaching the straps and reading the manual. Reading the manual is very important because this camera is so feature laden, that to unlock the full potential of this camera you REALLY need to read the manual.If you don't read the manual and plan to just throw it in auto and "point and shoot", then you will be quite happy with your pictures.





Megapixels: 7.2 million. more than you will ever need. My HP R717 had 6.2 million and took horrible pictures no matter what I tried. This means that you shouldn't worry about the numbers of the sensor, but instead, look closer at the camera built around it.





The manual: Easy enough to read, lots of symbols that match what you see on the screen or electronic viewfinder. It seems to be in a logical order so that once you read a few pages, you can get going quickly.





Ergonomics: The camera has some weight to it. THIS IS GOOD !. A little extra weight means that the camera is not as easy to shake and mess up a picture. Even with my big paws, the camera fits nicely in my hand, with the right thumb resting on a special area designed for it, and the index finger goes intuitively on the shutter/zoom switch. The other 3 fingers wrap around the body on a rubberish grip that has a well placed contour for the middle finger. You need to use 2 hands for your right thumb to work the little joystick and menu buttons ( even with my big thumbs, it isnt bad ).





After the battery and memory are installed: Initial turn-on reveals a big bright screen with excellent resolution.





Auto Mode: You have few options ( hey its auto mode....). The first thing you should do is pop up the flash ( it does NOT automatically pop up by itself ), and in this ONE instance, panasonic fell on their face, by not giving you a warning that you should use the flash. Instead the handshake warning shows up ion the screen. This means that you are going to have a long shutter time and the picture will be subject to blur because the shutter is open a long time, to let in enough light to give you a proper exposure in auto mode. This can be compensated by the optical image stabilizer ( I just leave it on ), but just pop up the flash and let the camera do its thing. Its thing, is to take pretty decent pics in auto mode !





Other modes ( except movie ): When other modes, you have a wealth of information on the screen. You can ( depending on the mode) change exposure, F-stop, shutter speed ( and of course go into the menu and change ISO ). When in full manual mode, you get a nice exposure meter onscreen that, once you press the shutter to focus the camera, you get the exposure and then have about 10 seconds ( even with your finger OFF the shutter button ) to change the F or shutter speed with the joystick under your right thumb. There is a nice onscreen menu for the joystick, telling you which directions you can go, and once you have made a change, the shutter speed changes from white to yellow ( indicating that you are changing the shutter speed ), or the focus area, of the F ( each changes from white to yellow to tell you whats selected ). Very nice.





Movie mode: This is great for taking short clips. It is not recommended to substitute in the place of a real video camera, but in a pinch you wont be disappointed. The sound quality is a little poor, but the picture is surprising.





Zoom: One word......AWESOME. While in the mountains of Whistler BC, I was amazed at the zoom. The 12 X optical was impressive enough, but add a hint of digital zoom on top of that and you have something amazing. I was able to pull in crystal clear pics of mountain tops (and the skiiers shooshing down them )several thousand feet away. Thats where the optical stabilizer and a fast shutter really capture a great shot. And this was the second day of ownership. This camera is something special indeed.





Noise: Noise?....yes digital noise from the picture sensor that can add distortion and artifacts into the picture that you don't want there, usually found in the shadows. All digital cameras suffer from it except the MOST expensive DSLR's ( $1500+ ) which still have some, but much less than the $200-$400 class of long zooms that this camera falls in. Noise is related to ISO. the higher the ISO, the more sensitive the camera is to light, but at the same time, the more susceptable the camera is to noise from the sensor. Kind of like when you turn the volume of your stereo WAY up.....you hear hiss, but when the music starts, you cant hear the hiss....except in the really quiet passages....shadows on pictures are like the really quiet passages in music. At ISO 100, this camera is great, at ISO 200, unless you put the picture on a computer and zoom the heck out of it, it is great. ISO 400, the noise is starting to creep in but if you were to make a picture put of the zoom on your computer screen, it would be double poster size before you saw the noise. ISO 800 more noticeable, but 8X10 on the computer screen is still very VERY acceptable. Unless you are into "pixel peeping" ( I love that term ) you wont see the noise. Make real prints , 8 X 10's, 11 X 13's and smaller and you will be very happy with the way this camera takes pictures.





Battery life: Wonderful. There is finally a real standard in picture taking for battery life and this camera exceeds that standard. Panasonic rates it at 370 pictures per charge. I had trouble believing this, considering my old HP R717 camera barely made it to 80 pictures. Well, Panasonic is right. On the very first charge of the battery, the camera took 447 pictures, ( mostly outdoors without flash ) and that includes lots of fooling around and first-time menu surfing.





In summary: I am exceptionally pleased with this camera. I demand a lot for my dollar, and I got it. If you want the same complete in-depth evaluation that I used to help me make this decision, go to http://www.imaging-resource.com





They have an outstanding way of testing cameras and I found their conclusions extremely accurate. Furthermore, they test things like "chromatic aberration", and "barrel distortion" under controlled, repeatable test conditions.





I would whole-heartedly recommend this DMC-FZ8 to anyone looking in this price range. Point and shoot simple for the novices, enough manual toys to keep the amateur's happy and experimenting.



UPDATE......1 year and over 5000 ...yes FIVE THOUSAND pictures later, the camera hasn't even hiccupped once. The battery is still strong, averaging around 380 pictures per charge. Everything still works perfectly. All buttons function as they should, the rotary mode dial is still tight with crisp detent's between the modes, the thumb stick joystick is still crisp and tight in operation, all buttons work as well as day 1, no zoom issues nothing...nada........I sincerely hope the people at Panasonic don't change ANYTHING about the build quality of this camera. This is the best money I have EVER spent on ANY consumer electronic product. PERIOD.