Panasonic premieres Lumix DMC-FZ100 high-speed superzoom camera (1 Viewer)

I have had my FZ38 for nearly a week now and I can say that it will be a hard act to follow, all I could really say is that I wish it had the EVF of the FZ18.

For me the free angle lcd is a high priority as it comes in very handy when using the camera on a tripod at unusual angles as I do currently with my FZ30 and Oly 1.7 tcon

Fz100

Started reading your posts today, the FZ100 sounds really interesting. then searched around, read some previews and one review, my interest was such that I phoned my camera store and they are ordering one in for me to try out. It may arrive this Thursday or possibly the following Thursday. I'm taking a memory card to get some pictures to bring home and check out. Will post them when and if this happens.

Craig S said:

Started reading your posts today, the FZ100 sounds really interesting. then searched around, read some previews and one review, my interest was such that I phoned my camera store and they are ordering one in for me to try out. It may arrive this Thursday or possibly the following Thursday. I'm taking a memory card to get some pictures to bring home and check out. Will post them when and if this happens.

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I see that fotosense (UK) is selling the FZ100 for £350 - claims to have 11 in stock.
Regards
Jim

Fz100

Thanks for the tip Passerine, but I live in rural Canada, my local camera shop, (Henry's), is 40 miles away, they have 34 on back order, but one of their stores in Toronto, which is a few thousand miles away, has a stock so they have ordered one from Toronto. They weren't certain if it would make the truck for delivery to my "local" Henry's by this Thursday so I may have to wait until the following Thursday. No one else within a few thousand miles seems to have any.
I must say I am looking forward to trying it out, if I end up buying it I will be ordering the adapter tube and TCON 17.
I currently have an E-510 with a 70-300mm lens. I have found its limitations and am actively searching for an alternative with more reach. I had narrowed my choices down to a Canon T2i, the soon to be released D60 or the Nikon D95. I had chosen an L series 400mm Canon lens or a higher end Nikon lens. But when I figured out the cost I was certainly apprehensive and really wasn't comfortable with paying for or carrying around $2,000 to $4,000 worth of gear.
I then happened on this thread and I really became interested in the FZ100. My wife had the FZ35 or 38 a couple of years ago, we were really impressed with its features and the quality of images it captured. She eventually exchanged it for a Canon XS with a 250 IS lens as she found the burst speed of the FZ was not to her liking. If I get the FZ100 I suspect she may want to get one too.
I am really hoping this camera will meet my needs, I suspect it will be better than my E-510 but I certainly don't think it will be as good as a mid range DSLR with a good lens, but then I will only be paying around $700 for the FZ100, TCON and adapter, if it gets stolen or destroyed I will not be as bothered as having lost the more expensive Canon or Nikon gear.
In our outings I have almost fallen in a river a few times and have fallen on muddy trails a number of times so the chances of me damaging or destroying my camera is quite high on my list of concerns. i don't expect to get pro quality images but if i can get better images at a distance than I can with my E510 I think i will be quite satisfied.

Craig,

I think you have described the usage of camera exactly right. It's not a £10K piece of equipment but a compact with a zoom.

Results wise you should get decent images, which is adequate for the majority of users.

Fz100

Thanks for the support pergrin, I am almost certain I will be happy with the FZ100's quality and image capture capabilities. I certainly do enjoy birding and photography but just don't feel comfortable spending the kind of money for semi pro equipment.
The E-510 is a pretty good camera, got it as they were clearing out the last of the E-510 stock after the E-620 was released. It was reasonably priced and takes nice pictures of birds with the 300mm lens up to about 25', hand held, after that you really need a tripod. After 25' the smaller birds are quite tiny in the picture captured, larger birds are a decent size but but suffer from lens shake so the image is not as clear as I would like. Birds beyond 40' of any size are just to small in the captured image. A teleconverter was not really an option with the 300mm lens, and going to a 400-500mm lens was not really an option. I did try a 500mm mirror lens, the images captured were OK sometimes, but often were blurry or the colors were way out of whack. There was at least a 95% discard rate with these pictures, of the best ones I think I only posted 2 and I was not real happy with them. I also found that with a 500mm lens you would quite often have to search for your subject as you are starting off a 500mm and in bush or at a lake once you focus the lens nothing looks the same so you are spending time looking for your subject. I would probably still use the mirror lens at a lake or for a distant shot of a perched raptor, but this year there is very little waterfowl around so the mirror lens has had very little use since spring. I think a mirror lens in the hands of a pro might produce better results but for the average person it might suffice to capture an image that you might be able to identify a bird a few hundred yards away.

Craig, I too think that you will be perfectly happy with the FZ100.

I’m fortunate that I can view, professionally analysis, and print out sample images on very good hi-res printing equipment.

I do take the reviews on cameras with a pinch of salt.

The final judgement on any camera image is not the camera itself, but on the final device output be it screen or paper.

I have looked at two cameras (Fuji’s HS10 and the FZ100) and reproduced the sample images on a digital press.

Tonally the Fuji was better, and I liked the fact of being able to save in raw. The only image I have from the FZ is the Heron and Greylag, again it produced good results. Both image results have niggles but that’s expected.

Nikon and Canon are due to release new models soon, I will sample their images, apply and choose one between the four.

I want to have something to carry around this winter without all the hassle of backpacks and tripods.

Thanks again perigin, I found out about reviews long ago when I bought my first digital camera, a 3 mp Fuji, the so called honest sites rated it quite highly and it turned out to be a very poor camera, I'm not sold on the FZ100, will wait to try it out. I'm taking my own memory card so I can bring the pictures home to look at. We don't print to many pictures, we usually put them on a digital picture frame. The largest we print are 5'x7", but we do intend to get a larger digital picture frame. So as long as they look decent on my 22" monitor, sharp, decent detail, accurate I think I would be happy.

Fz100 compared to older FZ18 to Fz35/38

Hi all, This is my first post, but I thought you might be interested in the fact that I have just got the new FZ100 camera. I currently have the FZ18. I have had the camera 3 days now and can tell you it is significantly better in most respects than the FZ18, especially the speed of the shutter and autofocus. Where it does fall down is in the manual focus mode. On the old FZ18/28/35/38 the manual focus was controlled by a little joystick (or joyless stick) on the back of the camera. It wasn't great to use, but it was pretty quick to go from close up to infinity. On the new camera it is controlled by a horizontal wheel near the top of the camera. I thought this was a better option, but after using it I have to tell you it is sooooo slow. I takes ages to get anywhere with it. You can also use the left and right arrows on the central control dial and they are as fast as the joystick, but they aren't really in a great spot to use easily and before you can use them yo have to activate the horizontal wheel first. I missed a couple of shots today because of the way I had to use the manual focus. I guess I'll perservere and get better at it, but so far it is the worst feature of the camera. I also don't think you really need an extra teleconverter the zoom is great nad I use digital as well. I have compared digital zoom to a 2x teleconverter on my FZ18 and the results weren't all that different from each other. The teleconverter was slightly better, but only marginally and the focus was a little slower. Hope this helps. I still think the FZ100 is a great camera for catching fast action, but has that one aspect where its slow.

Jessops are showing the FZ100 available on pre-order at £449 and the FZ45 on pre-order at £379, it might be also of interest that they have dropped the price of the Fuji HS10 to £325.

Welcome to BirdForum

I wonder if you could post some sample photographs at maximum optical zoom please? It would be good to see some photos that aren't produced by professional reviewers.
Many thanks
Hobbes

scodgerott said:

Hi all, This is my first post, but I thought you might be interested in the fact that I have just got the new FZ100 camera. I currently have the FZ18. I have had the camera 3 days now and can tell you it is significantly better in most respects than the FZ18, especially the speed of the shutter and autofocus. Where it does fall down is in the manual focus mode. On the old FZ18/28/35/38 the manual focus was controlled by a little joystick (or joyless stick) on the back of the camera. It wasn't great to use, but it was pretty quick to go from close up to infinity. On the new camera it is controlled by a horizontal wheel near the top of the camera. I thought this was a better option, but after using it I have to tell you it is sooooo slow. I takes ages to get anywhere with it. You can also use the left and right arrows on the central control dial and they are as fast as the joystick, but they aren't really in a great spot to use easily and before you can use them yo have to activate the horizontal wheel first. I missed a couple of shots today because of the way I had to use the manual focus. I guess I'll perservere and get better at it, but so far it is the worst feature of the camera. I also don't think you really need an extra teleconverter the zoom is great nad I use digital as well. I have compared digital zoom to a 2x teleconverter on my FZ18 and the results weren't all that different from each other. The teleconverter was slightly better, but only marginally and the focus was a little slower. Hope this helps. I still think the FZ100 is a great camera for catching fast action, but has that one aspect where its slow.

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speckled wood said:

Jessops are showing the FZ100 available on pre-order at £449 and the FZ45 on pre-order at £379, it might be also of interest that they have dropped the price of the Fuji HS10 to £325.

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A quick google throws up quite a few places offering the FZ100 for around the £360 mark - perhaps even lower in the run-up to Christmas?
Regards
Jim

Full zoom shot on FZ100

Hobbes2 said:

Welcome to BirdForum

I wonder if you could post some sample photographs at maximum optical zoom please? It would be good to see some photos that aren't produced by professional reviewers.
Many thanks
Hobbes

Click to expand...

I'm attaching a full zoom shot of a female Scarlet Robin. It was taken in Aperture Priority and ISO 200. Not the greatest shot and some of the other shots I took look almost as though they were taken through frosted glass. I am going to try and compare some shots with my FZ18, once it gets light again.

I just received an email from Uk digital cameras saying they will take old models in part exchange for the new ones - £170 for my FZ38

Think I'll stick with mine though....

Fz100

Thanks for the additional info scodgerott, but I took the plunge last night and bought the FZ100. My local Henry's managed to get 2 FZ100's, tried it out in store and was quite impressed after just 5 or six test shots. Got it for $500 CDN, teleconverter and adapter tube on order. Should get my teleconverter next week, not certain when I will get the adapter tube as no one seems ot have them. Final price for entire kit will run about $600 CDN, although the TCON 17 I ordered is used.
They put the fully charged battery from the demo camera in the camera I bought so I was able to go out and start taking pictures immediately. Will post some samples later. It was after 7 pm so the light was failing, but I was pretty impressed with the camera.
I find the zoom and focus a little slow but I am used to using an Olympus E510 with a 300mm lens.
The EVF is not as bad as I thought it would be in low light, I'm not a fan of EVF and the optical viewfinder on my 510 was clearer, but for the price I am quite pleased. I took all my pictures last night using scene modes as I didn't have time to read the manual and just wanted to take some pictures. Took about 180 pictures, deleted about 90 as either being of poor quality or because I just didn't like them. This was not an unusual practice with my E510 or my wifes Canon XS, often I would delete 75% of the pictures we had taken with our DSLR's.
In our outing last night we spent about an hour and a half walking through The Fort Whyte Center nature preserve.
The features I didn't like:
The FZ100 is not intended to replace a DSLR. I was aware of this prior to purchasing the FZ100 and was aware that there would be limitations when compared to a DSLR.
-The EVF is inferior to an optical viewfinder, but I found it was acceptable because of the type of camera the FZ100 is.
-The viewfinder goes black while images write to the memory card.
-Writing to memory card was not anywhere nearly as fast as a DSLR, although I did have a cheap memory card in it last night, will put a better one in it today. It probably took 2 seconds to write an image to the memory card.
-Small camera body and grip. I would prefer a larger grip for better stabilization.
-Zoom and focus slower than DSLR but not to bad.
What I did like:
-Price for features when compared to a DSLR.
-Image quality was good even at 600mm, although a monopod or tripod would likely produce better results. Image quality was at least as good as my old E510 and 300mm lens.
-Focus seems to be more precise than old E510, was able to focus on birds behind branches and in leafy trees. Something the E510 was very poor at and caused me much frustration.
-Smaller, lighter, it does not feel like I'm carrying a rock suspended from my neck.
-Not so worried about damaging the camera or loosing it as compared to a DSLR. I had priced out a new DSLR rig and it would have cost me $2,000-$4,000 CDN, so the FZ100 is a bargain, although I may not get the pro quality pictures that cameras in that price range could provide. I don't print pictures larger than 5X7" very often, most of our pictures go on a digital picture frame. This camera seems to be capable of doing this just fine and I'm certain it could provide a good image for larger printed pictures.
All in all I am happy with my purchase, the features and the image quality.
Have attached a few pictures. All taken between 7 and 8 pm. All images captured hand held, no tripod or monopod used.
One bird is about 50 feet away while the other is well over 100 feet away. Prairie Dog is about 6 feet away, squirrel about 25 feet distant. Spider web taken in Macro mode. No post editing other than resizing to postable size. I was not really happy with the spider web picture, (I used autofocus in macro mode with macro mode auto focus selected), but I wouldn't have been able to get the picture with the E510 other than with manual focus. The manual focus qualities of the E510 were severely lacking and the image would actually have much worse with the E510. I found manual focus with entry level to mid level DSLR's to be lacking.

fz100

Here are a few more samples, taken between 7 and 8 pm, varying cloud. No post editing other than resizing.

fz100

Here are even more samples. At 600mm a monopod or tripod would be best, not unlike any other camera or lens at 600mm. Again no post processing other than resizing. All pictures taken using scene modes.

I am thinking it goes black while the image is written to the memory card, it is more of an annoyance than anything. I put in a better SDHC card this morning and hope it will shorten the write time to the memory card. One reason for blacking out the viewfinder could be that at least you know when the picture has finished writing to the memory card. I could see myself happily clicking away while the image was still being written and thinking I had many more pictures than I actually had.
I consider that this is basically a higher end P&S camera and I will put up with its "shortcomings" as compared to the price of the DSLR I was considering.
I am quite pelased with the camera and will be heading to a Provincial Park today to get some more pictures and see how it performs in bright daylight. Will try out burst mode and shooting with manual settings today as well.
Overall I am pleased with the FZ100, price versus features and results are quite acceptable when compared to a DSLR and lens kit to get 600mm and even better if you consider the price of this camera to get 1020mm with the 1.7 teleconverter as compared to a DSLR with the same reach.