Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1 (1 Viewer)

Anyone interested in receiving/offering info/tips etc. on this camera? Bought one because of the 12x image stabilised zoom lens (420mm equivalent) and am hoping to be able to take pictures off bird feeders, birds in sanctuaries, animals at zoo etc. It's only a 2MP camera and is really a point and shoot affair (though, naturally the camera strap took a few attempts to put on without twists). It has an auto-bracket feature and can take a sequence of up to 7 pictures at 2 or 4 frames per second. The only choice over shutter speeds and apertures it offers (outside of exposure compensation) is with a selection of programmed "modes" : eg. portrait, action, etc. I've found that the "portrait" mode, designed to give differential focus by choosing the widest aperture, consistently gives a faster shutter speed than the more conservative "action" mode.

Guess I'll have a quick check now in the gallery for pictures taken with the Olympus C2100 for inspiration on what is possible with a similarly specified lens (albeit probably in the hands of an expert).

Best wishes.

P.S. The lens does not have a filter thread but comes with a screw-on plastic adaptor which accepts the provided lens hood as well as 55mm filters. The manual advises against adding lens convertors; maybe for eg. the Olympus TCON-17 would be a bit heavy for the plastic adaptor provided.

Panasonic dmc-fz1-s

Hi, i live in Laval, Québec,Canada and i have a lot of birds coming and going. I am looking at the the same camera as you mentionned in may. Do you think it would be a good buy?

Gee, even the experts are reluctant to advise people on which camera to buy. And I'm a novice : this is my very first digital camera. Still you may be interested in my reasons for the choice.

First you've maybe already checked these out. Perhaps it's still worth having the links in one place :

www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/fz1.html

www.dcresource.com/reviews/panasonic/dmc_fz1-review/index.shtml

www.megapixel.net/index.php

www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_opinions.asp?prodkey=panasonic_dmcfz1

The Steve's Digicams review conclusion is still rather misleading about the issue of the viewfinder freezing after taking a picture. I sent an email pointing out that with auto review mode off (where your picture is displayed for you after you have taken it) the viewfinder "freeze" is barely more than a second at most. (The addition of the "qualification" in brackets seems to have been the somewhat less than satisfactory result). The other reviews do mention that shot to shot time is barely a second.

The megapixel link is to its homepage. It's worth hunting the review from there (and perhaps you have a choice of French or English...)

The dpreview link is to users' brief comments about the camera. Given acceptance of the camera's limitations, these are pretty much all positive (which certainly had an influence on me).

Now down to business. I reckon the DMC-FZ1 is a pretty good all-round camera. It's about the size of a typical 35mm autofocus compact and should probably be handled in the same way (strap round neck etc.) Should be fine for general use, holidays etc. as long as you haven't been spoilt by ultra miniature cameras. As well as this, as stated in my first post, it should be excellent for those scenarios that maybe stretch standard zoom cameras a little too much. I'm not sure how big the birds are you are referring to, or how close you can get to them. But perhaps you realise that while this camera gives perhaps 8x magnification, the digiscoped photographs shown in this forum are perhaps typically at more like 40-50x allowing for the combination of camera and scope zoom. Just don't want you to be disappointed.

While the 8x magnification lens may be a limiting factor for bird photography, I don't belive the exposure modes will be. You'll probably be often shooting at maximum zoom, maximum aperture, using a slow ISO to maximise quality and hoping your steady hands and the image stabilisation will do the rest to get a sharp picture.

You might also find this camera limiting depending on your requirements for enlargements of your resultant photos; though on-screen you probably won't have a problem. (I assume the 2MP specification was deemed a reasonable target on the drawing board given the very small size of the CCD; which in turn enabled the lens to be so compact. Bit of a shame about the degree of jpeg compression on the finest quality mode; 1600x1200 pictures come out as ~800k which might limit how much you can play with them in Photoshop...I'll keep you posted...)

From the little you've written (OK so maybe I've gone too far the other way...) my main concern would be your expecting too much magnification from a 420mm equivalent lens. And bear in mind, if your subject isn't big enough in your 2MP picture at that magnification, you might not like the loss in quality you get if you start cropping it.

I should add, on my experiences so far, I'd certainly add my endorsement to those at the dpreview site.

Hope this helps rather than hinders...

THANKS FOR INFO.CAMERA DMCFZ1

Thank-you for the reply.

The birds are small :blue Jay, Northern cardinal, American Goldfinch, White-breasted Nuthatch, Indigo Bunting, Boreal Chickadee, a lot of different woodpeckers, and many other species.
They are very near my house, 5-10 meters at the most.
The camera will probably do the job,thanks again.
Marcel

Righty then. I suppose later I'll be seeing your photos in the gallery alongside mine of house sparrows and blackbirds :-C

Best wishes (no really).

Norm - Thank you for pointing me in the direction of this thread. You have answered my questions here. You are getting great results w/ this camera. The feature that I think I would like most about this camera is the image stabilization. It is also nice to see a camera w/ this much optical zoom. It seems like the latest models of digital cameras are going to less and less optical zoom. I know that Sony and Canon used to have 10 times optical and I do not believe they offer that any longer. I have an Olympus C700 w/ a 1.7 times teleconverter lens. The only thing I don't think I'd like about the panasonic is the fact that you cant add a lens. I will be very interested to see if Panasonic comes out with a 12 times zoom that has more MP and will accept another lens. If they are anything like Olympus they should be coming out w/ a new model any day now. Seems like OLY comes out w/ a new one every 6 months! Can't wait to see more pictures from you.

Thanks, Leslie

Hello again Leslie. I guess you're gonna have to show a little more patience for the upgrade you're looking for to come along

:cat:

Wonder if you checked the dpreview opinions link after the latest post today. Contributer reckons s/he can get reasonably sharp result at full zoom (420mm equivalent) at 1/30 sec! My two gallery photos were max zoom at 1/200 sec. Looks like I'll have to do some tests on this, but I'm not too sure how.

While I'm here, hope you don't mind if I record my discovery that going from the Natural to Standard to Vivid picture adjustment settings causes an increase in colour saturation AND contrast.

Also, contrary to the 6 June post on dpreview, I have found no fall-off in resolution at the top end of the zoom range (did a test at w/e with tripod and lens resolution chart). Presumably there would be a greater risk of chromatic aberation in against the light shots, and of course a greater risk of camera shake.

If some resourceful soul managed to machine an aluminium version of the lens hood adaptor, I wouldn't discount the possibility that it could safely hold the Olympus B300 or TCON-17. Don't know if anyone has tried it with the plastic version yet to see if it's worth the trouble.

Thanks again for praising my results, though I think we all know it's to the camera praise is due. I hope to go my local zoo in the next few weeks; m'be get some pics of something a little more exotic than have managed so far...

Happy birding.


Norm

Thanks to member normc on the Panasonic forum at Steve's Digicams for advising the following :

"The Sony VCL-1452H lens appears to work very well with the DMC-FZ1. It is a 1.4 Telephoto and is clean all the way thru the zoom. I think it was originally a portrait lens for the Sony 505v. It is not a heavy lens but it requires a good 55mm to 52mm stepdown adapter. The Sony 2x will not auto focus if at all?"

It appears to be a new lens probably not yet available in UK but evidently in the USA :

www.imagestation.com/shop/product/sony/?prodID=10581

Looks like it may be small and light enough to be OK. I haven't seen the results. Also wonder if purchasers of 1.4x convertors tend to think they've got a significant return.

The Panasonic digital camera forum I mention is at :

www.stevesforums.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=23

Norm

Hi Norm - Sorry I didn't see this post until now. Yes, of course I want all the best features and only want to pay $500 for a camera! Thank you for the further info on the results you are getting w/ your camera. I think I have similar settings on my camera as far as the color saturation and contrast and I may mess around with those and see what happens (thanks for the suggestion). Good to know that it looks like a converter may work w/ the Panasonic too. I'll look forward to your zoo pictures. Have a good day!

Leslie

Thanks Leslie. Glorious sunshine here today

First "fly in the ointment" I've found regarding the Panasonic DMC-FZ1. It seems people are having difficulty getting hold of spare batteries. The Panasonic own brand batteries at $60 or £60 seem pricey and so far alternative manufacturers' batteries have only been spotted in Hong Kong.

There is some dialogue on this at the stevesforums site mentioned above.

Norm

P.S. If I do get some piccies of captive birds at the zoo, not sure they'd be eligible for the gallery. Might be OK to post one here. Or maybe Marcel will be up and running soon and give us something from that mouthwatering (certainly to this Brit) list of birds.

Hmmm... you know I'm not sure about whether or not you could post the zoo pics on here. I did go on the Steve's forum the other day just for the heck of it and I did see something about the battery issue. That would really stink - $60 is a lot of money for batteries, but trying to find them seems like a REAL problem. The Olympus takes rechargeable NiMH, which are available at just about any drug store. You can also use regular alkaline if you're really desperate, but they don't last long at all. So are you just using one set of batteries right now? Are they re-chargeable?

The camera takes a single lithium ion battery which can be fully charged out of the camera in the supplied charger in ca. 90 minutes. The charger can also act effectively as a "mains adaptor" while the camera is connected to your PC.

Must be difficult to come up with a "power usage" score for a camera. The Megapixel site gives the Panasonic a score of 8, the same as it gave the C700. Mind you, not always easy to tell how these scores are affected by possible changing expectations.

Yes, I only have the battery supplied. Guess have to be organised and ensure it has full charge before leaving house. And can't do that until I've researched whether it's OK to charge partly charged Li ion batteries. Looks like the zoo will have to wait...

Don't worry. I was going to check with Admin before posting any picture I thought might be off-rules (they seem a civilised bunch). I didn't read instructions properly before posting my first two (rushing defences?) and got an email advising me where they had been put; no recriminations. Still, I like to think I'm not one to push my luck...

Regards, Norm.

At least the charging time is not too bad. I can go about 4 hrs on a fully charged set of 4 NiMh batteries. Hopefully you can get another battery before you go to the zoo. You would probably need more than one for a trip like that. I screwed up when I first started posting pics too and was uploading them to "my gallery" and you've actually got to select a category for them.

Leslie

Hi Leslie. Yep, I did the same as you re. gallery 8-P

I'm not sure getting another battery is an immediate option unless order from abroad. M'be if I set the power timeout to two minutes, only use the EVF, turn down the brightness and talk to it in soft and gently encouraging tones I might get away with it? Come to think of it, maybe because I'm still new to digital photography, I'd still be using the camera how an amateur uses a film camera ie. not taking many shots per subject. That might help. I'd be happy with one reasonable picture from the trip. Delighted with two.

Thought I'd put in this link about some guy's opinion of his Panasonic DMC-FZ1 :

www.astromart.com/messages.asp?message_id=85990&page=

Looks like I just need to look around now for a Canon 10D and a kid as a backup for my trip :-O

Norm

Bird Forum member wizard :clap: :clap: has found this site :

http://eurobatteries.com

which advertises the Panasonic DMC-FZ1 battery. They appear to do Euro and North America deliveries.

Yeah, that Canon D10 is pretty awesome, a bit out of my price range though! Good idea not to use the LCD to help w/ battery life. I very rarely use mine. Have a great weekend

Leslie

Belated thanks Leslie. Your post arrived during a week when I couldn't post because of "problems with ISP's proxy server" for which a workaround was found.

I've given the dpreview.com url before. It has, however, only just been brought to my attention that although there is no Panasonic forum there (politics/egos), the "other digicams" forum is largely occupied with threads on the DMC FZ1 :
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1001

There's loadsa stuff here on batteries, convertors, using the camera in low light, links to galleries etc. etc. Here's one link to a gallery of zoo pictures that I wish I'd taken. Many of them used Leslie's beloved Olympus B300 telecon :
http://home.wanadoo.nl/fred.hermanie/fz1/index_01.html

Regards.

P.S. For what it's worth, there are rumours of a more megapixel version to come out at end of year.

P.P.S Just caught your latest "dragon" Leslie. I like. Maybe you need to try early morning and buckets of dry ice to slow them down...

You can upgrade your FZ1 to a FZ2 for free

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1033&message=6927434

Panasonic FZ1/FZ10

.....'P.S. For what it's worth, there are rumours of a more megapixel version to come out at end of year. '

Just to correct some apparent misconceptions from earlier in this thread
1. There is a more megapixel version out already in the form of the FZ10 (which is actually a completely different camera in that its lens is much bigger http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/fz10.html2 for the review.

2. The FZ1/2 is 12 x optical zoom and from memory its about 38mm focal length so the 12 x puts you well into 400mm plus territory.

3. It can take teleconverters such as the TCON 17, BUT there's a small snag in that the filter thread is very short and won't hold the TCON17. My pal who has a Z2 has got round this by screwing a step up ring together with a step down ring (to get back to 52mm) into the filter thread and that's solved the problem. Alternativel you could pick up a cheap 52 UV filter and just knock out the filter element. The camera balances nicely in the hand with the TCON17 added

With the auto stabilisation feature, I think this camera has definite possiblities for bird photography, and once the FZ10 reaches the UK its likely that the price of the FZ1/2 will drop below the £250 mark which allowing for £85 for the TCON17 makes an interesting proposition.....

FZ2 has been below £250 for quite some time (www.berridgemail.co.uk).
For a week of so it has been below £150 (less than many kids' mobile phones I'd wager...) Someone on dpreview thought he was buying a one-off but then someone else found it was a promotion :
http://www.ukdigital.co.uk/panasonic_promos.htm

Hopefully this doesn't indicate that the FZ1/2 line is about to be discontinued without replacement :-C