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09/28/2014 01:13:55 PM · #1 |
I have had the new Panasonic Lumix LZ1000 for almost 2 months now and using it as my primary walk around camera (often in addition to my RX100 in my pocket.
So I thought I would write a mini-review here, for others considering it. My main reason for getting it was to carry on my bike -- the RX100 is too limited in focal lengths for a serious bike trip where I might spot wildlife, as well something needing wide angle (the RX100 is 28mm, the FZ100 is 25mm at the short end). However, I realized I still needed something wider, so on my bike trip to Nova Scotia (the first trip with the FZ1000), I also carried a Panasonic G5 with a Bower rectilinear manual focus fisheye. So on my bike, I ended up carrying three cameras, still lighter in total than my SLRs..I carried the RX100 because I could actually shoot pictures of the other riders with it while riding, and the other two cameras for scenery.
Here are my thoughts.
Viewfinder...A very big picture, easy to see the subject, settings, highlight clipping, and an enlarged area for focus. When you half press the shutter button, you see what exposure will look like in the final. You can also set it to show you the blur effect of shutter speed. The only negative I have is that sometimes you can't easily see the effect of rotating the polarizer. Instead, in those cases, I can use the highlight clipping zebras to show me when I'm polarized properly (fewer zebras).
Controls...I think the FZ1000 has one of the best control layouts I have ever used on a camera. It has a perfectly placed button for focus on/off, or to switch the type of focus. It has a fully articulated LCD, which I leave closed (back towards me) to protect it, since I rarely need to use it with it's excellent viewfinder. The camera has a great grip. It's big, but not heavy. You can use the ring around the lens for focus or zoom. I use it for focus, I prefer to use the lever around the shutter for zoom. But it's easy to switch between the functions on the lens, since there's a switch on the lens for that. There are two downsides to the controls: 1) there's only one wheel that's shared for adjusting aperture, shutter speed, and exposure comp. You click it to change between them. But I have gotten used to it. 2) To move the focus point, I have to do two extra clicks to get in that mode...but you don't need to look at the menus...it's a left click, a down click, and then you are in the mode. You can turn on a mode which allows full-time movement using the four direction keys...but then they no longer function as their original assigned functions, which are also useful. However, you can assign a different function key to turn this mode on, so it's only on press to switch.
Lens...the lens is fantastic...very sharp, great range (though missing extreme wide angle and extreme tele), and a good tradeoff for letting in light. It also has very nice bokeh when you are zoomed in and at wide apertures. Obviously as a 1" sensor, at wide and medium angle focal lengths, there's a lot of depth of field. But this is good for landscapes and many shots...you can leave the lens at a wide aperture and still get deep enough DOF. It's only a problem when you really want shallow DOF, and then you just have to use the longer focal lengths.
As far as light gathering, it's very good. It ranges from F2.8 at 25mm, to 4.0 at full tele of 400mm. Unfortunately, it stops down quickly as you zoom. Here's wide open at some sample zoom levels:
25-26mm: F2.8
27-28mm: F2.9
29-33mm: F3.0
46mm: F3.2
55mm: F3.4
62nn: F3.5
72mm: F3.7
92mm: F3.8
112mm: F3.9
160mm: F3.9
175-400mm: F4.0
Still that's not bad for a 25mm to 400mm lens, where the camera only weighs 2lbs WITH battery and lens.
ISO and Noise. At ISO 125, quality is pretty much like an SLR. As you move up, noise creeps in quickly. But except when you pixel peep, it doesn't degrade the picture significantly. For pixel peepers like me who don't like to use noise reduction, it's best to stay with ISO 800 and below. But if you don't pixel peep, this camera can be easily used to ISO 3200 and even above that. I do think the RX100 (original) is a little better noise wise, for some reason. But in reality, this camera is only about 1 stop or so more noisy than my D7100, if that.
Features. The camera supports very nice features, like 4K video, and up to 7 shot bracketing. It fires like a machine gun...11 shots per second, I believe, but slows after about 20 exposures. It's much better than either my Nikon D7100 or D600 in this regard though. IMO, the built in HDR and sweep panorama in the FZ1000 are pretty much worthless compared to the Sony RX100. The feature is there, but poorly implemented. Sweeps on the RX100 are almost always perfect. On the FZ1000, almost never. Same for HDR.
Battery Life: The battery is the same as in the G series, micro-four thirds cameras and the FZ200, which was good for me since I have a G5 and a FZ200. So having bought an extra battery I already have four batteries. But I find the battery life is very good, so while I carry an extra, the battery lasts most of the day, or all day. Technically, I think the CIPA rating is 360 shots.
Conclusion. I really like the camera. The controls and viewfinder are really wonderful, the picture quality and corner to corner sharpness is excellent especially at lower ISOs. I am disappointed mainly by the lack of good sweep panorama and built in HDR like my Sony RX100. It's also a very large camera, but that makes it easy to handle, especially since it's light and has a great grip. I use a wrist strap with it (and I bought the Opteca one so I can snap it off an put on a black rapid style sling strap). Oh, and the lens accepts filters (62mm) without an adapter!
I'll post some test shots to show you ISO versus my other cameras later. And some links to shots from Nova Scotia!
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09/28/2014 02:05:15 PM · #2 |
| thank you. good description of the basic handling. |
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09/28/2014 02:48:59 PM · #3 |
A look at ISO performance of the FZ1000 versus the Nikon D600.
This is a screen capture with both photos being shown at 1:1. The full size screen capture is available for viewing (select view fullsize)
Note that the FZ1000 has a 2.7x crop factor, the D600, none of course. so they are about the same focal length here...approximately. Both eere autofocused via contrast detect...the D600 said it was in focus, but seems a bit off (the lens was the Nkkor 24-70 F2.8)...maybe it was a tad too close to completely focus).
Raw files, ISO 6400. For some reason, the colors are more accurate here on the FZ1000
ISO 3200
ISO 1600
ISO 800
ISO 400
And finally, the FZ1000 at ISO 125, the base ISO. It goes down to 80, but 125 is the real "base ISO". I didn't repeat the test for the Nikon in this case.
I shoot RAW, but here's the in-camera JPEG (was shooting RAW+JPEG) for:
ISO 125
ISO 1600 (in general, JPEGs have too much smoothing. My JPEG settings are all the way down too! But ISO 1600 isn't too bad for JPEGs. I prefer the noisier ISO 1600 RAW though.
Message edited by author 2014-09-28 15:02:10. |
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09/28/2014 10:37:17 PM · #4 |
It looks like the Panasonic held its own pretty well compared to a camera with a sensor 5x its size. Even at higher ISOs it was fairly close and the Pany shots had flare that degraded image quality and made the noise more noticeable. The FZ did have coarser grain compared with the 600's finer noise at 3200 and 6400 but those shots are still useable. At 6400 it was just starting to get hard to read the fine letters on the right hand side of the dial.
Another feature of the Panny is that you can extract still shots from the 4k video however with reduced image quality due to higher compression and also you need to have higher shutter speeds to freeze movement. |
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