Panasonic DMC-FZ15 or FZ20

[Bradley_Wakoff]

Anyone using these digicams as a discreet (though not tiny) DSLR alternative?
Specs seem good, especially the fast lens and IS.
I'm especially curious about handling and shutter lag.
-brad

[PaulSilla]

I borrowed one for a half day, and was impressed enough to buy one for my wife for Christmas.
I'll have a better feel for it in a couple weeks. Got tired of lugging my Nikon around for casual stuff, and seemed like a good compromise.

Handling was pretty comfortable, menus easy to understand, and controls logically placed. Especially liked their implementation of manual focus, has a very nice feel and function. Shutter lag was short, but noticeable. Short enough to get used to the timing, but still not DSLR territory. The IS is very good, with a little practice I was handholding at 1/4 second at mid zoom with acceptable results. The lens range and constant f2.8 are what really impressed me. Although at 420mm equivalent in low light, you'll definately need a support. Didn't really torture the lens throughout the focal length, but didn't notice any significant aberration. Was very surprised by the real time histogram display, nice feature.

Downsides were the electonic view finder, it's small and not particularly well placed. The LCD is good, but a little tough in low light. Lack of RAW support was a downer, but probably a blessing in disguise if you spend your days processing RAW already. The lens adapter and hood add about 6" to the front of the camera, so it gets larger then you think. Apparently there are third party solutions I'll be checking out. The camera itself is a little larger then I'd ideally like for a carry around, but for the focal length and pseudo SLR feel it seemed a great bargain.

So if your wife needs one, I'd say go ahead ;-)

[Walter_Kimmel]

I use the !D MkII, with a D60 as backup. My wife wanted an upgrade from her Oly 2100, which has image stabilization, a 35-350mm equivalent lens, and produces beatiful shots for her, despite the 2 megapixel limitation. She upgraded to the Panasonic FZ20 (she refuses to consider the weight of a DSLR and long lenses.) Of course, I had to try the camera out first [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

The FZ20 is smaller and lighter than her Oly 2100, has 5MP, a 35-420mm equivalent focal lenght *at a constant f/2.8*, a very nice manual focus ring, with reasonably fast AF, good burst mode with a big enough buffer so that after a 3-frame burst it is only a second or so until you can get another burst. Coming from the 1D II I found the shutter lag (from the focus lock position to full press) much less annoying than I had anticipated.

AF choices include 9 area, 3 area and 1 area center area) focusing, where it appears that more than one AF sensor is used, and "spot" focusing using a single center AF spot. You can also link the metering to the active AF point. Exposure choices are full frame, center weighted and spot (I don't know the size of the spot.)

I found the focusing to be accurate except in rather low light. Exposure is accurate in all modes, with exposure compensation (and flash exposure compensation) available. Color is excellent, contrast is very good, and I was surprised by the lack of CA through the zoom range, and lack of noticeable distortion even at the 420mm setting. There is some barrel distortion at the wide end but not noticeable in most shots. I set the sharpening and contrast to Low, and resolution to highest. Tiff files take too long for my patience, but are surprisingly fast anyway. I used Jpeg Fine, and found few artifacts at 100% in PSCS.


In addition, with a 3rd party adapter, the Olympus B300 1.7 converter (or its replacement) extends the equivalent focal length beyond 700mm with better results than could be anticipated. (We have a B300 from my Coolpix days.) There are several .8X and fisheye converters that others have used with this camera, and the posted images are quite good.

Using Bicubic Smoother, Focus Magic and PKSharpen's Output sharpening, I am able to get very nice 13x18 or so prints using Qimage. (Not as good as the 1d II prints, but very, very nice.).

ISO 80 & 100 aare pretty clean, ISO 200 gives some noise but very acceptable if you don't have to drag too much detail out of underexposed shadows, and ISO 400 shows more noise. If you use Low sharpening, Noise Ninja can do a nice job of de-noising a well-exposed image at ISO 400.

There is a small but effective *live* histogram that responds to changes in exposure settings. My wife has learned to produce the best exposures with ease...Too bad there is no way to implement a live histogram with optical viewfinder DSLR's


My wife better keep an eye on this little camera...

[img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[SteveVirata]

I agree with what has been posted and I'll tell my experience going from the FZ-10 and FZ-20 to the DSLR world with a D30 and now a 10D. The FZ-20 takes nice pictures and has an excellent zoom with good IS. There is a little learning curve but not too steep. I like to shoot sports (college games, kids playing, etc.) and was a little frustrated by the EVF. I always was seeing what "happened" rather than what was "happening." After trying a couple of things to make an "optical viewfinder" I found a used D30. Next thing I knew, I had a Sigma 70-200 f2.8 and a Canon 17-40L f4. Next thing I knew, the AF was way too slow and I had a 10D. It just snowballs...

Back to the FZ-20. I find the camera to be a great "compact pseudo-DSLR." I like the f2.8 aperture and the big zoom capabilities without the physically big lens (and without changing lenses). The biggest difference is the ISO performance. Cramming 5MP onto a smaller CCD makes noise an issue at 200 and 400. They can't compete with a large DSLR sensor. So if I'm heading out with friends and don't want to lug around my 10D, I just grab the FZ-20. Very capable camera for most situations. I chose the FZ-20 over my D30 as a backup.