Firstly, this is not a camera for those petty souls who can be easily satisfied with just any picture of the place/object they want to capture. This is a near SLR camera.. that offers plenty of control to the photographer.
If you want to know a little bit about this camera, visit: https://dpreview.com/news/0308/03081102panasonicfz2.asp
Well, Lumix FZ1 was launched sometime around Sept 2002.. and was a success. Lumix FZ2 came in Sept 2003... and I got mine in October. :-) (FZ10 was launched in November 2003.. but its too heavy for me)
The main feature being the 12x optical zoom. (Optical zoom is by achieved purely by lens movement. There is absolutely no loss in picture quality. Digital zoom is electronic zoom achieved by extrapolating the pixels.. so the image will become slightly blurred). The maximum zoom achievable in a camera is the producut of Optical & Digital zooms. Hence, FZ2 is capable of 36x zoom.
Problems with high zoom is that any shake of camera will also get multiplied as many times & hence the pictures end up being toooo blurry. However, Lumix cameras have OIS (Optical image stabilization) which allow taking clear hand-held pictures upto full 12x zoom. Any more zoom, tripod or some other stable support becomes necessary.
FZ2 operates in 9 modes (8 shooting modes & 1 viewing mode). Rather than explaining what each mode does, I will simply summarize what the camera offers:
(*) Manual control of aperture value. (i’m not yet an expert to comment on this. all I can tell you is high aperture value will allow more light to fall on the sensor.)
(*) Manual control of Shutter speed. (Night shots need higher shutter speed values to allow extra exposure)
(*) Manual control of light sensitivity (ISO 100, 200, 400 and Auto.)
(*) 5 different White Balance modes - Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Flourescent & manual setting. (manual setting mode can be used when the lighting is a mix of different colours (like in a night club). Just point the camera at a perfectly white object & it’ll set the white balance accordingly to give very good images).
(*) 3 different color modes - Natural, Cool & Warm. (cool will make the image BLUEish, Warm will make it REDdish. Cool can be used in mercury vapour lamp lighting to nullify the redness in the images).
(*) Autobracket feature (Useful when you are not sure how much exposure is optimal. Automatically 2 snaps are taken with different exposure settings. One will be bright(overexposed) the other will be slightly dark(underexposed). Using both the snaps, an optimum exposure image can be obtained using specialised software).
(*) Burst mode. (Upto 4 pictures are taken rapidly. Can be used to capture that perfect snap of a dive/jump.)
(*) Sports mode (to capture fast moving action.
(*) Pan mode (to follow a moving object & take a picture at a particular moment)
(*) Portrait & Night portrait modes as in any camera.
(*) Macro mode.. to capture intricate details of small things like flower buds/ insects/ watches/ PCBs/ etc. The camera lens can be as close as 2 inches to the object!!!
(*) Movie mode with Sound
(*) Static & Dynamic Focus. Static is one time focus setting for as many pictures as you want (in a session). Dynamic focus will set the focus before every picture.
(*) The menus are pretty comfortable, and so is using the LCD screen/view finder. (view finder has diapter control (to enable ppl with POWERful eyes to take snaps without their glasses :-) )
(*) The battery is powerful & can take upto 100 images in one charging. But storing 100 2MP images needs around 128 MB space. (the supplied card is just 8 MB. if you’re buying a camera go for atleast 128 MB card).
The flash movie at this site explains the working of various features of this camera: https://panasonic.jp/dc/fz2/
Now, some cons of the camera:
(*) It weighs 350 grams & doesn’t fit into a pocket. (with a 12x zoom lens, it is still a tiny camera)
(*) Night pictures are not upto expectations. Its impossible to take hand-held night landscapes. Night portraits are ok because using the flash on your subject will decrease the shutter speed significantly. The daytime pictures are as good/clear as they can be in any camera.
(*) The flash is almost useless. (atleast, i’m not yet used to such low power flash)
(*) Manual FOCUS is absent. (Lumix FZ10 released in November 2003 has this feature.. but it weighs 550 grams).
(*) Price of 270 pounds (nearly 21, 000 rupees) can be considered expensive for a 2MP camera. (if you know how to use all the features, then its worth it)
For thoroughly professional reviews, visit:
https://steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/fz1.html https://dcresource.com/reviews/panasonic/dmc_fz1-review/index.shtml
Even though these are for FZ1, they explore most of the common features very well.
Hope you enjoy using it.
-S