For ages, I have not thought beyond Sony, Canon and Nikon when it comes to cameras. When I got to know about Panasonic dmc fz50, I should say I was outright excited. This is one model that tries to bridge that gap between a D-SLR and a P&S, and that relieved a lot of my confusion on a choice for a camera.
*The design
If you just look at it, you cannot differentiate between a SLR and fz50. With the front and rear dials on the right, manual zoom(12X: 35mm-420mm equiv and no projection of lens [just zooms internally]) ring and the build, Panasonic brings a(very) near-to-SLR handling. Felt a tad heavy when I held it for the first time, but the weight is just so evenly spread that it gives a fantastic balance to hold and shoot. The different compartments that hold the batteries, memory card and the USB, AV in/out all have a plastic cover(as against rubber covers for a USB in few models). Overall build of the camera is just rock solid and beautiful. With the lens hood on, it makes me look like a photographer. If I compare it to my dream girl, it is comfortably there.
Operations & Handling
*After switching it on, it is on its mark and gets set in a jiffy. The battery life is good and comes to around 300 snaps after complete charging(most of my snaps were under low light extreme conditions). The 2-inch LCD can rotate at any angle and is a good advantage. Both the viewfinder and the LCD have good resolution, and the default LCD contrast is a bit on the higher side(to be noted while taking snaps). The menus are excellent and a lot photographer friendly. It doesn’t take a lot of time to change the settings and you should achieve most common stuff at a maximum of 2-3 presses. That makes all the manual functions really easy.
Images
Had a day out with my camera(to a cave which also has good landscape surrounding it) to put it under some test. Under bright light conditions the image results are phenomenal. When I try the ‘fix’es in Picassa software, there is hardly any change in the histogram. The color temperature and contrast are just spot on. With a long zoom image stabilizer is mandatory these days. Fz50 has one and it does work really well. The flash power is really good and lights up a reasonably big room. But I felt it was a bit too bright on closer shots. Slow-sync flash can compensate that anyways.
It was under the low light conditions I had some disappointment. I did read about fz50’s ‘noise’ on dpreview.com. steves-digicam.com said people are just making too much noise about the noise, but it actually it is not too bad. There were mixed opinions around. Just took a bit of gamble in still buying this model and when I saw the images myself, as I said, it was disappointing. It has an ISO of up to 1600, but anything more than ISO 400 results in what can be a just-better-than mobile camera quality images. The crowded 10MP comes in as a disadvantage here as well.
Of course, one can go back to usual ways of greater exposures and lower ISO, but requires a tripod and the objects to be still(to avoid motion blur). But this is one thing that stops fz50 taking a step further into the list of amazing cameras.
Features
There are loads of features around on this. There is this I-ISO(intelligent ISO) apart from Auto ISO and works good with decent lighting conditions. Not being a SLR, there is this advantage of having a movie mode. Movie is good and you can zoom while recording. But, as in any digital camera when you compare to a camcorder, the movie features are only limited.
There are various shooting modes like Night landscape, Night portrait, starry sky, sports, beach, etc. And in most modes(and in manual modes), it automatically takes 3 snaps at 3 different exposure levels and we can select the best amongst them.
The software as I mentioned earlier is fantastic. For instance, when you take images vertically with the camera, you don’t have to manually rotate during playback. It automatically recognizes and rotates the image. It looks like so much of thought has been put into before giving great ease of operation.*
Conclusion*
Fz50 has a great design and fantastic ease of operations. The big disadvantage is the low-light shots at ISO greater than 400(even 800 is manageable), which is visibly bad. If you can live with that(considering greater ISO images are unrealistically bright), then this is a worthy consideration. If you are someone who gives sensitivity a damn, going for this could be even a deal of your life.
However just for that single reason(quality issues at ISO > 400), Panasonic Lumix dmc fz50 falls a fraction short of being a masterpiece to just another piece in a sea of digicam choices.
Smiles,
Vinayak
(For technical specifications please check the link: https://panasonic.co.uk/high-zoom/dmc-fz50eb-k/index.htm)