Hello all,
I am looking for a lightweight camera to take in the field to make occasional bird and perhaps other types of photos. I want to use it without a tripod. I have been looking at super and ultra zoom cameras, and had a few questions.
1. I see some posters use a tele-converter to increase the zoom on these cameras. I assume that no tripod is used without the tele-converter. Do people generally use a tripod if they also opt for a tele-converter?
2. Are there disadvantages to using a tele-converter?
3. I have seen stated as a rule of thumb that the "power" of the zoom lens is equal to the number of millimeters divided by 50. However, my recollection is that the human eye is equivalent to a 58 mm lens. Would a more exacting formula be the number of millimeters divided by 58?
I have been reading other threads and some reviews and it looks as though the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 ultra zoom might suit my needs. Are there other cameras I should be considering? (The only other ultra zooms I am aware of are the Olympus, which seems to be widely panned (though I just read that the SP-560 currently corrected some of the 550's faults), and the Fuji, which I read an unflattering review of). In addition to light weight, I am also looking for a camera that:
-- is intuitive and easy to use
-- has either an LCD or EVF that can be used in bright sunlight
-- has mechanical image stabilization
-- and of course good image quality (though I am not expecting perfection in this camera class of course)
Thanks for any help,
Jim
Hi Jim,
I recently purchased a Panasonic FZ18 for my trip to India and I am so glad that I did. The 28 to 504 mm range really came in handy and another guy who was with us for part of the trip brought his Panasonic TZ1 (10x optical) and was just not getting close enough with his shots. I found that I was frequently using the 5 and 3 megapixel extended zoom options to get close enough to the birds.
The camera is very light, easy to use, fast and responsive and the battery does last about a full day's shooting even in Burst mode, which I used pretty much all the time. You can get a teleconverter for it. Most people recommend the Olympus TCON-17. Actually I have just invested in one because I would like to be able to extend the zoom range without going down to 3 meg. Of course, this adds weight to the camera and I understand that most people recommend using a tripod.
The general opinion over on DPreview is that the FZ18 is the best of the 18x superzooms with marginally reduced picture quality over the 12X FZ8. However, the extended wide angle and zoom range more than make up for this shortcoming IMHO. Focus is fast and pictures are pretty good quality up to about ISO 300. You probably know that above this, all of the superzooms suffer from a lot of noise because of the size of the sensor and the amount of megapixels the manufacturers try to cram in.
I would say to you to judge for yourself by the following shots. Most of the shots I posted were taken just using P mode and intelligent ISO 400 max. The fireworks were taken using the Fireworks scene mode.
My other camera is a Fuji F31FD which I use for digiscoping. When I have time to set up a shot, I have found that so far, in lower light, the IQ is a lot better than my Panasonic (although I have been advised that If I spent more time using the manual settings I would have got better results on some of my shots, but you live and learn), but it is obviously more fiddly to set up so I hardly took any shots with this camera on holiday.
Another one you might wish to consider is the Canon S3IS or S5IS. If you want to shoot movies this is better because you can use the zoom function and it also has a flip out screen. The panasonic doesn't allow you to use zoom in movie mode. However, it is not as wide as the panasonic (36mm as opposed to 28 mm) and is only a 12x optical zoom. Panasonic's FZ18 also shoots Raw if that rocks your boat.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/877360...57603341038890/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/877360...57602909218691/
Hope this helps.
Jo
Hi Jo,
Those are some great photos! I bet you were glad you had the zoom when that tiger came around. ;-) I had a couple of questions though.
I was having some trouble figuring out the EXIF data though. I was not sure what figure, if any, gave the zoom level the picture was taken at. I thought it might be the 35mm equivalent figure, but some of those were in the 800s, so that did not seem right. (Unless they are reflecting the addition of digital zoom or a teleconverter?) Were many of those taken at maximum zoom? Are you getting good results without a tripod at maximum zoom?
I also noticed that one of the owl photos was listed as being taken at an ISO of 1600, but seemed quite sharp. Was the 1600 figure accurate?
Finally, do you find the "digital zoom" useful at all?
Cheers,
Jim