Panasonic Lumix FZ80D Looking better second time around. 3 May 2026

 

I posted a user review of the Pana-Lumix FZ80D soon after the camera was released in 2024 then sold the camera for no good reason that I can now recall and recently bought another.

I seem to be getting better results with the FZ80D second time around. The reason for this is not clear. Maybe the second copy of the lens is a bit better, maybe I better understand how to use the camera, maybe new capabilities in Adobe Camera Raw are helping.  

The lens is actually quite sophisticated for a budget model, with 14 elements in 12 groups, 6 aspheric lenses with 9 aspheric surfaces and 3 ED elements.

Bridge cameras were once very popular and numerous but the number available for sale new has drastically declined over recent years. I really don’t understand why as the bridge camera can be one of the most  versatile and capable types of all. Perhaps camera companies might cite falling sales. But if they introduce then fail to update their product lines then declining consumer interest would seem inevitable. 

In May 2026, if we specify a proper handle and controls and a proper built-in EVF with an eyepiece, I find only two models available, the FZ80D which is quite compact and the Nikon P1100 which is a much larger thing with a 125x zoom.

It is not clear to me whether the FZ80D represents a commitment by Panasonic to stay the course with bridge cameras or whether it is just a corporation squeezing the last drop of juice from the near-depleted fruit of a product line nearing end of days.

Whatever the case the FZ80D  is capable of making sometimes surprisingly good photos in careful hands, despite its antiquated lineage. 

In this post I offer some sample photos, mainly of birds. I also include a landscape and a flower close-up to show that the FZ80D is quite capable with these subjects.

We can make decent bird pix with the FZ80D provided a number of strategies are used.

Get close to the subject. Even with the 1200mm full frame equivalent focal length getting close is necessary for decent results. Most of the birds shown in this post live in close proximity to humans so are not spooked even if I get within 4-5 meters, as long as I do so quietly and slowly.

Pick a bright, preferably sunny day and move around to the sun-lit side of the bird. The FZ80D is not at its best with backlit subjects. 

Set the mode dial to S (shutter priority AE) and a shutter speed of around 1/500 second. The FZ80D has an optical image stabiliser in the lens but at the long end of the zoom a slow shutter speed will still produce unsharp results.  Don’t worry about the aperture, the camera will set the minimum f-stop available at each focal length and that is the best. Set Auto ISO.

View through the viewfinder with the camera firmly held against the eye socket to minimise camera shake.  Never hold the camera out at arms length when zoomed out. Try to frame the subject in camera to reduce the need for cropping later. Practice controlled breathing to steady the hands.

Set [Direct Focus Area] in the menus so the active focus area box can be moved with the cross keys and the box size changed with the control dial.

Experiment with single shot and  continuous focus and drive searching for the combination which works best in the current conditions. 

Make many exposures. Usually a few frames will be a bit better than most. 

Use RAW capture and post process in a capable RAW Converter. I use Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw/Photoshop.

In Adobe Camera Raw, I use much bolder slider settings for FZ80D images than I would for cameras with a larger sensor.

In the Light tab I adjust highlights and shadows to prevent highlight and shadow clipping.

In Effects I drag the Texture slider firmly to the right while viewing the image at 100% on screen.  Often the image will tolerate 100 with beneficial effect. Texture works very much like Sharpening but over a larger span of pixels. I do not touch the other Effects sliders. They have a different type of effect.

In Detail I drag the Radius up to 3.

I view the image at 100% while dragging the Detail slider to the right. I usually take it all the way to 150 then back off a bit if that looks too extreme.  

Next in Detail, I click on Denoise to start Adobe Denoise AI. This by default shows the result at 50%. I drag the slider up or down until the image looks good without excessive processing artefact.at one end of the spectrum or excessive noise at the other end.

This often produces color fringing which needs to be corrected in the Optics tab. Check Remove Chromatic Aberration under Profile then work the Defringe sliders under the Manual tab. Success with this comes from practice and experiment. There are no set rules.

At shorter focal lengths and in particular in the middle of the zoom range lens quality and detail rendition are quite good, remarkably so when we consider the sensor in this camera measures only 6.17 x 4.55mm with a  diagonal of 7.67mm.

Summary.  With careful camera work and post processing we can coax some quite decent photos from the FZ80D. There is not much chance of exhibition quality results here but for personal and family projects the camera does a creditable job. 

I have been using successive iterations of this model since the FZ70 of 2013. Since then the same lens has been retained, same body, same controls and same user experience. The sensor has gone from 16 to 18 Mpx, the EVF is now an OLED type and we have USB-C charging as mandated by the EU.

Despite there being so many legacy components, I am finding that imaging capability is improving as the years go by. I guess this could be due to better stabiliser operation, closer control of tolerances in lens manufacture and maybe an improved processor. 

I really wish Pana-Lumix would commit to further development of the bridge camera genre. Unfortunately the signs are not promising. They dropped the FZ1000 line, the FZ2000 and the FZ200-300 line with no hint of further bridge cams to come. In addition Sony has discontinued their RX10-4 which is the most capable bridge model ever made, when they could have updated the ergonomics and menu system for a better user experience.