The
silly season is
almost upon us. At this time of year many photo websites and blogs like this
one post some kind of “camera of the
year” award.
In previous years I have not thought any single
product was sufficiently noteworthy to merit an award. I have instead put the
view that Micro Four Thirds was the most
promising system available and I
still believe this.
But I am just one member of a substantial cohort of
camera users who really hate changing lenses.
I have for many years lived in the hope that some
clever maker would produce a convincing all purpose, do everything mega zoom
camera which would offer very good picture quality with access a full range of focal lengths without
having to change lenses.
Several manufacturers have been improving their superzoom
offerings in the last few years.
Panasonic’s FZ200 looks appealing on paper. I bought
one and found its picture quality and performance wanting.
The Sony RX10 comes close to meeting my requirements.
But its zoom range is a bit limiting and I have several concerns with
performance and ergonomics.
I bought a Panasonic FZ1000 as soon as it became
available in Australia and soon sold all my interchangeable lens camera gear,
with no regrets then or now.
Here
is a quick summary of
the FZ1000:
Specifications
and Features
* All in one camera requiring no accessories beyond
the 62mm protect filter on the lens and one or two spare batteries.
* Very good quality 16x zoom lens ranging from E25mm
to E400mm focal length.
* Built in high quality EVF, fully articulated
monitor, flash unit and full complement of controls for the expert user but
also with fully automatic operation for snapshooters.
* The camera is very versatile. It works well for a wide range of purposes
and settings; landscape, architecture, candid, street, documentary, wide angle,
telephoto, macro, sport/action, wildlife………the list goes on.
* As a bonus it does 4K video straight out of the box
without the usual handcart full of accessories required for decent quality
video. Users have reported however that an external microphone is desirable.
Picture
quality
* Excellent at low to mid ISO settings.
* Usable for most purposes at high ISO settings.
Performance
* Very fast, accurate operation, autofocus and
continuous shooting.
* Very responsive camera.
Ergonomics
Setup, Prepare and Review Phase actions are all
carried out very efficiently.
In Capture Phase, Holding, Viewing and Operating are
all efficient, effective and user friendly.
Limitations, and some workarounds:
* No ultra wide focal length. For real estate and architectural
photographers whose bread and butter is ultra wide angle interiors, the FZ1000
will not suit. For occasional situations however either the automated sweep
panorama function or stitch panorama can be used.
* No ultra long
focal length. Workarounds include using one of the JPG only e- Zoom functions,
or cropping RAW capture.
Actually I think there is a substantial niche for a
dedicated wildlife/sport/action/bird camera with a smaller sensor than the
FZ1000 allowing a lens of longer effective focal length and wider aperture.
This camera would not try to offer the wide angle end of the focal length
range, but would concentrate on the long end with fast AF, big buffer and fast
operation.
* Luminance noise at high ISO settings. This is not the
first camera I would select for indoor sport/action photography. I have used it
however for indoor junior basketball and produced quite decent results.
I think that some camera users who post on internet
sites have gotten themselves overly exercised about luminance noise in
photographs. Some cameras these days exhibit almost no noise up to extreme ISO
settings. I suspect this has given rise
to expectations that all cameras will have this capability. This is both
unrealistic and un-necessary. High ISO photos from the FZ1000 print very well even
at large sizes.
* Limited buffer for RAW capture. The workaround is to
use JPG capture for sport/action. A bigger buffer and faster clearing would be
nice however.
* The small sensor (compared to full frame) means that
depth of focus at any lens aperture is greater than that found in a full frame
photo. This can be a benefit for the documentary style photographer who wants
everything in frame to be sharp but a disadvantage for the sport/action worker
who wants the background to be smoothly out of focus. I guess you can’t have
everything.
Summary
I regard the FZ1000 as a game changing product. It
comes very close to making entry to mid level DSLRs and Mirrorless ILCs
redundant.
With 2 spare batteries, spare memory cards
and microfiber cloth it fits into a Lowe
Pro Apex 110 AW bag and weighs just 1270 grams including the bag.
In my house, it replaced a Panasonic GH4 with high
grade wide, mid and long zooms, a kit which was much more bulky, heavy and 5x
as expensive as the FZ1000.
After shooting fully manual 35mm SLR for decades, the Panasonic DMC-G1, G3, G5 were easy to get used to. I even bought a lens adapter to be able to put my MD lenses on M43. Now, thanks to your look at the FZ1000, I'm tempted to trade up again. Very tempted.
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