1000 and 1 photos with Panasonic FZ8

There are no bad cameras. There are cameras that are improperly exploited. Before evaluating advantages and disadvantages, let`s stop for a while and look back – what for we purchase that sort of equipment? The sphere of creativity of Panasonic FZ8 is report-and-art images in daylight, the images of transient moments of the stream of life, when on the one hand a photographer has no more than a minute to get ready his device, and on the other hand high criteria for the quality of the images are required.

Manufactures bundle Panasonic FZ8 with a battery of standard charge capacity, battery charger, cables for connecting camera to either PC or TVset (USB or «bell-wire» cables accordingly), a disc with driver software, a lens hood with an adapter, a strap and a lens cap on a string.

Panasonic FZ8 frontview

Panasonic FZ8backview

Some words about unused options

From personal experience of using digital camera of the previous model, the following options were turned off at once (and have not been needed any longer): digital zoom and Mode 1 of Image Stabilization (there are 2 Modes in Panasonic FZ8); there was also no need for several Scene Modes, such as «Pet» or «Baby 1 and 2». The reasons are ultimately personal.

Apparatus possibilities

The heart of any digital camera is its sensor. Panasonic FZ8 has a 7 megapixel, 1/ 2.5? Type CCD sensor making possible to shoot photos of perfect quality in bright light (in daylight or candlelight equally). Panasonic FZ8 achieves good results even in gloomy weather, still it has some demerits. First of all, Panasonic FZ8 should not be used in low light conditions (in a dark room or at twilight without extra units for lighting), because the sensor does not cope with them while the inner algorithms of noise suppression will trace quite noticeable artifacts on the images. Even an impressive value of photosensitivity ISO 1250 (or even ISO 3200 in a special mode) won`t be much helpful, what we may observe in Example 1 (shots are made in «Aperture Priority AE» Mode different photosensitivity values).

Example 1. Artifacts on the image shot in a dark room, in Manual Mode (program Mode with Aperture Priority being at the low level of noise suppression)

A special «High sensitivity» Mode for shooting in the darkness is realized with the help of the program filters rather than the abilities of the sensor. It turned out in practice that you may have the same or even better results correcting the images, that have been shot in Manual Mode with high ISO values, in any graphic editor.

The quality of shooting in semi-auto «High sensitivity» Mode.

You may observe the similar problem working with its predecessor – Panasonic FZ7. Its photosensitivity scale is a bit shifted, ISO values from 80 to 1600 are available, though I would not recommend shooting with ISO values higher than 400.

I`d like to emphasize the fact that hardly will any digital camera achieve good results in such conditions, and it is not accidentally that only in Manual Mode you can set «extreme» ISO values. It turns to be a very clever decision by developers, that camera has program limitation for auto choosing of photosensitivity (100, 200, 400; the latter is possible shooting with a flash).

Lens of Panasonic FZ8 has a wide range of characteristics which is absolutely sufficient for the amateurs. Optical magnification in fact achieves the expected results, while the chromic aberration does not spoil the image greatly (it`s well-known that chromic aberration is mostly influential practicing optical magnification, but even with maximum zoom value the amount of aberrations is normal. Instead of going into details of physical characteristics, let us have a look at the Example 4. My personal value of the optical characteristics (within the type of the camera) is only 5 on the 5-number scale.

Panasonic FZ8 has a built-in flash, which power may be either automatically (in pre-set Mode) or manually set. It`s a pity that the device doesn`t have a «hot-shoe». It might have been more preferable using a separate flash for the side – illumination, especially for shooting objects with glossy surface.

An important tool for any electronic portable device is power source. According to the results of more than 6 month period of exploitation, the service of the tool is satisfactory in my personal opinion.

The abilities of the program

However well-qualified may a photographer be, when a few seconds are at his disposal to get ready, the best decision is to refer to pre-set shooting modes. Among the variety of scene modes in Panasonic FZ8 the very simple «Portrait» and «Scenery» turned to be most useful. These are two polar scene modes in a way, because the first one creates the so-called «blurring of the background» with the largest aperture (it makes the image more impressive) and also set White Balance values automatically so that the face should look natural. The second one manages the maximum depth of focus with the smallest aperture.

The depth of focus for «Portrait» and «Scenery».

The abilities of only that pair of pre-set modes (in a bundle with manual modes) provide good opportunities for making the most impressive and qualitative images- they make up 90% of all the shots. It was interesting to try such modes as «Aerial photo» (here it is not a support for Panorama Mode but a mode that allow to create a blurting background behind a moving object) and «Night Portrait». «Soft skin» is one more fascinating mode – idea, that I happened to come across with while shooting with Panasonic FZ7 and FZ8, though it requires too specific area of usage. Photos should be taken in bright daylight and there should be no objects in the background similar to skin in colour.

As far as auto and many other semi-auto modes are «smart» enough to choose the appropriate brightness of the flash in order to lighten a dark object placed in the bright background (for instance, a face in front of the sun or sparkling water) they may be included into a numerous list of merits of Panasonic FZ8.

It`s only a pity that there is no manual regulation of White Balance for «Scenery» mode, that makes impossible «playing» with the mood of a shot.

During the working process a peculiar feature of Panasonic FZ8 was marked. Using optical magnification the program of the camera compensate automatically the lack of light coming into the lens with lighting of the image. The correction is not always as successful as on the Example 4.

The compensation of brightness using optical magnification. A fragment of the original shot of the object and the shot of the very object with 12 time optical magnification.

I can`t characterize the fact as a drawback, but it should be taken into consideration while you are forming a composition. In fact the effect is not always noticeable. There is a number of examples when you can`t observe it, among them an example of shooting a dark object on the bright sky with optical magnification.

Panasonic FZ8 has plenty of settings for auto focusing and a handy tool for manual distance setting. As in it`s predecessor Panasonic FZ7, here is a screen where you may watch the enlarged fragment of a shot (which you`d like to choose) so as to evaluate the clearness of the borderlines. But in difference from FZ7, macro shooting for FZ8 is realized not as a separate mode, but as a crafty setting of focal distance. Practically it turned to be more convenient.

Using Panasonic FZ8 you can`t help feeling that the producer did think over each detail. Even the shutter speed priority mode is realized in two means – with the first one you may shoot not for a long time but frequently (recording on the built-in memory), and with the second - long-time shooting but less frequent (recording straight on the memory unit).

Quality and formats

Along with a great number of the image size in pixels, Panasonic FZ8 has three chief settings for the quality of the shot, these are low, middle and Raw. The ability of working with Raw images has become one of the main reasons for choosing Panasonic FZ8 among the other cameras within it`s class. It is most useful when the details are crucially important. The only blot on the landscape is that in FZ7 the images of best quality are saved in TIFF format, which might be better fot FZ8 to my mind, because far less graphic editors work with Panasonic Raw- files.

Summing up

A number of fingers of both our hands is not enough to count the possibilities of the camera, that have not been mentioned in the review. Within it`s class – ultra-zoom- Panasonic FZ8 presents more than simply good results through the whole scale of settings.