Panasonic FZ50
Author
Discussion

benjc

Original Poster:

677 posts

278 months

Friday 20th October 2006
quotequote all
I am thinking about investing in one of these bad boys, and was wondering what the consensus of the PH photographic community was!

I am after a camera with full manual control, a very good zoom, "point and shoot"- ability, without the fussiness and long term expense of a dSLR.

So guys, any thoughts???

edited due to "red wine" spelling!

Edited by benjc on Saturday 21st October 00:43

sparkythecat

8,104 posts

285 months

Saturday 21st October 2006
quotequote all
I trod the same path a few weeks ago and narrowed my choice down to the Panasonic FZ 50, the Canon IS 3S and the Fujifilm Finepix 9500. (The 9600 came out on 1st Oct)

I dismissed the Canon as I found it to fiddly for my porky fingers.
There was little to seperate the other two cameras. I chose the FZ50 because it had a good lens, it had a better OIS system that the Fuji and I liked the feel of it.

If you look in the photography resources thread on this forum you will find links to a number of review sites which I found very helpful.

On some of the review sites and their asssociated forums the camera gets criticised by purists for having image 'noise' problems at lower light levels. Any camera such as this is a compromise and will never produce images as good as an SLR with a prime lens, however it is very versatile. As I'm probably unlikely to be printing any bigger than A4 this wasn't a big issue for me. Although it's early days yet, all in all, I'm very pleased with it. thumbup