Great Lens, Great Outdoor Performance, Fair Indoor Skin Tone
Written: May 12 '05
Product Rating:
Ease of Use:
Durability:
Battery Life:
Photo Quality:
Shutter Lag
Pros: What a lens! Great clarity and detail. Little lag time
Cons: Below average auto whitebalance, EVF poor in low light, some unnatural skin tones
The Bottom Line: If you enjoy controlling your camera, like a DSLR type feel, want a zoom and like clarity and detail, this is a good choice. Not a great point & shoot.
born2run's Full Review: Panasonic Lumix® DMC-FZ20 Digital Camera
The story about the FZ20 is its Leica lens. The 12X zoom with stabilization, the f2.8 through full zoom range, the clarity of detail in photos - for me, all work as advertised. It's outstanding for outdoor shots of all kinds, from nature shots to sports action shots. I've also gotten quite usable shots at indoor events with low light.
If you're looking for a pocket-sized camera, this certainly isn't it. However, I like the form factor. While it's large in volume, the camera isn't nearly as heavy as it looks, and I don't find it annoying to cart around for an afternoon of sightseeing.
However, while this camera can take extremely good photos once you know what you're doing, there is a learning curve. Results on fully automatic settings can be disappointing. This is not a point and shoot camera. The auto white balance can't handle a lot of situations, and skin tones when shooting fair-skinned people indoors can come out quite overly magenta unless you tweak settings and/or post process. I considered returning the camera over this issue, but ultimately have managed to work things out with a combination of tweaking settings and doing post processing. A camera in this pricerange ought to do a better job with color reproduction on auto settings. But every time I'd think about returning it, I just couldn't part with that Leica lens.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 459 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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