Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Poor Man's Digital SLR, July 7, 2004
Dumbfounded by the deluge of digicams? Spending more time obsessing on which digicam to buy, more than you did buying your house? Like the fact the users seem to fall in love with this little wonder but are put off by the fact it's only a 2 megapixel camera? Don't worry about the megapixels. The Lumix FZ1/FZ2 is rightfully developing quite a cult following with consumers, photography enthusiasts, and even professional photographers (read "FZ-1: A Pro-Level Digital Point & Shoot" by Frank Van Ripper from the Washington Post available on-line at CameraWorks.com) If you can live without more megapixels, this compact camera has so much to offer. 2MP is more than you need for PC viewing, e-mail, and the web. It can and does provide sufficient resolution to make excellent photo-quality prints up to 5X7, and supposedly makes nice enlargements up to 8X10. This is a compact, responsive, point and shoot camera with a robust feature set - including a capable burst mode (great for sports action shots and not found on cameras in this class), and true TTL framing via an EVF. There's enough to this camera to satiate the enthusiast - night portrait, portrait, panning, "normal" mode etc., and also has a fully automated mode if you want to let the camera do all the work, and just "focus" (pardon the pun) on composition. But what sets this digicam apart is the big zoom fixed Leica lens. It really is a word-class piece of glass with remarkable specs, especially considering its size. Combine this remarkable lens with an effective image stabilization system, and you have a "different animal" all together. This is a unique versitile and fun digicam that has so much more than others in its price range. Its limitations (weak pop-up flash, EVF cuts out in low light, noise above ISO 200, etc) are really more attributable to its class ($300 point and shoot) than the camera. However, it is capable of producing remarkable images, and once you start shooting with its high quality lens with an IS system, you'll never want a camera doesn't have them. Plus, it is an excellent value. If you don't do a lot of enlargements or cropping in a photo editor, I would recommend the FZ1 in a heartbeat over any other camera, regardless of the number of megapixels, in its price range, and most cameras that cost two or three times as much. Now a word about megapixels. A megapixel is 1 million pixels (they're the little squares that make up the image...). So, this camera produces images that are 1600 pixels wide by 1200 pixels high. 1600X1200 = approx 2 million, hence 2 megapixels. Since going digital, I find that I view 90%-95% on my PC/laptop monitor. It's convenient, and priting them all would cost a small fortune, since now that I can snap away with wreckless abandon since film (for me) is a thing of the past. (I still use a lab to print. I would rather "borrow" the lab's $200,000 printer than own a $300 dollar consumer photo printer, plus it costs much less per print when you factor in the cost of the printer ink...) Okay, so my laptop's highest 32 bit resolution setting is 1024X768, the resolution of the FZ1 (1600X1200) exceeds that. Point is that since I view most of my pictures on a PC now, I gain NOTHING from a higher resolution camera with more megapixels in most circumstances. The 5% to 10% of pictures I print, I usually print at standard 6X4. Anything over 200 pixels per inch (ppi) is considered "photo quality" for printing, 150 ppi is considered "acceptable". As you get beyond 250 ppi on a print, the differences in resolution from a normal viewing distance are virtually invisible to the naked eye. IMO, I would fail a blind test, probably, if asked to guess the resolution of a picture between the 200 and 250 ppi range. 1600 (pixels)/6(inches) = 267 ppi, exceeding 250 ppi in length on a 6X4 (Note: technically, this formula isn't entirely accurate but is close enough for government work, and serves better as a quick illustration...). A 5X7 is 228 ppi, and an 8X10 is 160 ppi. Hence, this camera produces "photo-quality" images up to 5X7 and "acceptable" resolution up to 8X10. Most photo editors worth their disk space, like Photoshop, can resample images using bicubic interpolation to add pixels and boost resolution for the (very) occasional larger print. A very good product for this is Qimage, a free trial is available, and it's quite inexpensive to purchase. A hot shoe would have been nice but my understanding is that a "digital slave flash", which are quite reasonably priced, like the Vivitar AF200, work very well when you need a big flash. Now consider, not a "scientific survey" but 3 or 4 folks I know own 3 to 5 megapixel cameras. (The 5 megapixel guy has a 10X optical zoom camera, made by one of the usual suspects, that cost 2X as much as the FZ1, but he doesn't even attempt zooming out beyond 5X without blurring the image, since his camera doesn't have IS). None of them kept their cameras on the highest setting thereby "using" all the megapixels. Why? Because the larger image files cut the amount of pictures they can store on their flash cards in half, their camera annoyingly "locks up" for a couple seconds while it writes a larger image file (often very frustrating), and they really can't notice a difference in quality on their prints, and they view most of their pictures on their PC. Let's say you have a 6 megapixel camera that had a cheap lens that introduced all sorts of distortion and a processing engine that rendered inaccurate colors. What would you get? A crappy picture with distortion and inaccurate colors rendered in all their ugly glory in high resolution. The FZ1 has the "best" lens on the market, and an excellent, innovative processing engine that provides "enough" but not "extraneous" megapixels to provide photoquality resolution for 99% of "real world" viewing formats. I believe that camera companies are exploiting the conspicuous consumption factor of camera consumers who wear their camera around their neck like jewelery. (The "name" + many megapixels = "the guy" equivalent of a pearl necklace to wear on a night out). It is therefore a great way for the camera co's to (finally) introduce planned obsolence into their offerings, dispensing with the days when folks held on to their cameras for decades until they finally died. I'm glad at least one manufacturer withdrew from the "great megapixel wars" and offered an excellent product based around real user needs and the true advantages of the full range of available technology - like IS and its processing engine, and did so at a very reasonable cost, instead of being just another combatant exploiting one aspect - "the megapixel", and the conspicuous consumption factor. Get the picture?
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32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Camera, October 6, 2003
Don't fall for megapixal envy! A 12x stabalized optical zoom on this 2.1MP camera will out perform a 4MP camera cropped to the same field of view.I've used three digital cameras; a Canon A40 (2.1MP), an Olympus D-40 (4.0MP) and the FZ1. It is no contest the FZ1 takes the best pictures, has the quickest shutter response, the most accurate color reproduction and an amazing lens that allows shots the others cannot dream of taking... Manual controls would be nice, but not missed much at all. Once again, you cannot crop a 4 or 5MP image to the same field of view as this camera at 12x optical zoom and achieve the same quality. If you are not making posters, 2.1MP is plenty. You won't be disappointed.
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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
EASY QUICK AND PAINLESS DIGITAL PHOTOS, December 13, 2003
This is my first digital camera, having used a Kodak Advantix with some zoom capability for the past several years. The cost of film, development, lost pictures and negatives made the purchase of a digital camera a no brainer. However, the one thing lacking from most digital cameras I had seen was an optical zoom. Digital zoom is almost meaningless, so don't be fooled by ads such as "3x Digital Zoom" which doesn't do much alone. I researched various other models, including the Olympus zoom models, but chose this camera because of the terrific price, quality glass Leica lense, compact size and the unbelieveable 12x optical zoom with picture stabilization, which is necessary to take non-blurry pictures at full zoom. The only concern I had was some negative comments by Amazon reviewers regarding low light photos. The first thing I did when I received the camera was take some photos of people in low light conditions at distances over 10 feet with the flash on. I discovered two things: (1) The pictures came out fine. (2) Hey I can use this thing without even looking at the instructions! It is a very simple camera to use, the screen menus are easy to navigate and activate options. The key theme here being the lack of frustration. There is a dial on the camera with little pictures or icons such as: a camera (when you are in normal photo mode), a car (to photo moving objects), a flower (to photo extreme close-ups), a person with a star above them (night photos). It can't be easier than that. Turn that dial to shoot video, press the shutter and you now are recording home video- as long as your memory card permits. I recommend purchasing a large memory card, 128 Megabytes is sufficient, since the 8 MB card that comes with the camera will only let you take about 30 high quality photos. The instruction manual is the best I have seen for an electronic product. Each page has a large heading at the top for the action you are trying to accomplish, i.e., take photos, record video, play back video, delete pictures. This makes it quick to find the topic. Underneath that heading are the simple steps, with diagrams showing you what to do. A positive of this camera is that once you learn how to accomplish an action, it is so intuitive you will likely never have to refer to the manual again once you have tried it.I was unconcerned about some mild criticisms about the lack of manual adjustability of certain camera-tech related functions, which I admittedly do not understand. I am not a professional photographer so I don't feel as I am missing anything, nor will you if you just take casual family, event and vacation related photos. The second day I had the camera I took it outside and shot some full zoom photos with the picture stabilization feature on. I was stunned by the detail, clarity and quality of the pictures I could obtain from objects at incredible distances. I cannot imagine ever using a camera without an optical zoom again. It simply opens up a whole new world of possiblilites for your pictures and frees you from the limitations of a regular camera, without the need to carry around a bunch of bulky zoom lenses like you might see a professional photogopher use. The camera seems very sturdy, comes with a nice strap, fine lense cap with its own micro strap connecting it to the camera if you like, to prevent it from being lost. I was initially dissappointed that Amazon only offered the black model, but it looks nicer in person then on the web page. I am now glad they only sell the black version because it looks sharp. If you want some technical oriented reviews, versus an anecdotal review, there are many fine detailed reviews, with examples of actual photos taken using the camera on the web. I liked the one at Digital Camera Resource.
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