Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35 12.1MP Digital Camera with 18x POWER Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD
Posted by brian | Posted in Camera Reviews | Posted on 06-21-2010
Tags: 12.1MP, Camera, Digital, DMCFZ35, Image, inch, Lumix, Optical, Panasonic, Power, Stabilized, Zoom
5
- 12.1-megapixel resolution
- 27mm wide-angle Leica DC Vario-Elmarit lens; 18x optical zoom with POWER O.I.S.
- HD movies with 1280 x 720-pixel resolution; AVCHD Lite format
- 2.7-inch TFT LCD screen
- Capture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included)
Product Description
LUMIX 12.1 MEGAPIXEL DIGITAL CAMERA WITH 18X SUPER ZOOM & AVCHD LITE MOVIE (BLAC
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As a serious amateur, I’ve been fortunate enough to own a number of point and shoots including Panasonic, Fuji, several Nikon’s, & a couple of Canon’s. All have had their strong points and I’m not a brand loyalist by any means, but after a couple of weeks, I must say I absolutely love this camera.
My first impressions were ones of pleasant shock. The camera seemed smaller than in the pictures and if it seemed smaller, it seemed doubly more so in terms of weight. Compared to my SLR this thing is an absolute lightweight but very well built and certainly heavier than the smaller ‘in your pocket’ point and shoots. A great balance…although I wouldn’t want to drop it. Some strategically placed silicone on the housing would make this a bit more rugged without much if any impact on cost. Powerup is about as fast as you can bring the camera up to your face – amongst the best of the point and shoots. Controls are easy to use and I like the mini joystick for making on the fly adjustments in manual and scene modes. The menus are fairly well laid out although some items I had to resort to the manual to find their location for the first time.
The iA or Intelligent Auto function gave consistently above par picture quality, although I was always able to tweak it better myself (this could have been as much preference as anything). The AVCHD and HD movies worked absolutely flawless with my Transcend 16 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS16GSDHC6E [Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging]. (NOTE:Make sure you lowlevel format these SDHC cards a COUPLE of times BEFORE first use). I do wish that you could use the normal shutter release instead of the dedicated movie button on the back face when in movie mode. I kept forgetting and tried to stop the movies using the shutter button instead of the record button. Minor nuisance, but will be overcome as I get my brain wrapped around the change in button locations.
The battery worked well past 300 stills and about 35 clips, so I am very pleased with it with the LCD display being used for most of the shots. I purchase another spare battery;Lenmar DLP006 Lithium-ion Digital Camera/Camcorder Battery Equivelent to the Panasonic CGR-S006A Battery, also available here at Amazon, and it appears to be working about as well as the original Panasonic (a great buy). The EVF or Electronic View Finder was very handy, although most of the overlaid information is very hard to distinguish in the small EVF. I CAN’T BELIEVE PANASONIC DIDN’T INCLUDE A RUBBER BOOT FOR THE EVF! Please someone, anyone, make it as an accessory.
The EZ or Extra Zoom function is quite handy. Using this feature, you can shoot at lower resolutions and get more effective zooming power out of the camera…over 30x and it works very well. The LCD screen is clear and crisp, but its performance in high ambient light is about average. Thank goodness for the electronic view finder mentioned above.
Image stabilization is the absolute best amongst my camera collection and is especially noticeable in low light and full zoom. I was pleasantly surprised how well I could take indoor pictures at night with a simple tweak of the exposure. Far better than any of my other point and shoots, although nowhere near my SLR.
The standard 3picture burst mode was fairly standard and unimpressive, but the 10pics per second for speed priority and 6 pics per second in image priority burst mode worked well for catching difficult shots like geese landing on the water and children jumping out of swings, but I still wish the resolution and picture quality was better in these modes. Still, for a point and shoot, it’s ability to catch the fast action is at the top of it’s class.
The lens cap interferes with zoom, but the camera will kindly remind you that you have left it on with a 17,000 volt discharge…just kidding…it will tell you on the LCD screen.
LIKES: Ease of use, picture quality, zoom and extra zoom, HD movie, lightweight, stop action. BEST Point and Shoot I’ve ever owned ! ! !
DISLIKES: (all minor) No eyepiece boot for EVF, lens cap interferes with zoom, tripod mount interferes with battery/memory door when in use. Only 10 sec. max on the built in timer.
Rating: 5 / 5
I previously purchased the Canon SX20is and used 2 weeks. I found the images just a bit too soft for my taste. Too bad because all other facets of the camera was great. But, to me image quality is everything. If it can’t produce a crisp image, I don’t want it. Perhaps I was spoiled by the excellent SX10is I was switching from.
Desperate for an inexpensive Hi Def video camera for a client project, I decided to give the dual Panasonic FZ35 a try. I had used a Panasonic LX2 for several years and liked it, so I figured why not even though Panasonic is not a manufacturer one would normally think of first for a high quality still camera.
So far, I have been pleasantly surprised!
What I like about the FZ35:
1. The super sharp Leica lens! Having 18x zoom in such a small package.(Sharper than SX20is)
2. Metal tripod mount
3. VERY Reasonable price for all the features included. Seems a bargain to me.
4. The fact you also get very nice HD video in one package is a bonus.
5. Excellent macro mode. If you like macrophotography you’ll like this camera.
6. Relatively simple controls/interface once familiar. (You do have to read the manual)
7. Has 46mm filter threads for add ons.
8. Full time battery indicator.
9. Optional wide angle and telephoto lenses are available if desired.
10 Better than most image stabilization system.
11. Many focus & exposure options.
What I’m not so crazy about:
1. Buttons & switches are quite small and seem rather delicate.
2. Manual as PDF (what a pain). I’ll take mine paper, thank you.
You might as well print it out right away. You’re gonna need it!
3. Smallish Electronic ViewFinder (Not just this one either. They all leave me wanting.)
4. Construction and light weight give a slight feeling of cheapness.
5. Proprietary Panasonic battery.
6. Location of media card in battery compartment.
Is it perfect? Nope. Are any of them? Even the $5,000 ones?
What do I miss most when switching from my NIKON? That bright, super clear viewfinder.
Will it clip highlights? Sure, if you don’t set it up right. They all do. High dynamic range is not usually a feature on most consumer cameras.
Can it take a sharp picture? You Bet! In macro especially, you’ll love the clarity of the image.
Newbies purchasing this … make no mistake, this is a complex little piece of gear. Sure, you can use it on intelligent AUTO if you want, but what a waste. You have to LEARN this camera to get the most out of it. And don’t expect to learn it in a day or even a week. Used properly it will yield beautiful, sharp images. Buy it and shoot, shoot, shoot and you’ll get the hang of it. Why not? The “film” is cheap!
By the way, purchase a Class 6 SD card right away. That way if you want to play with the HD movie function you can. Some cheap SD cards can’t write fast enough for HD video use. If you have a hi def TV you’ll love it.
Beware though, HD video files get HUGE fast! Uploads to YouTube (or anywhere else) can take quite awhile. A 1 minute, 36 sec. clip equals 491 MB and over 4 hrs to upload via DSL.
If you get serious about HD video, or enjoy doing critical focus photography, PLEASE, buy a decent tripod and USE it. Camera movement is the main enemy of sharpness. At the low ISO settings required to get the most out of these small sensors, keeping the camera still is extremely important. Don’t expect stabilization systems to entirely solve “jitter” problems at very low shutter speeds!
High end users take note: In the Custom controls there is an separate adjustment for contrast, saturation, noise reduction and sharpness. YEA ! Somebody is listening.
Nov. 5, 2009. I’ve made nearly 1000 shots with this camera and I’m impressed and still very happy with it.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is the first of the Panasonic Lumix superzooms that I’ve had an opportunity to use extensively. I regularly use both small point and shoot digital cameras (Canon SD550 and a waterproofed Canon S100) and digital SLRs (Canon 5D and Rebel XTi), but this is definitely a different sort of beast. It’s nearly the size and weight of a DSLR with a lens that is noticeably long in use. It’s sold as straddling the line between the two categories and it initially seems that way. But the more that I think about it, the more I think this camera really fills a different niche. If you’re a serious photographer, a DSLR is really the way to go. You get full control over the images, a large sensor size, a selection of lenses, and filter options. If you’re that person, this is hardly a replacement, and for the compact point and shooter this is a massive camera. Where this camera wins out is for a very simple kit covering wide angle (27mm equivalent for a 35mm camera) and the stunning 18x zoom. You’ll be able to do most everything passably with this camera and with no additional lenses. Maybe this is the camera to put in the glovebox of your car? It’ll always be there, and you can get most any shot with it. No preparation needed. Okay, enough thinking about who wants the camera, how does it work?
Well, it works pretty darned well. The image stabilizer seems to work extremely well, especially at moderate zoom (say 50-150mm equivalent), the battery lasted about 300 shots with some flash use in there, and image quality (subjective, not measured scientifically) was quite good. The camera was a bit slow to react at times though and the face detection works only occasionally. Still, that leaves this a solid camera for what I think is a quite good price. If you’re not going to take advantage of the DSLR capabilities, this is a good functional camera for you. Or an excellent second camera for simplicity.
Pros: 18x zoom with a genuine wide angle, solid construction, good battery life, image stabilization that works, one size might well fit many
Cons: big for a point and shoot, slow acting at times, gimmicky features are, well, gimmicks
Rating: 5 / 5
(Copy of a review posted on the UK site – this is the FZ38 over there)
This is an initial review after one day of ownership, which I’ll revise. My previous experience of digital cameras is limited to a Nikon Coolpix compact, now about 7 years old, and this camera is intended to replace the Nikon film SLR and three lenses which I’ve lugged around on holidays for 10-15 years. So some things that are amazing me will be just what you expect if you’re used to similar cameras.
From that standpoint, the first thing to amaze me is the weight. Complete with battery, SDHC card, lens cap, lens hood and shoulder strap, it’s 1lb 1oz on the kitchen scales. And there’s very little to add in the accessory line – a clear and polarising filter (unlike some ‘bridge’ cameras, this one has a filter screw thread), spare battery, blower brush and mini-tripod from old stock and a new bag, and we’re done. This probably means the full kit weighing less than the SLR with mid-range zoom.
One reason for persevering with the SLR was being able to use an 18-35 mm lens for wide-angle shots. As the wide end of this camera is only equivalent to 27mm, I was pleased to see the panorama assist facility, and will be testing out the “stitching” software supplied with it to see whether I can still get a picture of a cathedral from the square in front of it. (An initial experiment suggests that given a level tripod, some good results should be available). At the narrow end, you don’t get the same power as the 24x or 26x alternatives, but with my previous range of 18-300mm, I used the 300 end less often than the 18, so probably not a big issue unless you’re snapping birds or cricketers. (You can have 32x if you reduce image size to 3Gb, but a very quick comparison suggests that unless stuck for memory space you may as well use 18x/12Mb and crop the picture later.)
The next big surprise was the quality of the results from “Intelligent Auto” mode. As soon as the battery was charged, I went outside and snapped away without worrying about where the sun was, or anything else I’d have pondered with the SLR. Results were very good, so you can do some very lazy photography, and if one or all users of the camera have never cared about shutter speeds and exposure compensation, it barely matters – Intelligent Auto and some other top-wheel choices like the scene mode will do most of the work.
I haven’t yet tried the movie-making side, though that’s not of great interest to me.
Various minor points:
The supplied Photofun Studio 4 software says that it doesn’t support 64-bit Windows Vista, but does install and seems to work OK.
You do NOT get a printed copy of the full manual, just a short ‘Getting started’ guide. The full manual in PDF is supplied on CD and you can find it and read it on the Panasonic website before buying, but I would have liked to have to whole thing – spare time on holidays is an ideal time for reading it. As and when we have a netbook PC for keeping and editing pictures, this issue will disappear!
The lens hood is easy enough to fit but its guide mark is unhelpfully placed on the bottom of the camera and common-sense fitting by eye without inverting the camera works just as well. The lens cap fits on the screw-in ring to which you attach the hood, though I’ve not yet checked whether you can stick this whole lot in front of a lens-protecting filter without vignetting or other trouble.
The square “+/-” symbol on the display may cause mild panic if you’re used to an old SLR’s top-panel display, where the symbol itself indicates under/overexposure. On the FZ38, it doesn’t unless there is a number next to it. The display options are worth exploring – the guidelines option is a boon for lining up, and when displaying pictures, you can optionally show a lot of information like shutter speed and aperture. Another user interface issue is that some selections are made without the equivalent of an “OK” button and some with, so at first you may find yourself pressing the “Menu/Set” button too often, despite the camera’s efforts to guide you.
One problem with the user interface is more significant – some lists of option choices use graphical symbols whose meaning may not be obvious. In some cases (like the ones shown when you select portrait with the mode wheel) these have explanatory captions (my favourite is “Smooth skin – shoot potrait’s skin more smoothly” – misspelled and a bit repetitious, but they tried). In others, there’s no help – try Setup – LCD mode, where your choices are “Off”, “A*” and “*” with no help about what LCD mode is or what these settings mean. You have to go to the full manual in PDF to find out. Depending on your experience, other symbols may be obvious, and explanation might be irritating, so there’s probably scope for some kind of “expert/beginner” setting which determines how much is explained. This is the one that stops me upping the rating to five stars.
The electronic viewfinder works well as an alternative to the screen, once adjusted with the diopter wheel. The display is exactly the same – you can even look at your stored pics with the viewfinder.
The battery is good for 470 shots based on the CIPA standard, but the manual warns you that this is based on a particular usage pattern – “e.g. when recording once every 2 minutes, the number [...] decreases to about 117. So a spare battery is probably worth buying. The charger is good for voltages 110-240, so for foreign trips you only need the kind of adaptor that makes the plug fit.
Rating: 4 / 5
…who doesn’t adore this camera.
To begin with, I did my research, and I really thought this would be the perfect new toy, so I asked for it for Christmas. My husband complied and bought me the Lumix FZ35 for Christmas, and I bought him the Lumix ZS3. We are both digital SLR users, but as we are both tour guides, we wanted lighter, easy-to-use ‘bridge’ cameras that would take great photos and HD video while we are in the midst of guiding, as it is just too much hassle to use and carry an SLR while you are also carrying a heavy pack and talking at the same time. Let me add, I have the older version of the FZ35 (the DMC-FZ50, circa ‘06) it’s a totally awesome camera, and my faithful workhorse for my other job as a resource inventory person, but it is much larger, probably at least 3X heavier than the FZ35, and it does not shoot great video. After reading the great reviews for the newer camera, I thought the FZ35 could be my new ‘guiding camera’.
My husband and I just returned yesterday from guiding a National Geographic trip in Yellowstone National Park, downloaded our photos and began comparing. My husband’s images were jpg, I was shooting RAW+jpg. My husband is much happier with his photos than I am with mine. I found the wildlife shots I took while completely zoomed in to be mostly fuzzy, while my husband’s taken with the ZS3 to be clear. I was also disappointed with the amount of color noise in my photos, especially when shooting with the iAuto, although I experimented with many different settings mostly in bright light. In short, I was not completely happy with a single shot that I took during the past week. This is something that has never happened to me before. I have taken tens of thousands of photos in Yellowstone with at least 6 different cameras over the years, and I can attest to the fact it’s not a difficult place to get a decent photo in. However, I couldn’t seem to get a decent photo with the FZ35, no matter how much I played around with it.
I know I was not using it incorrectly, as the menus are virtually identical to the camera I have been using since 2006. Maybe I have a lemon, but there are enough issues besides the photo quality that I still plan to return the FZ35 without getting a replacement. Read on.
I also found the fact I had to constantly adjust the diopter to use the optical viewfinder to be extremely irritating. The optical viewfinder was one of the reasons I wanted this model, as I am terribly far-sighted and I didn’t want to have to wear magnifying glasses to take photos. With other cameras I’ve had, once the diopter’s adjusted, you should rarely, if ever, have to re-adjust it. Something else I found disappointing right out of the box, is the previous model of Panasonic I still own has a wonderful swiveling LCD, which turned completely around and locked for protection when not being used. The function automatically switched to the LCD viewer if you opened the LCD or turned it around. I thought this was a great feature, and I can’t figure out why Panasonic doesn’t have it on their newer model. Having an adjustable LCD is almost mandatory for taking macros of plants at ground level, which is something I do constantly during the summer.
Another really serious flaw to me is that the R2W RAW format used by Panasonic is unrecognized by Lightroom and Photoshop CS3, as well as Aperture, iPhoto, and Adobe Bridge. Apparently, if you use Panasonic’s proprietary software you can open the photo and convert it to a .tiff, but since I have approximately $700 bucks worth of photo processing software on my MAC computer, I’m not about to confuse the issue by having to open something in Panasonic’s software, save to a .tiff (which creates enormous files, unlike saving to .psd or a .dng) just so I can work with it in the software I already own. I’ve searched high and low for a plug-in for RW2 format for photoshop, but apparently Panasonic hasn’t issued one yet that will work with the aforementioned software.
So, I’m disappointed that I didn’t find a worthy replacement for my DMC-FZ50 and I am returning the camera in favor of the compact Lumix ZS3, which at this point is about a hundred bucks cheaper.
Rating: 2 / 5