Available From
Why are these offers here?
Lowest Price!
- Overview
-
Reviews
- Compare Prices
User ReviewRead All Reviews »
Thats better!
Pros
Superb Handling and Functions. Manual Focus that works. Versatile Controls. Excellent EVF and Screen.
Cons
Image Noise. Poor RAW support.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
Superb handling, fast response with little or no shutter lag. Solid construction with a lovely 12X lens.
I've recently been lucky enough to test a Fuji S9500 and a Panasonic FZ30.
Out of the two I've decided to buy the Panasonic. The main reasons are it's excellent build quality and more importantly, it's shooting performance.
I went out today in terrible weather, poor light, high winds and occasional showers. Even under these conditions I still got some nice shots with the FZ30. I could see the rear screen and the EVF clearly, and altering settings was easy an intuitive.
Anyone getting on a bit, like me, will probably be suffering focusing problems with many camera's, especially where you can't trust the Auto focus.
The FZ30 has a brilliant manual focus mode, where you turn a ring on the lens, exactly the same as older film cameras; but what makes it better is that the moment you start to focus, the EVF magnifies and the quality of the screen is good enough to really judge the focus accurately.
The Fuji can also manual focus, and it has a lens focus ring, but you don't get the auto enlargement of your subject without extra key presses, on the EVF.
For taking pictures of birds or other moving objects, the FZ30 is by far the faster and more accurate system.
Another excellent facility on the FZ30 is the continuous modes. When you select a setting, either High, (5) or Low (9) or continuous, even if you switch the camera off, the settings are remembered, so for actions shooting, it's simply switch on, bring the camera up to your eye and shoot away at around 2.8 fps for as long as you like!
The Fuji suffers a major problem here. You have 3 continuous modes, first 4, last 4 or continuous. The problem is after you've taken the first or last 4, the camera can take up to 15 seconds before you can take any further shots. On the FZ30 it's less than 2 seconds, even at the 8 Mpixel setting. The Fuji's continuous mode is also a leisurely 1.1 fps. You also have to reselect the mode after the camera has shut down.
Fuji has made a lot of their Noise reduction system and indeed it works quite well, but it's not a patch on the Canon and Panasonic's lens stabilization modes. The Fuji simply increases the cameras ISO speed as the light gets low or when you use maximum zoom. So you can get a picture hand holding the lens 2-3 stops lower than you would normally, but, even with their noise reduction system, you picture will not match the FZ30's.
Although the Fuji can shoot at up to 1600 ISO, and needs to if you want images without camera shake, the Panasonic's 400 ISO setting are roughly equal for noise, and can at least match the Fuji thanks to image stabilization.
Noise though is the FZ30's weakest point. Even at ISO 80 you can see some noise when viewing pictures at 100% on your monitor, but print your pictures at 8 X 10 or less and it's not a problem or even evident. Even if you want to crop your image, simply run it through a noise reduction program in Photoshop or similar. I spent some considerable time comparing images from both and even though I do enlarge portions of my images a lot, (bird pictures etc.) I decided the FZ30 images are more than good enough.
Where the FZ30 wins is that with it you at least stand a better chance to get the image in the first place, thanks to it's superior handling characteristics.
I generally use P(Program),A(Aperture),or S(shutter) modes and all options are available when using these. Not so the Fuji. You can only shoot continuously in Auto and Scene modes. (Why??)
The FZ30 has many special scene modes, Portrait,Sports, Food,Scenery,Night Portrait,Night Scenery,Baby,Soft Skin,Candle Light,Party,Fireworks,Snow,Starry Sky, and Panning. That just about covers everything! (Perhaps one day I might try and use more of them)
The Baby mode is unusual. You have the option to put the Babies age onto the image straight from the camera.
The Soft Skin Mode works well, using with the burst mode and the lens set to telephoto, you can get some lovely soft portrait images.
If you want to make your own settings, no problem. Want to adjust white balance? yep, you've got loads of options including two you can set yourself.
Want to take different aspect ratio pictures? How about 3:2, 16:9, or normal? (You can even convert from one to another in camera after you've taken the picture.)
You can shoot in TIFF, Fine Jpeg, Normal Jpeg or RAW mode.
One criticism here, Panasonic software for using RAW images is pathetic, all you can do is convert to Jpegs which aren't as good as the in camera ones! So unless you've got some other software that can do something useful with the RAW images,(Photoshop Camera Raw for example.) it's one to avoid.
In the end for me at least, the FZ30 won hands down. It's a delight to use, and one of the best this side of a DSLR.
Out of the two I've decided to buy the Panasonic. The main reasons are it's excellent build quality and more importantly, it's shooting performance.
I went out today in terrible weather, poor light, high winds and occasional showers. Even under these conditions I still got some nice shots with the FZ30. I could see the rear screen and the EVF clearly, and altering settings was easy an intuitive.
Anyone getting on a bit, like me, will probably be suffering focusing problems with many camera's, especially where you can't trust the Auto focus.
The FZ30 has a brilliant manual focus mode, where you turn a ring on the lens, exactly the same as older film cameras; but what makes it better is that the moment you start to focus, the EVF magnifies and the quality of the screen is good enough to really judge the focus accurately.
The Fuji can also manual focus, and it has a lens focus ring, but you don't get the auto enlargement of your subject without extra key presses, on the EVF.
For taking pictures of birds or other moving objects, the FZ30 is by far the faster and more accurate system.
Another excellent facility on the FZ30 is the continuous modes. When you select a setting, either High, (5) or Low (9) or continuous, even if you switch the camera off, the settings are remembered, so for actions shooting, it's simply switch on, bring the camera up to your eye and shoot away at around 2.8 fps for as long as you like!
The Fuji suffers a major problem here. You have 3 continuous modes, first 4, last 4 or continuous. The problem is after you've taken the first or last 4, the camera can take up to 15 seconds before you can take any further shots. On the FZ30 it's less than 2 seconds, even at the 8 Mpixel setting. The Fuji's continuous mode is also a leisurely 1.1 fps. You also have to reselect the mode after the camera has shut down.
Fuji has made a lot of their Noise reduction system and indeed it works quite well, but it's not a patch on the Canon and Panasonic's lens stabilization modes. The Fuji simply increases the cameras ISO speed as the light gets low or when you use maximum zoom. So you can get a picture hand holding the lens 2-3 stops lower than you would normally, but, even with their noise reduction system, you picture will not match the FZ30's.
Although the Fuji can shoot at up to 1600 ISO, and needs to if you want images without camera shake, the Panasonic's 400 ISO setting are roughly equal for noise, and can at least match the Fuji thanks to image stabilization.
Noise though is the FZ30's weakest point. Even at ISO 80 you can see some noise when viewing pictures at 100% on your monitor, but print your pictures at 8 X 10 or less and it's not a problem or even evident. Even if you want to crop your image, simply run it through a noise reduction program in Photoshop or similar. I spent some considerable time comparing images from both and even though I do enlarge portions of my images a lot, (bird pictures etc.) I decided the FZ30 images are more than good enough.
Where the FZ30 wins is that with it you at least stand a better chance to get the image in the first place, thanks to it's superior handling characteristics.
I generally use P(Program),A(Aperture),or S(shutter) modes and all options are available when using these. Not so the Fuji. You can only shoot continuously in Auto and Scene modes. (Why??)
The FZ30 has many special scene modes, Portrait,Sports, Food,Scenery,Night Portrait,Night Scenery,Baby,Soft Skin,Candle Light,Party,Fireworks,Snow,Starry Sky, and Panning. That just about covers everything! (Perhaps one day I might try and use more of them)
The Baby mode is unusual. You have the option to put the Babies age onto the image straight from the camera.
The Soft Skin Mode works well, using with the burst mode and the lens set to telephoto, you can get some lovely soft portrait images.
If you want to make your own settings, no problem. Want to adjust white balance? yep, you've got loads of options including two you can set yourself.
Want to take different aspect ratio pictures? How about 3:2, 16:9, or normal? (You can even convert from one to another in camera after you've taken the picture.)
You can shoot in TIFF, Fine Jpeg, Normal Jpeg or RAW mode.
One criticism here, Panasonic software for using RAW images is pathetic, all you can do is convert to Jpegs which aren't as good as the in camera ones! So unless you've got some other software that can do something useful with the RAW images,(Photoshop Camera Raw for example.) it's one to avoid.
In the end for me at least, the FZ30 won hands down. It's a delight to use, and one of the best this side of a DSLR.
