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The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30 - an image quality perspective.
Pros
Good spatial resolution, sharp lens, good color rendition.
Cons
High noise levels, minor chromatic aberrations, minor barrel distortion, diagonal jaggies.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
I can recommend this camera for its features, good lens, and ergonomics, but only to users who don't need anything more than ISO 100.
Introduction
I'm still in search of a digital camera to use as a backup to my film cameras. So far, nothing but the most expensive digital SLRs have been up to the task. Compact digital cameras above five megapixels take fine snapshots for computer viewing or making small prints. Below five megapixels, resolution suffers substantially and you're really stuck with 3.5 X 5 inch prints if you want true photo quality. Lately, prosumer digital cameras, which fall somewhere between point-and-shoot and professional SLRs, have increased their resolution slightly and their image quality slightly to the point where I can seriously consider them as a backup camera.
My search has led me to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30, which has a lot of the features professionals look for. So, I went down to my friendly local camera dealer with SD memory card in hand to do some test shooting. By now, they're getting used to me doing this so they just hand over the camera and let me play. I spent about an hour taking test photos, inside and out, under a variety of lighting conditions, apertures, and focal lengths. Instead of summarizing every feature and menu option, I'm going to write this review solely from an image quality perspective.
Image Quality
Chromatic Aberrations (purple fringing)
When three, four, and five megapixel digital cameras were emerging, so was chromatic aberration. This aberration usually manifests itself as purple fringing around bright areas in a photograph. In certain high contrast situations, purple halos would be easily visible around a bright area, and they stood out like a sore thumb. Lately, there have been several models of high-end digital cameras produced by several manufacturers that have almost no purple fringing. Based on my test photos, the Panasonic DMC-FZ30 can sit proudly in this category. I tried to produce purple fringing at sunset with high contrast cityscapes and although I was able to, it was more difficult than expected. Perhaps we're finally getting to the point when I can check this off my list of reasons not to buy a digital camera. At least in a prosumer or SLR digital camera. So yes, you will find some purple fringing in some of your photos, but it's fairly rare. So far, I'm sold.
Lens sharpness
Less expensive digital cameras are less expensive because they use lower quality materials, and manufacturers spend less time engineering the cameras for maximum image quality. Lens sharpness is often a tell-tale sign of lack of attention to material and build quality. The majority of consumer digital cameras suffer from edge bluriness, vignetting (dark corners), barrel distortion, and/or loss of detail. I've experienced this with several higher-end consumer models from Canon and Nikon. Prosumer cameras suffer less from this problem because manufacturers spend more time engineering better materials to produce sharper images. Accordingly, we pay more for this models. The DMC-FZ30 has one of the sharper lenses I've seen on a digital camera in awhile. With the Leica label on the front of it, I would expect nothing less. There is some loss of sharpness near the edges, but it is less than most prosumer digital cameras. I could only detect the slightest amount of vignetting in my test photos, and only when I really went looking for it. So far, I'm still sold.
Barrel distortion was much more obvious, and this was somewhat expected due to the extreme zoom range of 35-420mm. That range covers just about everything you need in a telephoto lens, but you pay the price for the ability to zoom out to 35mm. With very few exceptions, zoom lenses always suffer from more image quality problems than fixed focal length lenses. Still, I've seen worse barrel distortion on more expensive prosumer lenses, so I'm willing to let this one go and just stay away from 35mm a little if I'm worried it's going to be a problem. So far, I'm still sold.
Color Rendition
CCDs are dumb in the color department - effectively, they need filters to tell them what colors they're seeing. Color has always been a problem with digital cameras because each manufacturer adjusts their filters to match what they think consumers want to see. Personally, I don't want to see anything other than reality. Compared to film, color rendition of all digital cameras is poor and probably will be for some time. Compared to other digital cameras, the Pansonic DMC-FZ30 does a respectable job of rendering realistic colors throughout the visible spectrum. Usually, when I take my test photos home and inspect them on my color-calibrated monitor, I can immediately tell which colors were reproduced accurately and which ones were not. With this Panasonic, my test photos didn't immediately make me upset that I wasn't getting the colors I wanted. Instead, I had to revisit the scene the next day to make sure my memory of the colors was accurate. That's a good sign. So, I'm still sold, as long as I remember that I'm not getting film quality color.
Noise
And now for the bad news. All consumer and prosumer digital cameras suffer from a significant amount of sensor noise. CCD sensors are notoriously noisy, and this problem isn't going away anytime soon. Noise in a digital image is somewhat analogous to film grain in a photograph, although it tends to manifest itself in a much less desirable pattern. Film grain tends to be consistent throughout the image area and has minimal impact on detail (resolution), even high ISO films. Not the case with noise. In fact, noise has been one of the big image quality problems keeping me away from digital cameras. The Panasonic DMC-FZ30 is a huge step backward with regard to image noise. Even at ISO 80, which is the sensor's lowest sensitivity, noise is readily apparent in my test images, especially across areas of uniform color and brightness. Ugly. Step up to ISO 100 and it's slightly more apparent. The next increase in sensitivity to ISO 200 renders the camera completely worthless in my opinion because my images were so noisy I was actually losing detail. Absolutely unacceptable. Of course, you can forget about ISO 400. I'm not sold, I'm not buying this camera.
Jaggies are back?!
As if noise levels weren't a big enough step backward, I noticed jaggies in a lot of my test images, even when uncompressed. Jaggies are the unsmooth diagonal lines that can appear along building edges or anywhere a diagonal line and a significant level of contrast are present. I thought for sure this was a thing of the past, but Panasonic appears to be reminding us that it's not.
Conclusions
Noise kills this camera as a potential backup camera for a professional or anyone who is serious about image quality. I suggest looking at the Canon G6 as a reasonable alternative. If you're really concerned about noise, just get a Nikon D50 for the same price as this Panasonic and you can shoot through ISO 400 with almost no noise at all.
I'm still in search of a digital camera to use as a backup to my film cameras. So far, nothing but the most expensive digital SLRs have been up to the task. Compact digital cameras above five megapixels take fine snapshots for computer viewing or making small prints. Below five megapixels, resolution suffers substantially and you're really stuck with 3.5 X 5 inch prints if you want true photo quality. Lately, prosumer digital cameras, which fall somewhere between point-and-shoot and professional SLRs, have increased their resolution slightly and their image quality slightly to the point where I can seriously consider them as a backup camera.
My search has led me to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30, which has a lot of the features professionals look for. So, I went down to my friendly local camera dealer with SD memory card in hand to do some test shooting. By now, they're getting used to me doing this so they just hand over the camera and let me play. I spent about an hour taking test photos, inside and out, under a variety of lighting conditions, apertures, and focal lengths. Instead of summarizing every feature and menu option, I'm going to write this review solely from an image quality perspective.
Image Quality
Chromatic Aberrations (purple fringing)
When three, four, and five megapixel digital cameras were emerging, so was chromatic aberration. This aberration usually manifests itself as purple fringing around bright areas in a photograph. In certain high contrast situations, purple halos would be easily visible around a bright area, and they stood out like a sore thumb. Lately, there have been several models of high-end digital cameras produced by several manufacturers that have almost no purple fringing. Based on my test photos, the Panasonic DMC-FZ30 can sit proudly in this category. I tried to produce purple fringing at sunset with high contrast cityscapes and although I was able to, it was more difficult than expected. Perhaps we're finally getting to the point when I can check this off my list of reasons not to buy a digital camera. At least in a prosumer or SLR digital camera. So yes, you will find some purple fringing in some of your photos, but it's fairly rare. So far, I'm sold.
Lens sharpness
Less expensive digital cameras are less expensive because they use lower quality materials, and manufacturers spend less time engineering the cameras for maximum image quality. Lens sharpness is often a tell-tale sign of lack of attention to material and build quality. The majority of consumer digital cameras suffer from edge bluriness, vignetting (dark corners), barrel distortion, and/or loss of detail. I've experienced this with several higher-end consumer models from Canon and Nikon. Prosumer cameras suffer less from this problem because manufacturers spend more time engineering better materials to produce sharper images. Accordingly, we pay more for this models. The DMC-FZ30 has one of the sharper lenses I've seen on a digital camera in awhile. With the Leica label on the front of it, I would expect nothing less. There is some loss of sharpness near the edges, but it is less than most prosumer digital cameras. I could only detect the slightest amount of vignetting in my test photos, and only when I really went looking for it. So far, I'm still sold.
Barrel distortion was much more obvious, and this was somewhat expected due to the extreme zoom range of 35-420mm. That range covers just about everything you need in a telephoto lens, but you pay the price for the ability to zoom out to 35mm. With very few exceptions, zoom lenses always suffer from more image quality problems than fixed focal length lenses. Still, I've seen worse barrel distortion on more expensive prosumer lenses, so I'm willing to let this one go and just stay away from 35mm a little if I'm worried it's going to be a problem. So far, I'm still sold.
Color Rendition
CCDs are dumb in the color department - effectively, they need filters to tell them what colors they're seeing. Color has always been a problem with digital cameras because each manufacturer adjusts their filters to match what they think consumers want to see. Personally, I don't want to see anything other than reality. Compared to film, color rendition of all digital cameras is poor and probably will be for some time. Compared to other digital cameras, the Pansonic DMC-FZ30 does a respectable job of rendering realistic colors throughout the visible spectrum. Usually, when I take my test photos home and inspect them on my color-calibrated monitor, I can immediately tell which colors were reproduced accurately and which ones were not. With this Panasonic, my test photos didn't immediately make me upset that I wasn't getting the colors I wanted. Instead, I had to revisit the scene the next day to make sure my memory of the colors was accurate. That's a good sign. So, I'm still sold, as long as I remember that I'm not getting film quality color.
Noise
And now for the bad news. All consumer and prosumer digital cameras suffer from a significant amount of sensor noise. CCD sensors are notoriously noisy, and this problem isn't going away anytime soon. Noise in a digital image is somewhat analogous to film grain in a photograph, although it tends to manifest itself in a much less desirable pattern. Film grain tends to be consistent throughout the image area and has minimal impact on detail (resolution), even high ISO films. Not the case with noise. In fact, noise has been one of the big image quality problems keeping me away from digital cameras. The Panasonic DMC-FZ30 is a huge step backward with regard to image noise. Even at ISO 80, which is the sensor's lowest sensitivity, noise is readily apparent in my test images, especially across areas of uniform color and brightness. Ugly. Step up to ISO 100 and it's slightly more apparent. The next increase in sensitivity to ISO 200 renders the camera completely worthless in my opinion because my images were so noisy I was actually losing detail. Absolutely unacceptable. Of course, you can forget about ISO 400. I'm not sold, I'm not buying this camera.
Jaggies are back?!
As if noise levels weren't a big enough step backward, I noticed jaggies in a lot of my test images, even when uncompressed. Jaggies are the unsmooth diagonal lines that can appear along building edges or anywhere a diagonal line and a significant level of contrast are present. I thought for sure this was a thing of the past, but Panasonic appears to be reminding us that it's not.
Conclusions
Noise kills this camera as a potential backup camera for a professional or anyone who is serious about image quality. I suggest looking at the Canon G6 as a reasonable alternative. If you're really concerned about noise, just get a Nikon D50 for the same price as this Panasonic and you can shoot through ISO 400 with almost no noise at all.
