Obtaining high-quality images from a camera in December,
even on the balmy West Coast of Canada which, unlike the rest
of the country, has little snow but more than its share of
rain, can actually be a serious challenge. The weather is often
uniformly dull gray or rainy, and that tends to limit the shutter
speed of a camera to the low range, which can cause blurred
images because of camera shake.
In addition, with a long zoom set to telephoto,
the magnification emphasizes the slightest movement, further
increasing the likelihood that the image will turn out to be
blurry.
Obviously, under these conditions a stabilized zoom lens is an ideal solution,
as the only other alternatives are the use of a tripod — often impractical — or
increasing the CCD sensitivity, which inevitably leads to increased noise
in the photo.
Therefore, with its effectively
stabilized 12X zoom and very bright f2.8 aperture across its
entire focal length range, Panasonic's Lumix DMC-FZ3 provides
an attractive option to any person that needs, or wants, to be
able to shoot under less than ideal weather conditions, and improve
the likelihood of getting a sharp image.
The stabilizer itself is dual mode, either providing continuous stabilization
which means that the live image on the EVF or the LCD is stabilized in
addition to the photo at the moment of capture (Mode 1), or just the moment
of capture is stabilized (Mode 2). In use, Mode 1 can turn out to be a
bit less effective than Mode 2, which we found to allow sharp images at
lower shutter speeds than we were able to obtain with Mode 1. However,
to the user, the advantage of seeing a stable image is clearly valuable,
and on a day with good light, Mode 1 is more pleasant to use.
The Leica lens used with the FZ3 also stands
out in a number of other areas, more closely related to the image
quality: this is a lens that produces photos that show no serious
chromatic aberration as long as the image is not overexposed.
Moreover, photos show an excellent sharpness, corner to corner,
and negligible distortion at the wide angle end.
The Auto white balance is also trustworthy, and copes well with light sources
that cover from 3000 to 8000°K, a colour temperature range that includes
white fluorescent, normal daylight, and even a television image.
And so, when used outdoors on a
sunny day, and with the white balance set to Auto, the FZ3 captures
images with accurate colours that are well saturated, and which
often show clearly delicate nuances within a colour range. Furthermore,
the default multiple area metering pattern of the FZ3 is similarly
reliable, and normally produces very well-exposed photos.
The FZ3 also yields good results with flash photos.
The pop-up flash, working in combination with the zoom's bright
and constant aperture of f2.8 makes it possible to get a bright
exposure with subjects up to 3.5m (11.5 ft) distant, and this
while the camera is set to its lowest sensitivity of 80 ISO.
However, flash photos also highlight that the FZ3 is sensitive
to noise, and, while at 80 ISO or even 100 ISO noise is non-intrusive,
above 100 ISO it is visible, particularly with flash photos.
In comparison to previous models,
the major advantage this model offers is the addition of a full
range of shooting modes: aperture and shutter priority and a
functional manual mode. But even with all this, there is still
room for further improvements. First, the FZ3 would have benefited
from a light compression JPEG format, something like a Super
Fine mode. Alternatively, a RAW format, well-supported by software,
could have been offered. As it is, although the camera offers
a TIFF format that records a 9MB image in 5 seconds, the TIFF
image is no better than the JPEG version.
Nevertheless, the
FZ3 has a very good image quality overall, and the stabilized
zoom makes it extremely attractive for a broad range of people.
Its only real limitation is because of its 3-megapixel resolution,
which limits it to a 5 x 7 inch print size at a commonly used
print resolution, if the highest image quality is desired.
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