The Best long zoom currently available

Author's Rating:

Pros: Solid feel, intuitive easy to use controls, fast shot to shot time.

Cons: I would have liked AAA's for batteries and a larger rubber eye cup.

The Bottom Line: 
Its the best stabilized long zoom out there. Lots of user control yet very easy to operate. Looks and feels like a 35mm. Develops user confidence with superb image quality.

Author's Review
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20 is a superb long lens camera worthy of consideration. Since so many reviews have already covered the various technical aspects, I'll focus my comments from a user viewpoint, having owned a dozen or so digital cameras since they first appeared some years back. I take pictures both for business and pleasure, supplying images for various publications as well as full cover photos for a trade journal. I don't make my living with a camera, but my modest success goes to show that a decent camera combined with a good eye can produce respectable, and saleable images. One does not necessarily have to have a $5000 set up to take great pictures.

The FZ20 is a 5 MP camera, but be aware that mega pixels alone do not a good image make. The quality of the lens, the compression in the camera, and exposure are far more important than the number of mega pixels. That said, this camera produces crystal clear images through a 12x LEICA lens, with very little compression loss in the 'fine' settings and a very good metering system. 5 MP is more than enough for what I do, and the truth is I often throttle back to 2 MP (all in 'fine' mode though) for everyday images, the results are that good and file size is manageable. After it's all said and done, it's the picture quality that matters most, and this camera delivers.

My last big zoom camera was an Olympus 2100-UZ with a 10x optical (stabilized) zoom. That camera was very good and I was hard pressed for a replacement. Nothing out there came close to it until I saw the FZ20. I have to say I was immediately drawn to this camera, and when I saw that nice LEICA logo on the lens I was smitten! The physical appearance, solid feel in the hand, nice use of a selector dial and logical easy to use controls sold me on the spot. Without going into tech details, I found this to be a very easy camera to use, and its obvious that Panasonic put a lot of thought into the design. Everything is right there where it belongs. While I did read the instruction manual, it really wasn't necessary as operation is pretty self-evident and the simplified menu is just that, simple.

The pop up flash is powerful and accurate and easily capable of illuminating a large group shot, or the better part of an average sized room. The hot shoe is another welcomed feature, just be sure to check the trigger voltage if your flash is more than a few years old. Some older units will fry the circuitry of any modern digital camera, if in doubt check here http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolts.html for voltage tables and cross-reference.

The SD card is a good storage choice. Power wise I would have preferred AAA's, however the battery it uses worked better than I had thought, given its diminutive size. Additional batteries can be found for about $30 on line. The charger is small and folds flat with no power cord, so that's a bonus. You could carry an extra battery and the charger, plus a spare SD card easily in a pocket. Recharge time is only about 90 min. So I gotta say that after using them, the small batteries are really a good thing, and a fresh one will last most of a days shooting. The compartment doors are really nice too, solid feel to them with a spring loaded metal hinge.

The camera body is just the right size with a easy to grasp lens ring for manual focus, I LIKE that feature. I would have preferred a threaded ring on the lens proper, however only the supplied hood is threaded and allows for 72mm filters and also has a removable extension. A word of caution here, be sure to keep the extension 'ears' at right angles to the camera body to avoid having part of one in your picture. This drove me nuts until I figured out what was causing it.

The big optical zoom is a respectable 2.8 through its entire travel, and with the image stabilization hand held long shots are easier to take. The digital zoom however is no better than is found on any other digital camera, fun to have but not really usable. I took some pictures of Air Force one from about 5 miles with pretty good results, but not near the quality of the optical only zoom which is superb.

The shot to shot shutter cycle time is very good. Even when using the flash, it's quick. I'd guess at about 1-2 seconds between shots for as long as you can push that button! I really, really like that. The self-timer is also easy to set, movie mode with sound is simple to use, and the macro mode is especially effective and easy to select.

To summarize, there are just too many good features with this camera to fully explain, take my word for it you won't be disappointed with one. For a time there I was getting discouraged that a suitable long zoom replacement for my ageing Olympus 2100-UZ would never come, then this great Panasonic appeared and proved better than anything I'd have hoped for.