Hi dear fellow MSians,
Second review coming up in my second innings on MS.
By the time you will read this line you must pretty know that I am going to review my most favourite gadget till date, my Panasonic Lumix FZ 18, dearly known as Panny FZ 18.
Panny FZ 18 is newest camera on the bay in ultra zoom series competing with Fujifilm S8000 FD and Olympus 560.
Most common features in which a lay man will be interested will be
Whopping 18x Zoom
8.1 Megapixel
28mm Wide angle
2.5 inch bright LCD
Face Detection Technology
Mega Optical Image Stabilisation
Intelligent Scene Selection
Intelligent ISO Control
Before I delve much into review I will be writing this review to describe my experience with the camera for lay man and as we popularly know “AAM AADMI” as those technical review can be found on any leading camera review websites.
A bit of History Before I purchased my Panny FZ 18
I was having a Sony DSC T-33 and I was quite happy with it but in low lights Sony was not giving desired results. So I started to look out for a camera to get to the next level which needs to be between normal Point and Shoot camera and Professional SLR’s, popularly known as PROSUMER camera. Being a Sony user I started my search from Sony and squared on Sony DSC H7/H9.
Then I started to look if there is any competitor for these two cameras and found Canon S5 IS was giving a tough competition to Sony and results were much better then Sony. Canon focus was much faster then Sony which was very impressive.
I was just about to purchase Canon and promoter here in an exhibition told me about Panny FZ 18. I compared the features of Panny FZ 18 with Canon S5 IS and features were no doubt better than Canon S5 IS. I was also told that Panasonic and Canon are most widely used brands of cam in Europe and US. Sony is just sold because of its name and is only popular in Asia and mostly among Indians, which I found is reasonably true.
Though I was pretty convinced by the features on Panny FZ 18 as compared to Canon S5 IS on papers, but was not convinced in heart as I haven’t read any review on this product.
So I again did a research on net and compared Panny FZ 18 with S5 IS and Sony H7/H9.
And what I found that all those features on paper were holding quite true about this amazingly wonderful camera.
So that’s how I squared on this marvel of a gadget Panny FZ 18.
Ok enough about History and now more of present.
My Experience
Most interesting feature of the camera is newly introduced feature known as iA(Intelligent Auto) mode.
Whenever you are not sure what should be the appropriate setting for clicking a particular shot, just switch the dial to iA mode and forget everything else.
iA mode will automatically select the best suited scene mode coupled with Mega OIS, Intelligent ISO and Face detection. So here you go with every thing just perfectly set for you. This feature is very best suited with the beginners.
In other words iA mode simply control 4 features for you Shake Detection
Motion Detection
Face Detection
Scene Detection
Slowly when you are stepping ahead towards a professional photographer and don’t really feel need of iA mode to serve you there is advance scene mode waiting for you. There are separate Modes for the frequently used Portrait, Sports, Scenery and Night Scenery scene modes, which are further sub divided in detailed settings.
Like if you select Portrait scene mode then you can choose from different settings like Normal, Soft skin, Outdoor, Indoor and creative.
*Additional SCN Modes
*Food
Party
Candle Light
Sunset
High Sensitivity(1600 to 6400 ISO — Standard JPEG)
Baby 1/ Baby 2
Pet
Panning
Starry Sky(up to 60 seconds)
Fireworks
Beach
Snow
Aerial Photo
Apart from these autos scene modes there are some shooting modes for more experienced photographers too like
Program Shift or Program AE mode(P) Aperture Priority(A) Manual Exposure(M)
Well to control all these wonderful controls camera got a very handy joystick, which is just breeze to use.
Some advanced feature or I must say manual features include Picture Adjutment, Manual Focus,
Mega Burst(Continuous shooting).
LCD of the camera is also intelligent. Under bright sunlight, the Auto Power LCD function increases the backlight brightness. In dark places, it increases the brightness level of live images according to the level of ambient darkness. It makes both shooting and viewing photos easier and more convenient.
Along with LCD cam has got equally good Electronic Viewfinder(EVF).
We can also click motion pictures from the camera and one good feature is, a motion image can be cut out as a still image in motion image playback. And you can also archive a 9-cutout still image
Some More Interesting Features
Text Stamp
The name and title information is displayed during playback, and can also be printed on photos in addition to conventional Date Stamp information such as date, age, and date of travel
Category Playback
Photos can be played back from a total of about 20 settings and can be searched and retrieved as a group for playback or for viewing in a slideshow.
Aspect Ratio
Select aspect ratio from 3:2, 4:3, and 16:9
There is built in memory of 27 MB, though which is just not enough for camera of this kind.
We can also store image in RAW format other then conventional JPEG format. Advantage of RAW image is that we can get high-level basic image processing abilities that give control over such things as unnatural edges from saturated colour borders, false colours in structures with intricate detail, and chromatic noise in photos taken at high sensitivity settings.
For processing RAW images Panasonic supplies software named SILKYPIX along with normal picture viewer.
What’s in the Box
The 8.1 effective Megapixel Lumix DMC-FZ18 cameras
CGR-S006 lithium-ion rechargeable battery
Battery charger
Lens cap w/retaining strap
Lens hood w/adapter
Shoulder strap
USB cable
A/V cable
CD-ROM featuring Lumix Simple Viewer, PhotoFunStudio, SilkyPix Developer Studio, Arc Soft Photo Suite, and drivers
147 page camera manual(printed)
Apart from this I got a 2GB SD card and original Panasonic carrying case with it.
And finally…….If I have any images for you all to check…yes here it is
https://flickr.com/photos/sachienmittal
Cost à SGD 650 equivalent to 17550 INR
