2009-01-14T19:00:00
Rated 4 out of 5
Good quality price
Great camera for every day use, great size for travel with nice picture better than a compact.
Jerome
2009-01-13T19:00:00
Rated 5 out of 5
Sold my DSLR
I've had a FZ3 for several years. I loved it, but it is not good in low light. I ventured into the DSLR realm (Nikon D80; 18-200 VR lens), but had a hard time getting consistantly good photos. When they were good, they were very good. But I would often get blurry or simply unsharp photos. I guess I learned just how good the image stabilization on the Panny really is. Plus I don't have the time to spend post processing. I've got a 4 year old.
I've always liked how easy to use the FZ cameras are. It doesn't take any effort at all to take good, sharp, well exposed photos. The IS is so good, I can take hand held 1/4 second photos which are clear (except for subject movement, of course). I estimate about 90% of the photos I take are usable (though I delete about 50% of them due to composition/poor photography skills). When I tried the D80, it was more like 50% usable. (Call me lame, but the mirror slap caused me to take blurry photos!) Sure I could learn to do better with study and practice, but I'm not a serious photographer. I want to be able to pull out my camera, turn it on, capture my most adorable daughter, and not break stride trying to chase her around. The Panny's are perfect for this. Oh, and I don't want to have to carry/change lenses to take a close up shot of a flower. (As an aside, I was at Blue Angels air show with my FZ3 and was able to get zoomed photos of the jets that the guy next to me could not get with his DSLR)
The FZ28 is MUCH better in low light than the FZ3, and almost as good as the D80 (due to wider aperture counteracting better ISO performance of the Nikon). The color saturation is also better than the FZ3. And the wide angle is really nice. I also really like that I can custom program 4 settings. This camera can do just about whatever you want it to do.
My only gripe with the FZ cameras is that auto white balance is not always excellent, especially indoors. Of course you can easily adjust for that with custom white balance (I carry a white business card in my case for that). I wish the FZ28 only had 6 (or maybe 8) megapixels. That's all I really need, even if I'm going to crop and enlarge to 8x10. I think there would be less noise and ISO 400 would be even better than it is. Plus the file sizes would be smaller.
I would not hesitate to recommend this camera to anyone who's not a professional. I think some professionals even buy them for "going light".
Steve L.
