Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8K 7.2MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black) by Panasonic
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Our Price: $275.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Digital Camera See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8K 7.2MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)
Digital camera Review: Good Camera
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a very good camera for this price. I havent purchased it for my personal use. I gave it to someone as gift. Only thing is image size (3 MB). In and all, my experience with the camera is very good. I give the rating as follows :
Image quality - 4.5/5
Built - 3.8/5
Easy to use - 4.5/5
Optical Zoom - 5/5
Overall - 4.4/5
Digital camera Review: Good Overall Camera
Summary: 4 Stars
This camera has been used in all sorts of conditions, which is exactly what it's good at. It doesn't have any one particular strength or weakness, it's just decent at everything (sport, night, indoors, etc.). The one problem with the camera is that the pictures at close up are grainy and adjustments don't help much. I've read about many other people with the same issue, but unless you're really trying to get full use out of the 7mp, it shouldn't affect your purchase decision too much. The stabilized zoom is nice and the 12x is great. Buy a couple lenses from raynox and you've got a great camera for a low price.Digital camera Review: Good at stills bad at movies
Summary: 3 Stars
I typically prefer the ultra-zooms over SLRs: imagine
doing a moon shot absolutely hand held, no tripods.
Add to that the
light weight and low cost for the same zoom range!
The key technology behind the ultra-zooms, IMHO, are the
image stabilization. And this works
very well on this camera and its leading competitors
(like canon S5, Olympus 560UZ). Stills from this camera
are very good.
The downside is mainly in creating Movies: your ability
to refocus and recompose using
zoom simply do NOT exist. Another downside is
the non-standard battery: AA would be preferable.
Digital camera Review: Good value, that's about it
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this camera from Amazon, but returned it two weeks later.
Everything about this camera is good value except the lens, which is excellent.
There is a lot of noise even at the lowest ISO (100). I had a beautiful picture of my backyard in which noise was really visible in a shadow, thus making the picture appear grainy in that area...and this was in good light. If you're going to be limiting the printing to 4x6 or 5x7 and you don't look at the pictures full-size on your monitor, then this is the camera for you. I would recommend it 100% for people like that. I am not prepared to 'shoot in raw' and post-process either. I don't have time for that. Maybe some people do. Raw also takes up quite a bit of space (11.3 Megs each), and the shot-to-shot time is around 5 seconds(maybe 4).
The lens cap is nice and it comes with conversion adapter and lens hood. All work great, although the conversion adapter is plastic and will get chewed up by inserting and removing over time (again, a 'value' camera). If it weren't for the noise, I would have kept this camera. I like inspecting pictures on my screen, so I got frustrated when details like grass or foliage would be muddied up due to noise (or noise reduction, depending on how you have it set).
The flash is nice, although it loses power quick. You can't take more than 4 or 5 flash shots within a minute or else the power of the flash deteriorates. You have to give it time for the battery to cool down. In Panasonic's manual for this camera they indicate their flash performance is based on waiting 30 seconds between shots. Again, another value decision.
The preset white balances are fairly inaccurate, at least under the lights in my house. I had to use the custom white balances to get decent white-levels in my photos. This is ok, except I always had to have a white piece of paper with me and set it manually. The white-balance fine-tuning is pretty nice.
As far as photo quality, there was very little purple fringing. In fact, almost none. I only saw some at the full telephoto zoom end at the corners of the picture. Kudos to Panasonic for this.
Corner blurriness and distortion was not an issue either. This is an awesome lens. It's just too bad the electronics inside the camera don't match the quality of the lens. I would not take this camera above ISO 200. I would not use it for indoor pictures (unless using the flash). The optical stabilization works great though, so you can keep to ISO 100 more often than with other cams.
I decided that there isn't an ultra-zoom on the market right now that lives up to my expectations. The S5 IS is not very good due to lens distortion and purple(red)-fringing. Alas I might have to do what the market dictates I must do and buy a D-SLR.
Digital camera Review: Great Camera
Summary: 5 Stars
I've not had my camera very long, but so far, I'm loving it. The zoom is great! I've not gotten to play with the extra features too much, but everything I've tried so far is excellent. And you can't beat the price for a camera with this kind of zoom. Lovin'it!