Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Panasonic DMC-FZ8 Review

Dpreview has put up a review of the Lumix FZ8 today. That was quick! Normally only Canons get this kind of quick reviews over there. It has gotten a Highly Recommended. Needless to say, it created a firestorm in the forums.

From the review, it's nice to see the image resolution has increased a little bit. The bigger LCD and viewfinder are now one of the best in the superzoom class. Unfortunately, noise reduction is very strong with the Venus Engine III. The RAW mode allows a user to bypass the noise reduction, which is an awesome feature. Using RAW will increase shot to shot time to around 3 seconds, which I think is tolerable.

One thing of concern is highlight clipping, which Dpreview found worse than the FZ7. Whoever wants smaller dynamic range, raise your hand! It seems a 1/2.5" size sensor can really only do so much, when the megapixel count is pushed to such extremes. I agree with Dpreview; if you can accept the image quality limitations of these compact superzooms, there's really no better value than the FZ8.

It deserves a Highly Recommended.

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