Like every year, Panasonic has presented a new bridge camera.
However, the FZ200 is likely to turn a few more heads than its
predecessor, as while its 25-600 mm zoom may seem rather modest,
aperture is an impressive f/2.8, and remains so all the way up to 600
mm!
Cast your minds all the way back to the early noughties and you may
remember that Panasonic outed a series of bridges with exceptional
lenses: 12x zooms with f/2.8 aperture. The last model of the kind was
the FZ20, announced all the way back in July 2004. At the time,
Panasonic was criticised for the quality of its tiny sensors (1/3.2" or 1/2.5"
depending on the models) and replaced the FZ20 with the FZ30, which had
a much bigger, much better sensor (1/1.8"), but which no longer had
constant aperture.
So it's taken Panasonic eight years to get back to its constant f/2.8 lens aperture. But, unlike its predecessors, 2012's FZ200 doesn't make do with a 12x zoom lens with no real wide-angle and instead gets a 24x zoom starting at 25 mm! Plus, there have been no compromises with the sensor, as the FZ200 uses the same 1/2.3" 12-Megapixel CMOS as seen in Panasonic's FZ150.
Another feature of this camera that's likely to catch attention is the
viewfinder. Definition has been quadrupled to 1.3 million dots. It'll
therefore be nice and sharp, even if magnification is still rather
limited (the size of the visible image barely changes, in fact). Plus,
it's still a sequential display, which can lead to colour break-up
effects when you move your eye. So although it's no match for the likes
of the Fuji X-S1 viewfinder, it's still also a whole lot better than most of today's surprisingly poor-quality bridge viewfinders.
The rest of the tech specs are less exceptional although they're certainly still decent. The FZ200 films 1080p video at 50 frames per second, has a RAW mode and has the same 460,000-dot 3-inch swivel screen as other recent Panasonic bridges.
The FZ200 lens looks pretty impressive. If quality and responsiveness are up to scratch, it could be of particular interest to wildlife and animal photographers—a 400 mm f/2.8 lens would give the same field of view as an enthusiast-level DSLR, weighing around 5 kg and costing around £7,000!
Price-wise, the FZ200 is likely to be a bit cheaper than Fuji's X-S1 (approx £530), which although no doubt better built (and with a mechanical zoom ring) only manages f/5.6 aperture at the longest focal lengths.
(via)
So it's taken Panasonic eight years to get back to its constant f/2.8 lens aperture. But, unlike its predecessors, 2012's FZ200 doesn't make do with a 12x zoom lens with no real wide-angle and instead gets a 24x zoom starting at 25 mm! Plus, there have been no compromises with the sensor, as the FZ200 uses the same 1/2.3" 12-Megapixel CMOS as seen in Panasonic's FZ150.
The rest of the tech specs are less exceptional although they're certainly still decent. The FZ200 films 1080p video at 50 frames per second, has a RAW mode and has the same 460,000-dot 3-inch swivel screen as other recent Panasonic bridges.
The FZ200 lens looks pretty impressive. If quality and responsiveness are up to scratch, it could be of particular interest to wildlife and animal photographers—a 400 mm f/2.8 lens would give the same field of view as an enthusiast-level DSLR, weighing around 5 kg and costing around £7,000!
Price-wise, the FZ200 is likely to be a bit cheaper than Fuji's X-S1 (approx £530), which although no doubt better built (and with a mechanical zoom ring) only manages f/5.6 aperture at the longest focal lengths.
(via)
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