David J Taylor wrote:

Jan Böhme wrote:


Daniel Silevitch skrev:



DPReview put up a fairly comprehensive review a couple of days ago:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/panasonicFZ50/


It was pretty positive, and ended with a Highly recommended rating,
though with a notice that this was only just so, and that the one
negative factor was image quality - not noise this time, as much as
indiscriminate noise reduction..

However, something like half of the Panasonic forum at dpreview are up
in arms against this review. It would seem as if The Camera To Worship
in this forum is the FZ30, and lots of people there took it really
personal when that one missed the Highly Recommended rating by a
hair's breadth a year ago. Thus, the more positive rating of the FZ50
now, is widely regarded as a Grossly Unfair Injustice to The Camera
To Worship.

Queer lot, photographers.

Jan Böhme
(FZ20 owner, thus neutral in the conflict)



Interesting - I was recently sent a photo from a Canon S3 IS and whilst it
was less noisy than the FZ5 equivalent (when viewed full-screen) it was
also less sharp. It seems to me that there is a spectrum of choices in
noise-reduction versus sharpness and that Canon, not having as good a lens
as that on the Panasonic FZ5/20 etc., have a less sharp image, and can
therefore use more noise reduction with less effect on the (already less
sharp) image quality. Perhaps Panasonic are now trying to make their
noise reduction nearer to what Canon do?



The FZ7 has about the same image quality as the FZ5. But after reading
that the FZ30 has better image quality then the FZ50 do you think that
the (unannounced) FZ8 would have lower image quality than the FZ5/7?

If Panasonic increases the MPixels and keeps the sensor size the same
then the quality of the pixels and therefore the quality of the image
would be less. Maybe the answer is to look at the new Canon A series
with an 8 and 10 MP camera and check the sensor size and evaluate the
images.

I think that Camera makers are going to hit a wall with MP and sensor
size just like Intel hit a wall with Speed and Heat in their Pentium chips.

I still have not bought a digital camera yet. My Nikon is still being
used when I need to take photos. I have decided to either buy an FZ7 by
Thanksgiving or wait an additional 3 months for the next (FZ8?) but it
seems that the next evolution of the current models sacrafice on image
quality to provide more features and MPixels. I do not like the trend I
see.

The FZ50 is much too big and heavy a camera for me as I'm so used to the
easy-to-carry FZ5!

David