Longterm review Panasonic FZ1000, a Great camera ! Part 2
The best camera is the one you have with you !
And it is for sure the best camera I ever had (in 40+ years) !
This chapter 2 is all about the Pro's and Con's of the camera.
Pros :
- The price, the weight, the volume and the features !!!
- Several settings in the menu that would cause the camera to react superfast to your wishes.
- Like starting autofocusing already when your eye comes close to the EFV.
- Very highspeed burst, selectable in 4 steps.
- With selectabel first-shot focus or continues focus.
- 10 seconds timer with 3 pictures taken.
- Fully adjustable timelapse-system with adjustable starting moment *
- Fast 16x optical zoom, extra 2x izoom (intelligent) without hardly loss of quality
and 4x regular zoom.
- Fixed plus zoomable macro from 1 centimer on.
- Shootingmodes selectable ultrafast via the knob at the left.
- Very good battery life.
- Infinite focussetting that is correct !
- When positioned exactly at the border between the white and the red line at the screen
(so in manual focus mode) you will find the stars focused correctly.
- For me this is the first time that infinity is really infinity concerning focussing.
- noise reduction system that can be turned off (which is indispensable for your startrails).
- Controlable by an app from your phone and tablet.
- Excellent scene mode for taking nightly pictures without tripod *.
You can take pictures always and everywhere !
Even in the dark and ie inside a cave during an excursion or in a church with low light.
Love this ! (*1)
Cons :
- The tripod connection is not in line with the lens (since it can't be due to the lens).
- It is not possible to zoom after you've activated the AEL (aperture exposure lock)
since AEL is then turned off.
- This makes it impossible to re-adjust the picture.
- The lens moves in and out when zooming.
- You therefore can (while zooming) not assist the camera at the end of the lens (at the lens hood).
- You first have to zoom and then can support it.
- The lens hood is larger then the camera so the camera rests (via the hood) on the lens.
- You have to wait for the lens to be fully distracted before you can lay aside the camera.
- Some menu options are related to or depending on others.
This is very hard to find out and understand while these dependencies are not mentioned in any manual.
Example is that you want to use a shutterspeed of more then 1 second.
You then find out that you can't select that with the electronic shutter.
Then2 (the next day ?) you finally find out that you can not activate the mechanical shutter
because you have turned of the shuttersound in the menu (one month ago).
That (!) is what I call a wrong priority.
Sorry startrail ...
- Regular mp4 filming is available in all modes (A, S, P, M, etc) just by pushing the red button.
So you can easily switch between filming and taking pictures.
But not so the 4k filming option.
Therefore you must switch the right dial to the separate video mode.
In which mode you can not take pictures.
However you can extract hq pictures from 4k films.
But only afterwards and by using the camera and so its screen.
In practice this is to difficult to do since you can not control and watch the film decently on the (therefore far to small) screen.
Connecting the camera to a hdmi terminal will help somewhat.
- You can not comfortably carry the camera in your left hand since the body there is very small and short. Timelapses :
- There is a bug in the timelapse system which is related to specific settings.
If you see a "vertical bang" everytime the timelapse returns from the last to the first shot read on.
Every picture has a few extra pixels vertical dropoff but you notice that only when changing from last to first picture.
The effect is just as if the camera was very slowly tilting down (where it is not).
After extremely many testruns (several 1000ths of pictures in series of 100) I have finally concluded that these settings
spoil the timelapse series :
-Autofocus, iResolution, mechanical shutter and zooming of 50+ %.
And these settings are not causing problems :
iDynamic, iZoom, digital zoom, normal zoom and macro.
Tip : if you are more into filming have a look at the FZ2000.
Tip 2 : version 2 (2019) of the FZ1000 is quite more expensive but does not offer extras related to photographing.
But it did cause the price of v1 to drop 👍.
