Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ47K 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 24xOptical Zoom – Black
- 3D Still Image Capture
- iA (Intelligent Auto) Mode Makes Every Photo Blur-less
- Full HD Video Recording – AVCHD (MPEG-4/H.264) Format
- LEICA 24X High Quality Power O.I.S. Optics (25-600mm)
- 12.1 Megapixel Hi-Speed CCD
The Lumix DMC-FZ47 packs a powerful optical zoom and attractive options including manual operation, adding full-HD video recording capability and the new Creative Control with Miniature Effect mode. The high quality lens unit of 25mm ultra wide-angle LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens with powerful 24x Optical Zoom newly features Panasonic’s Nano Surface Coating technology to minimize light reflection that causes ghost and flare. The powerful 24x optical zoom (35mm camera equivalent:25-600mm) can be increased its power to 32x equivalent with the Intelligent Zoom function taking advantage of the Intelligent Resolution technology maintaining the picture quality even using digital zoom. Empowered by a new 12.1-megapixel Hi-Speed CCD sensor, the DMC-FZ47 is compatible with high-speed, large-capacity signal processing required for 1920 x 1080 full-HD video recording in AVCHD and high speed continuous shooting. For more artistic freedom, manual control is available with DMC-FZ47. User can enjoy i
List Price: $ 379.00
Price: $ 379.00
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Initial Review: I like it a lot!,
I’ve had the FZ47 for about a month and a half, and, so far, I am very satisfied with it. Here are my initial impressions:
Likes:
24x zoom range — going down to a 35mm – equivalent of 25mm wide angle! Lots of times I’ve been in a situation where I can’t back up far enough to capture the entire scene — the 25mm wide angle position will really help in such situations.
Resolution and the image stabilizer
The electronic viewfinder (EVF): I wear bifocals, so in addition to LCD’s sometimes being hard to see outdoors, I always have to crane my neck to have the LCD in focus — the EVF eliminates that problem.
The AVC FSH movie resolution & the “zoom” mikes.
The “intelligent” dynamics option — I have a shot I’ve tried to take with my 2 previous digital cameras (Nikon Coolpix 2500 & Canon A710is) — because one side of the scene is brightly lit and the rest is in deep shadow. In the old days in a darkroom I would have dodged & burned, but I haven’t found a photo editing tool that can do that. The FZ47, however, with “intelligent” dynamics set to high, handled the scene very well.
The ISO limit set — it works very well with photos — you can set the ASA to “auto”, but the camera limits itself to ASA values at or below the ISO limit.
The flash range.
The macro function.
The options for manual focus, f stop, & shutter speed, along with the rear dial to adjust these. Together the options work really well. Also, the Focus button really helps when using manual focus.
The AF / AE lock.
The quick menu (though I wish it was user configurable!)
The one user-assigned button.
The separate ISO button.
Liked better in my previous cameras:
With my Canon, if I set the camera to “Hold” after taking a picture, I could zoom in to check the focus, etc, and then delete it if necessary — all in the camera’s “Record” mode. With the FZ47 I have to go to the playback mode — even though the camera has a “Hold” option. This is the biggest single complaint I have with the FZ47 — all the rest are quite minor.
While the FZ47 has a night-time scene that shoots several pictures in a row & keeps the one with the clearest focus, it will only work in that particular scene mode, and you can’t set color balance or anything else in that mode. With my Nikon I could use that function anytime I wanted — for example, in a museum that doesn’t allow flash.
Noise above ASA 400. Even movies are a bit noisy at ASA800 — particularly on areas with no texture and a solid color. I’m not sure if the ISO limit set works with movies, since it’s set in the photo section (that disappears when you adjust the dial to the movie position). There is an “auto” ASA position for movies, but without the ISO limit set function, that would really be a rather questionable selection in low light conditions.
Having to use a separate shutter button for movies — more often than not I forget & use the main shutter button!
If I could give the rating 4-1/2 stars, I would.
I’ve tried not to duplicate information in the Digital Camera Resource Page and other reviews; I’ve tried to give a user hands-on point of view.
As I continue using the camera I intend to update this review, but, for now, I really like the camera.
UPDATE 11/20/2011
I shot over 50 indoor photos today at a Thanksgiving Gathering, and, as expected the 35mm camera equivalent of a 25mm lens really came in handy — I constantly got more of the scene in the photo than I expected to. The custom color-balance also worked extremely well. I shot everything using the EVF; I played back for review using the LCD. It’s really nice being able to set record for one, and playback for the other. Checking photos for blur (sometimes the shutter speed was 1/10 second; blur occurred because subjects moved — the image stabilizer was working fine) by having to go into playback mode wasn’t nearly the problem I expected it to be — the mode switch worked instantly back & forth.
I also shot 2 short AVC FSH films (about 40 seconds each). The PhotoFun software that comes with the FZ47 is really not even worth loading on my PC (an older single core 3.06ghz Pentium 4 with 4gb of RAM). Please see my review of Pinnacle’s Studio 15 Ultimate software — it works well on my older PC, though rendering a standard DVD from either AVC FSH or mp4 FHD originals takes about 5 hours for 1 hour of video. The important thing is that it works — it doesn’t freeze or fail, and the video & audio are always in sync.
The short videos I shot today I intend to load on a website — in a VERY small reduction. PhotoFun certainly couldn’t make the small copy, but a free open source converter called FreeHDConverter works very well — again, even on my older PC.
Overall, I’m still…
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|Best in its price range,
I’ve looked at and read reviews of comparable fixed zoom cameras from Olympus, Cannon, Nikon, Fuji, Sony, etc. and this Panasonic has all of them beat. Now that I have actually bought the camera and had a chance to test it out myself I am extremely satisfied with it. Comparing it against a much more expensive digital slr is sort of silly in my opinion, you can also argue for benefits of having a more compact/lighter camera with one lens that goes from wide angle to super zoom and quickly and the high quality HD video is a huge bonus. The only gripe I have is with noise at higher ISO speeds, but this is about average for cameras in this class and is better then most of the others and the lens has good f stop opening for its long range. As long as you set the ISO to not shoot above 200 for shots that you want the lowest noise, it is excellent. If you are into night shots or action shots where you might need blowups for cropping it isn’t a problem, even at ISO 400 for prints up to B 13×19 it looks incredible. They did remove RAW with this model, but I don’t miss it much as the camera has excellent output. Would highly recommend this compact full featured camera over any of the others that have “star name status” (Olympus, Nikon, Cannon) in this price feature group.
As an example DigitalCameraInfo.com said this about the FZ-47 color accuracy measurements: “No competitive model comes close to the dead-on accuracy of the FZ47. For that matter, the FZ47 is more accurate than the Nikon D7000, more accurate than the new Nikon D5100, and even more accurate than the Canon EOS 60D, our top rated DSLR!” They also said that the noise levels are a huge improvement over the earlier FZ-35 and much better then either the Canon Powershot SX30 or the Fuji HS10
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