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LumixNoob

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James
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Hi, I've had a Lumix FZ200 since about October that I'm not altogether happy with. I initially bought it as an 'all rounder' that I could chuck in my bag when I go out hiking etc. The image quality is pretty good at low ISO settings but other than that it's not all that sparkling. The massive zoom is also something I'm not sure I need. I am looking for a camera that is fairly light/small but capapble of producing large(ish) print quality landscape pics. My question is are the new crop of super compacts with the big sensors as good as they appear to be? Or do I need to go down the DSLR route and just put up wit the extra bulk? Or make do with the FZ200 and learn how to better use it and avoid its shortcomings? One thing I do like about the FZ200 is the 25mm wide angle, what difference would an extra 3 0r 4 mm make in real terms if I got a DSLR with a 18-55 kit lens?

I've read that much my brain hurts and I haven't got a clue what to do!
 
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If you're in a quandary about what to do, stick with it until you're sure you've exhausted its capabilities. It may not be the world's best camera, but didn't get the worst reviews in its day. Here's a typical one:-
http://www.trustedreviews.com/panasonic-lumix-dmc-fz200-review#tr-review-summary .
I am a fan of Panasonic as a back-up to my DSLR as I think they give excellent value for money. I am tempted by the DMC-TZ100 and will probably go for it to replace my DMC-LX7.
 
Hi, thanks for the reply but I've talked myself into getting a dslr (I think!) . I've got my eye on some used gear, a Canon 600d and the 15 - 85mm.

I'vre ordered some larger than usual prints from the FZ200 to see how they turn out before I buy anything.
 
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LumixNoob said:
Hi, thanks for the reply but I've talked myself into getting a dslr (I think!) . I've got my eye on some used gear, a Canon 600d and the 15 - 85mm.

I'vre ordered some larger than usual prints from the FZ200 to see how they turn out before I buy anything.
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Bridge cameras like the FZ200 with mega-zoom lenses invariably have very small sensors (to make the huge zoom range possible). The sensor will easily fit on your little fingernail, whereas the Canon 600D's sensor (APS-C format) is way bigger - like more than 11x the area. In the quest for image quality, bigger is always better - sharper, and with less noise and other artifacts at higher ISO.

600D is a big step up, and the 15-85 lens is excellent (y)

Welcome to TP :)
 
I'm no expert but I wonder if super zooms are a case of "one size fits no one". Have you considered micro four-thirds systems, a lot smaller and lighter than a DSLR and you can pick appropriate lenses for what you are shooting, quite a few people on here seem to be going that way if they find an SLR to heavy or bulky.
 
LumixNoob said:
Hi, I've had a Lumix FZ200 since about October that I'm not altogether happy with. I initially bought it as an 'all rounder' that I could chuck in my bag when I go out hiking etc. The image quality is pretty good at low ISO settings but other than that it's not all that sparkling. The massive zoom is also something I'm not sure I need. I am looking for a camera that is fairly light/small but capapble of producing large(ish) print quality landscape pics. My question is are the new crop of super compacts with the big sensors as good as they appear to be? Or do I need to go down the DSLR route and just put up wit the extra bulk? Or make do with the FZ200 and learn how to better use it and avoid its shortcomings? One thing I do like about the FZ200 is the 25mm wide angle, what difference would an extra 3 0r 4 mm make in real terms if I got a DSLR with a 18-55 kit lens?

I've read that much my brain hurts and I haven't got a clue what to do!
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I think your main problem would be you no longer have a camera you can just throw in your bag and go hiking with. DSLRs are great but they're fairly large and heavy. If you want a camera to be mobile with I'd look at the FujiFilm X30 or even a Canon G5 X. The X30 has excellent optics, a decent zoom range and good image IQ. Manual and auto controls and small enough to throw in the bag. I have one myself because I seriously dislike hiking with several kilos of camera kit.
 
I use a Pansonic TZ35 for my walking arround camera and generally find it to be great (the most recent itteration is the TZ60) - i've printed a shot from the TZ35 to A1 without any bother

(admittedly i have a bunch of canon DSLR kit as well - but the pannie is great for days when I don't want to cart half a tonne of stuff with me)
 
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WingTsun said:
I think your main problem would be you no longer have a camera you can just throw in your bag and go hiking with. DSLRs are great but they're fairly large and heavy. If you want a camera to be mobile with I'd look at the FujiFilm X30 or even a Canon G5 X. The X30 has excellent optics, a decent zoom range and good image IQ. Manual and auto controls and small enough to throw in the bag. I have one myself because I seriously dislike hiking with several kilos of camera kit.
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There is very little difference in size between the panasonic FZ200 and Canon 600D (body only) and weight is similar. The extra weight will come with the lenses of course, but there are some really compact and light options available, though not at the extremes of zoom.
 
Steve B said:
There is very little difference in size between the panasonic FZ200 and Canon 600D (body only) and weight is similar. The extra weight will come with the lenses of course, but there are some really compact and light options available, though not at the extremes of zoom.
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This is what I was thinking. The 600d that I was looking at with the kit lens isn't much heavier than the fz200. I don't know how much weightier (in real terms) it would be with the 15-85, they didn't have one in the shop. I would be getting it online.

As a side question, does dust matter inside lenses? A lot of the used 15-85s I've been looking at have some dust. The seller says it won't affect pictures, is this true?
 
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The 15-85mm is quite a bit heavier, but is better in build quality, much less plastic.
Here is a size comparison, hover over for weights and dimensions.
http://j.mp/1PkCbu0
 
OK so generally bigger is better, so the bigger the sensor the better it is. Well it used to be anyway, the gap has been more or less bridged now and the IQ difference between APS-C and FF is pretty minimal these days, likewise the difference between m4/3 and APS-C is minimal too. In fact sometimes I find it difficult to notice any discernable difference between my FF and M4/3. Of course in low light FF comes into it's own.

However, sensor size does still matter in the extremes, so in anything other than perfect light your tiny sensors from your average compact or bridge camera won't compare to a DSLR. For me M4/3 are the perfect balance between image quality and portability and would recommend something like the Olympus EM10. I've used this for landscapes and it is more than capable. However, it is always best to try cameras out for yourself and see which you are most comfortable using, as it doesn't matter how good a camera is if you don't find it comfortable, or controls are not ideally where you want them etc it will take some of the fun away and you may end up not using it as much. If the camera is a joy to use then you just want to use it all the time.

If you try various cameras and genuinely don't have a preference in ergonomics and controls etc then it's important to look at the system. Once you invest into a system (Canon, Nikon, Olympus etc) it can be very costly to change later down the line as you could well be heavily invested into lenses and accessories. To be honest, most systems have most things for most people, and have most lenses covered but it's worth considering nonetheless. After all of this it is worth looking at the specs of the cameras and seeing which is going to be most suited to your needs. For example if you're into sports a better AF system is likely to be more important than dynamic range, conversely if you're into landscapes then dynamic range is going to possibly be more important than certain AF functions. If you're going to be shooting in low light then low light/ISO performance is important. DXOmark have a useful tool for determining such things. Here's an example of the 600D you're looking at, alongside the Olympus EM10, and also Nikon's entry level DSLR. As you can see dynamic range and ISO performance of the Nikon is significantly superior to the Canon and based on this the obvious choice would be the NIkon, with the Olympus coming in second. However, as already stated usability is arguably more important and you could very well prefer the Canon and so that should be the one you go for imo if this is the case.

Screen%20Shot%202016-02-04%20at%2014.44.21_zpskmitaxlg.png



http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Comp...kon-D3200-versus-Canon-EOS-600D___937_801_692
 
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Thanks for the information Steve/snerkler, very useful. I did look at the Nikon D3200, and it seems like a very nice camera. I decided on the Canon though because I would like an articulated screen for one thing, but mostly I pretty much picked the lens I wanted first. There didn't seem to be an equivalent focal range for the Nikon in my price range - the Nikkor 16-80 was almost twice what I paid for the 15-85 ( I bought the camera and ordered the lens). To be honest I didn't look at Olympus, but the EM10 is also more than I can pay at the moment. I'd also tried the 600d and it felt good and I liked the controls etc.

I'm not too worried about the Canon being the worse of the 3. Both dynamic range and colour depth are both slightly better than the fz200 and they are areas that I didn't have a problem with anyway. ISO performance obviously leaves the Panasonic in the dust, so that will be a very nice improvement. The weight/bulk factor is something I'll just have to test out in the real world.
 
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Transition between Canon and Panasonic is pretty seemless, the button layout and menus are very similar in the way they are set up.
The articulated screen is so useful, when my 600D comes to the end of it's days, having an articulated screen will be the first feature on the shopping list :)
 
Curiously I have reversed or perhaps re-reversed my habits for a 'carry-round' camera.

Twenty years ago, the carry-round was a neat little Olympus XA2 35mm-Film compact, to a bag full of OM SLR's.

I had toyed with going 'Auto-Focus' in the mid 90's, then again in Y2K with a healthy redundancy package, co-incident with infant Digital opening up options, and I shunned both in favour of a dedicated film scanner... and a bulk reel of slide film.

Three years later, when consumer compacts, which evolved far more rapidly than 'serious' digital cameras, dropped under £200, I bought one... 1.3 MPix, through-the-lens composition like an SLR, it was amazing! And used batteries faster than my notorious OM4! Making it also more expensive per shot than film! so 'not quite there yet' was the conclusion. It sort of became the carry-round, though the XA2 would often be close by for when the batteries went!

Three years after that, another, Kodak, compact, with 7.1Mpix, a 3x zoom and a long lasting, rechargeable battery, proved a bit more 'viable', and became the carry-round, and with TTL composition, and choice of 100, 200 or 400ASA, sort of challenged the SLR for a lot of situations, and saw them 'retired', as 'convenience' won out more often over anything else.

Three years ago, when the Kodak(s) had were finally deaded by kids.. and I needed a new camera, I went shopping and with entry level DSLR's having caught up and dropped into the £300 price bracket, the dilemma between a consumer compact, mirror-less or DSLR was 'eased' by mirror-less being bludy expensive for what they offer, and limited in the support their systems get. Consumer compacts? Choice has become dire, with camera-phones cutting the sector in half, leaving them either utra cheap 'toy' cameras, or much more expensive neither fish-nor foul almost 'bridge' or almost mirror-less cameras. Bang-for-Buck, entry level DSLR just chose itself!

AND begged the old gadget bag off the top of the wardrobe to lug it around..... or be left at home....AND... the 'old' 35mm film compact is back in my pocket more often than not!!! Reversing the habit of film SLR for 'serious', Digi-Compact for carry-round convenience.

Curious about turn that. Film was supposed to be the 'faff', Digital the 'convenience'! Has digital disappeared so far up it's own aperture, its now more faff than film?

It does bear some thought! And with so many spending so much time pontificating about white-balance, deliberating over 'RAW' and spending longer in 'Light-Room' than I ever did in the Dark-Room, analysis of the notion would certainly support the idea a long way!

Which begs some thought.. because that XA2 compact with it's fixed 35mm 'wide angle' lens was my only camera until 1989, and much travelled, much used it's delivered a heck of a lot of fantastic photo's over the years.. in years past we made-do without huge zoom ranges, even in the SLR world, all you might have was three 'primes' the standard 50, a 'wide' 35 or 28, and a tele, 90 or 135. Which begs a further thought, how much 'technology' do we really need? How much s actually 'useful'?

More thought, the other day, I was trying to squeeze my new lens into the 'old' camera bag. Err.. "WHY wont this fit!" was the quibble point, followed by "I USED to have two OM' with winders, and short zooms, on them in here, a long zoom, a tele-converter, 50 and a fish-eye, big 283 flash, small 'fill-in' flash; 16 spare AA's and a charger! And a dozen rolls of film or more, AND have space for a changing bag and a packet of wet-wipes! WHY when this 'electric picture maker' is supposed to be 'small', is just ONE camera body, FILLING the same bag, and I don't have room for a third lens?" Reminds me of an old adage; "Work expands to fill the time available; Clutter expands to fill the space available"

Stripped of it's winder, I was fiddling with the old OM10, and reminiscing, and it struck me, how way-back-when, rather than lug a whole back of 'kit' to the top of a hill, I'd leave it all in the car, and just slip that body on one pocket of my coat, and the lens in the other... it was always a 'compact' 35mm SLR, and side by side with my D3200, applauded by many for being so 'compact' as DSLR's go... made me wonder HOW they ever got SO big! It was interesting, picking up the 'little' super-zoom bridge I got as a 'carry-round' (to see where my daughter had hidden my spare SD Card!) and picking the OM10 up off the desk to make space for them both, having both in my hand at the same time, begging comparison not in the favour of the electric picture makers!

This probably doesn't help you answer your question. May yet beg suggestion I am advocating 'film', to which there could be some masochistic merit, But, I think, the conclusion it suggests is... there ISN'T an answer. It's all about compromise, and you just cant have your cake and eat it.

An 'everything in your pocket' compact will be compact, but the compromise is it will either not be very cheap or not be very wonderful, or a bit of both. A versatile SLR, will always offer 'more', but it wont fit in your pocket, and still not be all that cheap. In between? Bridge and mirror-less, lots of swings and round-abouts nudging the compromises, one way or t'other, usually upping the cost for little or no gain in compact-ness. You pays your money and takes your chances, and find what works for you the hard way....

But, while you have your pay-pal details to hand..... ;-) you might like to check out old high end 35mm film compacts on e-bay! You can pick up super-compact Olympus XA's, or Minox or Contax 35mm 'folders' for stupidly little money these days, and they make a great 'carry-round' besides a DSLR! LoL.
 
What are the short comings of the camera you have?

Are these short comings a result of the actual camera, or, and be honest with yourself, are they a result of your own skill and experience?
 
Harvey_nikon said:
What are the short comings of the camera you have?

Are these short comings a result of the actual camera, or, and be honest with yourself, are they a result of your own skill and experience?
Click to expand...
The OP said ISO performance, and usually on cameras like this over ISO 800 it starts to look a bit yucky so DSLR will be better. That being said this will be offset somewhat by the slower lens they're looking at as the FZ200 is f2.8 vs f5.6 of the Canon (at the long end). This means that the Canon will need to be at least 4x better in ISO handling to beat the Panny which I'm not sure it is. Of course as soon as he starts buying faster glass the DSLR will stride ahead.
 
Harvey_nikon said:
What are the short comings of the camera you have?

Are these short comings a result of the actual camera, or, and be honest with yourself, are they a result of your own skill and experience?
Click to expand...

ISO is the main problem, but the noise reduction and sharpening in-camera is not brilliant, even at reduced settings. It requires twiddling and tweaking for different iso settings. As said above the lens makes this a little better but not enough. There seems to be noise or noise reduction even at iso 100. It's true that image quality is alot better if the pictures are well shot and sharp, which I try to be careful to do but it's not a complete cure.

There are other issues too that I'm getting bored of; the electronic zoom is a pain, manual focus is uselessly slow, the sd card slot is trapped under the battery cover which in turn gets trapped under the tripod mount, anything over about f4.5 is soft (is that diffraction?)...

I also find myself using the viewfinder more and more which is less than brilliant, as it helps me steady the camera when trying to shoot at lower than ideal ISOs due to the questionable image quality. The eyepiece is plastic and I wear glasses so that isn't ideal either.

Don't get me wrong, in good conditions I've had some good shots, but anything less than good light it struggles. That brings me onto another point; I was looking at flashes and accessories that will ultimately only work with fz or certain Panasonic cameras. I don't want to buy stuff that will end up as paperweights because they don't work if I upgrade.

The only things I would miss are the relative portability and the long lens for the occasional wildlife shot.
 
LumixNoob said:
ISO is the main problem, but the noise reduction and sharpening in-camera is not brilliant, even at reduced settings. It requires twiddling and tweaking for different iso settings. As said above the lens makes this a little better but not enough. There seems to be noise or noise reduction even at iso 100. It's true that image quality is alot better if the pictures are well shot and sharp, which I try to be careful to do but it's not a complete cure.

There are other issues too that I'm getting bored of; the electronic zoom is a pain, manual focus is uselessly slow, the sd card slot is trapped under the battery cover which in turn gets trapped under the tripod mount, anything over about f4.5 is soft (is that diffraction?)...

I also find myself using the viewfinder more and more which is less than brilliant, as it helps me steady the camera when trying to shoot at lower than ideal ISOs due to the questionable image quality. The eyepiece is plastic and I wear glasses so that isn't ideal either.

Don't get me wrong, in good conditions I've had some good shots, but anything less than good light it struggles. That brings me onto another point; I was looking at flashes and accessories that will ultimately only work with fz or certain Panasonic cameras. I don't want to buy stuff that will end up as paperweights because they don't work if I upgrade.

The only things I would miss are the relative portability and the long lens for the occasional wildlife shot.
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Manual zoom and viewfinder are certainly more valid reasons to switch IMO (y)
 
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Thanks Steve, Looking through your gallery the ISO 800 shots are better than ISO 100 on my FZ200. Looking at the comparisons on DXOmark, that seems about right. The FZ200 get a measly 114 vs nearly 800 on the 600d. It get progressively worse as you'd expect. By 800, Images are looking decidedly 'painted' without much zooming in.
ISO 100 Crop:

 
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Glad to help, the increase in sensor size is a big help when it comes to ISO. Even though the 600D could probably be classed as old tech now, I'm still perfectly happy with its performance.
 
LumixNoob said:
Thanks Steve, Looking through your gallery the ISO 800 shots are better than ISO 100 on my FZ200. Looking at the comparisons on DXOmark, that seems about right. The FZ200 get a measly 114 vs nearly 800 on the 600d.
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There are many different actors affecting noise so it's not really ideal comparing your shots with someone else's tbh, just getting the exposure slightly off can have a detrimental effect on noise. Something like this might help, I'd say there's equal noise on the 600D at 800 iso compared with the FZ200 at 200 ISO (which takes into account the 2 stop difference between f2.8 on the Panny and f5.6 on the Canon), but the FZ200 looks extremely soft in comparison. Get comparative aperture glass on the Canon and it'll be significantly better in noise.

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/stu...5528&y=0.47240456074664766&extraCameraCount=0
 
Most of the time I leave the fz200 on f4/4.5, anything bigger is soft and anything smaller starts to blur a little bit. I tried a bunch of different setting on a tripod and f4 seems to be the best bet. Maybe I'm being too hard on it.

While we're on the subject of image quality, what size would I be able to print something like this at and get good quality for hanging in the living room (the full size image is on there)? I don't want it massive but I was just curious how big I could print if I wanted.

I don't really know how good the picture is but I like it (opinions welcome).

 
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For 'normal' prints it's often recommended that you want 300dpi. It's not quite exact but if you divide the camera resolution by the dimension of the paper then this should give you a rough idea without having to upscale. So the long edge of the Panny files is 4000 pixels I believe. A3 paper is 16.53inches so 4000/16.53 = 242 which would be perfectly acceptable imo. However, as I say it's not quite that simple as DPI isn't the same as pixels. Also, it depends on viewing distances The further away the less dpi it needs to be. Billboards can be as low as 12dpi I believe.
 
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