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Hi, i bought a Panasonic FZ100 as my starter all round camera. Not keen on the idea of swapping lenses and even less in carrying them about :bg3:. So far I am pretty satisfied but wanted to know if any of you had used one before and had any input on how to make the most of this camera.
Whether you had experienced any problems that could be resolved changing the settings and your thoughts in general.
Thanks
Shane
Hi Shane- I have not used that particular model, but I will offer a comment or two. The camera has an impressive zoom range and with the high-density sensor you have considerable reach. One issue with cameras like this is the small size of the sensor. The FZ100 sensor is 6.12 x 4.51 mm (according to dpreview.com) and with a megapixel count at 4320 x 3240 gives a pixel size of about 1.7 microns wide. Compare this with pixel widths in the range of 4-8 microns for DSLRs. Small pixels like this suffer from noise because they can't collect as much light per unit time compared to a bigger pixel, and they suffer from diffraction issues at wider apertures. To keep the noise down you should use the lowest ISO setting you can get away with, shoot RAW, and up your exposure as far as you can without blowing the highlights. To reduce diffraction softness, try to avoid stopping the lens down much.
As your bird photography skills develop you may want to look at moving to a DSLR.
Thanks for the info John.
Am shooting RAW at moment and will set ISO to 100 as often as possible.
not exactly sure what you mean by "To reduce diffraction softness, try to avoid stopping the lens down much."
What is stopping the lens down?
Again appreciate the help
Shane
Hi Shane- Your lens has a maximum aperture of F2.8 at the wide end of the zoom range and F5.2 at the telephoto end. "Stopping the lens down" means using smaller apertures than these. For example you could stop your lens down to f8 or f11. Diffraction causes the detail in your image to be smeared over a circle of pixels; the smaller the aperture, the larger this circle is, and the smaller the pixels, the more pixels this circle covers. You will get the minimum diffraction effect shooting at your widest apertures but there is a trade-off because lenses tend to work better stopped-down. If you can manage it, try using 1/2 stop down from maximum.
Thanks a lot
Means i will have to go fully manual as was not selecting the F number myself just the SS and ISO
Will try out manual everything and see how i get on.
Shane
:cheers:
Shane,
For reference, below is my article on telephoto reach. As John says, the small lenses on the P&S super zoom cameras are limited by diffraction. At the long end of the zoom range on the FZ100, it is f/5.2 and the diffraction spot diameter for green light is around 7 microns, which severely limits the detail that can be obtained with 1.7-micron pixels.
Figure 4 on this page illustrates the effect on image quality on a similar camera:
http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/telephoto_reach/
Roger
Thanks a lot Roger. My bank account just started to tremble hahahaha :bg3:
Will try and take it all in but still a bit advanced for me. Will slowly get there.
Will be trecking in a pine forest tomorrow so hopefully have some more examples for you guys to critique
Regards
Shane
