18x zoom and full ISO range samples from the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8

Panasonic Lumix spring 2007 launch report

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 press release

A couple of weeks ago, in Paris, we were able to handle some pre production samples of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8, as well as the new DMC-TZ3. Although we were told we could publish samples online, I wasn't happy that the FZ8 sample I had was representative of the production version as it exhibited noticeably more graininess than the TZ3. A production FZ8 arrived yesterday, so I dashed out on an overcast day and took some quick sample shots and I feel these are better than the ones I took in Paris.

Artistic quality was not uppermost on my mind when taking these shots - so you will have to bear with me on this! In all these shots the camera was on a tripod, with image stabilisation turned off and the shutter triggered by self timer to avoid any camera shake.The outside pictures, featuring the church spire, were all taken at minimum ISO (100), on aperture priority auto metering mode (f/4.5), evaluative metering and auto white balance.

The DMC-FZ8 replaces the FZ7 and gets a seven magapixel sensor, 18x extended mode zoom (3MP resolution) and RAW recording mode.

The ISO comparisons were taken indoors and despite 180 watts of ceiling lights, an exposure time of around a second was on the cards without flash and Lara was having problems keeping still enough to avoid motion blur. So I had to resort to flash. The reason why the images increase in warmth as the ISO increases is because the flash component of the exposure reduces and the warmth of the ceiling lights takes over. With flash on, the white balance is set by the camera for the daylight temperature of the flash.

I haven't yet printed any of these samples, but I was impressed by the on-screen quality of the extreme telephoto images. The lower resolution 18X extended zoom sample looks surprisingly good and I look forward to printing that one. With the ISO comparisons, 100 is not bad at all, though detail starts to break up slightly at 200 and by 400 things are getting a bit soft. That said, ISO 1250 is certainly usable, as long as the image isn't under-exposed, when it does get decidedly grainy.

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Sample images

Please note, by clicking on the the thumbnails below, the full orginal two megabyte, 7 megapixel, JPEG image will show in your browser. You may prefer to download the image to your computer for convenient browsing offline. Windows users can do this by right-clicking and using the 'Save Target as...' option.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 18x zoom (3MP)	Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 12x zoom
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 8.5x zoom	Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 4.9x zoom
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 2.4x zoom	Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 1x zoom
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 ISO 100	Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 ISO 200
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 ISO 400	Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 ISO 800
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8 ISO 1250

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