I finally pulled the trigger on the new camera I have been coveting.

No, it's not a DSLR, so some of you might want to stop reading right here. But glance through the specifications in the link shown above, before you decide that a non-interchangeable lens camera is beneath notice.

That f2.8 across the entire 25-600mm zoom range, the 60 to 1/4000 shutter speed range, and the 40 foot metered range for the built-in flash are eye openers.

No, it will NOT produce images as crisp and sharp as a DSLR with a dedicated 50mm lens... but you won't see the difference in an 8x10 print. And yes, there WILL be more noise at higher ISO settings but you won't see it at 8x10 at ISO 400 or less, and with f2.8 you won't need higher than that very often.

I guess it's technically a point-and-shoot, but in terms of exposure control I challenge anyone to find a [useful] feature on a DSLR that this camera doesn't have. Things like burst mode with dynamic autofocus up to 5.5 fps, and w/o dynamic autofocus up to 60 fps. HD movie capability, RAW output if desired, High Dynamic Range mode, and of course full P-S-A-M settings are impressive. All that's just tip-of-the-iceberg stuff.

Then... there is the Leica lens. Below are full-frame shots taken a few seconds apart with no post-processing of any kind. The first is at maximum wide-angle, the second at maximum zoom, with 4x digital zoom turned on. That clock (running about 6-1/2 hours slow, BTW) is exactly a kilometer away from where the pictures were taken. You'll have to look carefully at the "Wide" shot to even find the church tower; the small clock tower is in front of it. I'll concede that the zoomed picture is a bit ragged, but keep in mind the same camera and same lens took both shots.

I guess what it comes down to is that I am willing to trade a small amount of ultimate image quality to achieve unparalleled convenience and versatility.

YMMV.

tanstaafl.

edit: I added a third image, a low-resolution composite of the first two in case you don't have the patience to open the full-size pictures. I hope the third one will display below the post rather than just show as a link.

Wow! That's an amazing camera. I may just have to visit you or something to try it out someday. Either that, or risk venturing into a camera shop again (frequently an expensive proposition).

The zoomed in clock face seems to have a 'wavy' appearance. Is that the way it looks in real life?

No.

That is an artifact introduced because the clock was photographed through a kilometer of hot, unstable air (temperature ~90F), plus additional distortion was introduced by using 4x digital zoom on top of the 24x optical zoom, so only three of the 12 megapixels of the sensor are actually used.

There is no doubt that a good DSLR with a 2400mm lens screwed onto the front of it would do better, but you'd still have to deal with the distortion in the air, and you'd have to find someplace to park the wheelbarrow you used to carry all those lenses.

BTW, it's surprising how much the zoomed image can be improved by a very quick (~30 second) edit with additional contrast and just a touch more color saturation. (see below) The atmospheric distortion remains, however.

Remember, that clock face is a full kilometer away, and is almost invisible to the unaided eye.

tanstaafl.

There's nothing special about a DSLR that would make it inherently "better" (whatever that means) than a DMC-FZ200 for this. Long equivalent focal lengths and large depth of field under bright conditions are the forte of tiny sensors like that in the Lumix. Definitely playing to its strengths here.

But that camera has a lot of strengths, and a tiny price tag too! I'm quite impressed. But I would have to handle one to know for sure.

The strengths of a DSLR are control over depth of field, instantaneous operation of all controls, and low noise in very low light. Pretty much the opposite of the Lumix.

For the sample composition above, a DSLR might have a chance to better isolate the clock tower from its background (by having lower depth of field), subconsciously drawing the eye/brain to the subject without the distraction of the background. But with lower odds of getting a nice sharp rendition of the subject itself. Not to mention having to sacrifice even more pixels ("digital zoom") to isolate the feature of interest.

Cheers

Two things, I think.

One: Larger sensor area for the same number of pixels. This gives less noise.

Two: The ability to have dedicated lenses optimized for a given focal length. Zoom = compromise, the more zoom, the more compromise.

I am impressed with how little apparent compromise the FZ-200's Leica lens has considering the 24x optical zoom, particularly with that f2.8 aperture across the entire zoom range! Six months ago that would have been thought to be impossible.

You are correct about depth of field, but I offer the attached as demonstration that some depth of field control IS possible. I can shoot at f2.8 at any focal length, but even wide open as you say the depth of field is practically unlimited. Only in macro mode is there any semblance of control. The macro capabilities of the camera are excellent - I can put the front lens element nine millimeters from an object and still get autofocus.

I don't have to go scrolling through menus for anything that is commonly adjusted. There are 24 buttons, switches, dials, etc. on the camera body, and I can change almost any parameter without taking my eye out of the viewfinder. Example: in program shift mode, I can push to click the thumb-wheel on the back of the camera and toggle through exposure compensation (up to three stops +/- in 1/3 EV increments), aperture, or shutter speed, and adjust them by rotating the wheel, all the time seeing the effects of the changes in the 1.3 megapixel viewfinder.

Another cute feature is that in low light situations (I'm talking about shooting in the dark, where the exposure time might be ten or 15 seconds) the viewfinder automatically goes into light amplification mode and you see in the viewfinder what the 15-second exposure will look like. It's like having night vision goggles!

Panasonic offers a similar camera to the FZ200 for about $150 less, fewer features, a bit less capable, and interestingly that camera has a 16 megapixel sensor as compared to the 12 on the FZ200. That is the first sign of pixel sanity I have seen in the digital camera industry, breaking away from the concept that "more pixels equals more better". With tiny sensors, more pixels equals more noise. I wonder how the FZ200 team managed to slip that "smaller" sensor (same physical size, smaller number of pixels) past the marketing mavens? I'm glad they did!

The FZ200 has exceeded my expectations in nearly every area I have examined it in. I wish they could have retained the manual zoom of the FZ50, and I would have changed the UI regarding manual focus, but that's it. This camera is amazing, and the more I play with it the more impressed I become.

tanstaafl.

I do wonder whether that is slightly a "24fps movie" effect, though: whether we subconsciously like those photos because expensive-camera and/or pro-photographer photos all look like that, not because that look (while clearly different from the P&S look) is actually any better...

Peter

Dunno. But "emphasizing the subject" by reducing distractions is a fairly basic principle of art, and photography. Reducing the depth of field also makes an image appear more 3D than 2D in the area of the primary subject.

That's impressive.

My graphics editing skills are pretty minimal, so forgive me if this is a dumb question... but how do you do that?

tanstaafl.

My graphics editing skills are about as minimal as it gets -- I much prefer taking photos over having to massage them afterwards on a computer.

But for this image, I just loaded it into Gimp (any photo editor will do), and used a "Blur Tool". Essentially a paintbrush that blurs whatever is under it. Switching to 200X magnification helps.

Cheers

Easy! catch a quick flight over to your place, shimmy up the wall, whip out the DSLR and *click*


(Alternative approach: mask the area of interest and apply a soft blur effect to the background - grab yourself a copy of Gimp and play with some of the tutorials out there - good fun)

Believe it or not, I actually just figured that out on my own. I use Paint.net, which is considerably simpler than Gimp, but it has tools I am smart enough (for the most part) to use.

I didn't do as careful and clean a job as Mark did, but I have the concept of how to do it.

tanstaafl.

edit: hmmm... I see Mark added a lot more unfocus than I did. I like his better.

My recent thinking on this is that there's no such thing as the One True Camera For All Things. A full-frame D-SLR is great when you want the things it can provide (super-fast autofocus, great selection of lenses which can do shallow DoF, great low-light performance, etc.) but it falls on its face when you're doing other things (e.g., macro work is a huge pain due to the limited DoF). And the weight of these things will kill you.

The mirrorless compact cameras (from the Leica M9 down to various Micro 4/3 cameras) are a wonderful compromise in many regards, getting you much of the D-SLR goodness at far less traveling weight.

Mobile phone cameras are already in your pocket, which gives them a big advantage. You've got them with you. They also get nearly infinite depth of field, which is great if you want that.

I rarely find myself wanting extreme super magnification, so I the extra goodness of the FZ200 would be lost on me. If, however, I were trying to shoot sports from the cheap seats in a stadium, then it would be quite attractive. Make sure to bring a monopod or something else with which to stabilize the camera.

Dan, you left out the point and shoot category, which still has a place with people who hate their phone's camera (like me) and don't like carrying around even a mirrorless camera body (like me) The Canon S100 or S110 still fit a lot of people's needs nicely.

There's also the waterproof/shockproof/freezeproof(*) category.



(*) YMMV

Yeah, the "premium compact point-and-shoot" (PCPS?) market still exists, and I've generally been a big proponent of it. However, that segment made a lot more sense when the DSLRs were bigger and heavier. Now, with the mirrorless compacts, the high-end cameras are smaller and lighter. Conversely, the PCPS market is expanding upward with larger sensors and fixed lenses (Fuji X100, Sony R100, etc.), and likewise the interchangeable lens cameras are pushing downward (notably, the Pentax Q), to the point where you can now pretty much pick any point in a continuum of interesting cameras.

All I can say is that I still have my thoroughly awesome Panasonic Lumix LX5, but I hardly ever reach for it when I can instead reach for my Fuji X-Pro 1, which is light enough that I don't mind hauling it around all day.

As to the waterproof/shockproof/kidproof cameras, I don't have any experience with these. They tend to have inferior optics, since they're trying to avoid having parts that telescope in and out. On the flip side, you can take pictures in places that previously would have required you to spend big bucks on specialist cameras (Nikonos) or expensive enclosures. If you need a bombproof camera, then you know it and you pay the price.

I re-shot the Church Tower zoom test this morning when the air was a bit cooler and had less distortion, adding a third example to the test.

One picture was shot at maximum wide angle -- 1x zoom, you could call it.
One picture was shot at maximum zoom, including optical and digital: 96x.
One picture was shot at maximum optical zoom of 24x, then cropped in the computer to match the 96x zoom shot.

The reason for this was because I was curious about how well the camera's digital zoom would do compared to staying with just the optical zoom and cropping it in the computer. I mean, everybody knows that digital zoom is worthless, just a marketing trick to sell more cameras.

The camera did well, I think. Perhaps you can pick out which picture was pure optical with computer cropping, and which picture was full-out digital zoom on top of the optical zoom.

In the following post I am attaching a true long-range shot of San Luis Soyatlán. (File size is too large to attach to this post.)

tanstaafl.

Okay, here is the picture of San Luis Soyatlán.

Yeah, it's a bit fuzzy and not super-sharp. But that beach is 12.2 kilometers away.

I find that somewhat impressive for a point-and-shoot camera.

tanstaafl.

Was the camera saving in JPG format or RAW/uncompressed format?

JPG.

tanstaafl.

Well, there ya go. In-Camera "digital zoom" will work better (than out-of-camera cropping) because the camera has access to the full RAW data when it does it internally. Whereas doing it out-of-camera only has the JPG data, which has already suffered losses during interpolation and compression.

Using RAW format files should level the playing field, but is far less convenient. With cameras and sensors as good as they are now, I feel that shooting JPGs directly is more than good enough for most purposes.

With my own large DSLR, I have the camera save both JPG and RAW to the flash card. The RAW is there in case I want to make large prints or heavy crops (aka. "digital zoom"), but 99.9% of the time now I just use the JPGs.

Cheers!