DPInterface Panasonic Lumix FZ7 Review
Brad Soo - September 24th, 2006

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 is the latest addition to their ultra-zoom range, featuring 6 megapixels, 12X optical zoom, a larger (versus the FZ5) 2.5 inch LCD and of course, optical image stabilization.

Size and Weight

Exactly how compact is the FZ7? Take a look:

(266.9)  113.4 x 78.0 x 75.5 mm (410 g) - Canon PowerShot S3 IS
(347.4)  130.7 x 97.2 x 119.5 mm (570 g) - Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd
(350.0)  128.0 x 93.0 x 129.0 mm (650 g) - Fujifilm FinePix S9100
(189.7)  111.0 x 55.5 x 23.2 mm (160 g) - Kodak EasyShare V610
(247.0)  104.0 x 74.0 x 69.0 mm (300 g) - Kodak EasyShare Z612
(227.5)  112.5 x 74.5 x 40.5 mm (220 g) - Nikon Coolpix S10
(250.0)  105.5 x 74.5 x 70.0 mm (325 g) - Olympus SP510 UZ
(368.3)  140.8 x 85.5 x 142.0 mm (668 g) - Panasonic Lumix FZ50
(263.7)  112.5 x 72.2 x 79.0 mm (310 g) - Panasonic Lumix FZ7
(210.3)  112.0 x 58.1 x 40.2 mm (264 g) - Panasonic Lumix TZ1
(301.1)  135.5 x 87.0 x 78.6 mm (871 g) - Samsung Pro815
(290.2)  113.2 x 83.0 x 94.0 mm (389 g) - Sony Cyber-shot H5

The FZ7 is one of the more compact ultra-zooms but is by no means pocketable. The camera is "just right" in terms of weight and size.

Open up the Box

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 includes most of the essentials for a big zoom camera:

  • 16 MB Secure Digital Card
  • Rechargeable CGR-S006A lithium-ion battery
  • Battery charger
  • Neck strap
  • Lens cap and strap
  • Lens hood and adapter
  • USB cable
  • A/V cable
  • CD-ROM

Storage and Power

Instead of building in memory, Panasonic has included a redundant 16 MB card with the camera. You'd wanna get at least a 512 MB Secure Digital card when buying the FZ7. And make that high-speed please, since the camera's performance improves quite a bit with that.

550 shots - Canon PowerShot S3 IS
300 shots - Fujifilm FinePix S6000fd*
340 shots - Fujifilm FinePix S9100*
135 shots - Kodak EasyShare V610
260 shots - Kodak EasyShare Z612
300 shots - Nikon Coolpix S10
N/A - Olympus SP510 UZ
360 shots - Panasonic Lumix FZ50
320 shots - Panasonic Lumix FZ7
250 shots - Panasonic Lumix TZ1
450 shots - Samsung Pro815
400 shots - Sony Cyber-shot H2
340 shots - Sony Cyber-shot H5

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 turns in an average battery life of 320 shots per charge (CIPA Standard). The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 uses a lithium-ion battery unlike a few other ultra-zoom cameras in its class.

 

Extras

Quite expected for an ultra-zoom camera are quite a bit of accessories:

  • Conversion lens adapter
  • Wide-angle conversion lens (0.7x, 25 - 302 mm)
  • Telephoto conversion lens (1.7x, 61 - 734 mm)
  • Close-up conversion lens
  • Various filters
  • AC adapter

Camera Tour

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 is a fairly solid camera. Despite offering a decent amount of external control, it's not cluttered with buttons. A jog dial or two would be nice, but that appears to be reserved for the higher end FZ50. The FZ7 is available in your choice of silver or black. The one here is obviously silver.

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 has a 12X zoom lens equivalent to 36 - 432 mm and having an aperture range of f2.8 - f3.3 which is slightly faster than what you'll find on other ultra-zooms. The lens extends slightly when the camera is turned on.

Directly above the lens is the camera's pop-up flash. It's quite powerful, reaching up to 6 m at wide-angle and 5.4 m at telephoto.

The AF-assist/self-timer lamp and microphone are located to the top right of the lens.

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 has a large 2.5 inch LCD with 114,000 pixels. The LCD, despite being not that sharp, has excellent visibility both indoors and outdoors.

Above the LCD is the button used to pop up the flash and the EVF which is small but fairly sharp. Next to that is the speaker and a button which toggles between the LCD and EVF displays. A power switch is located towards the right.

The joystick controller allows you to change settings such as shutter speed and aperture, though not as quickly as using a jog dial. The DISPLAY button toggles the amount of info shown on the LCD as well as the LCD mode. The two modes are Power LCD which brightens up the display and High Angle which allows you to view the display properly from awkward angles.

The 5-way controller allows you to quickly change:

  • Up - Compensation (Backlight, exposure, flash exposure, white balance), bracketing
  • Down - Review photo
  • Left - Self-timer (On 2 or 10 seconds/off)
  • Right - Flash setting (Auto, auto with red-eye reduction, flash on, slow-sync)
  • Center - Menu/Confirm

White balance compensation allows you to set warmer/cooler white balance in 1 step increments to +/-10. Bracketing takes 3 shots with different exposures. The final button is the drive mode button which doubles as the delete photo button.

Over here, the main attraction is the mode dial which has these modes (Going clockwise from P):

  • Programmed auto - The camera chooses both aperture and shutter speed while you control other manual functions; program shift is available
  • Aperture priority - You choose an aperture between f2.8/f3.3 to f8.0 and a matching shutter speed will be selected
  • Time (shutter) priority - You choose a shutter speed between 8 seconds to 1/2000 sec and a matching aperture will be selected
  • Manual - Full manual control with the same values as above
  • Macro
  • Movie mode
  • Scene modes
  • Simple (Auto) mode
  • Playback

One annoying thing is that faster shutter speeds can only be selected with smaller apertures. The other buttons are for optical image stabilization and focus mode respectively. A shutter button is located at the tip of the grip with a zoom lever wrapped around.

At the bottom is a battery/SD compartment and a non-centralized tripod mount.

Shooting

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7's display is fairly complete with a live histogram and exposure info. There's even an indicator for both battery level and zoom position.

There's a whole bunch of image resolution options along with two compression levels and 3 aspect ratio settings.

 

Inside the menu, there's a whole lot of other settings as well:

  • White balance (Auto, daylight, cloudy, halogen, flash, custom)
  • ISO sensitivity (Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400)
  • Metering method (Multi, center-weighted, spot)
  • Autofocus (9 points, 3-points high-speed, 1 point high-speed, 1 point, spot)
  • AF setting (Single, continuous)
  • Photo effects (Off, cool, warm, monochrome, sepia)
  • Contrast, saturation, sharpness, noise reduction (Low, normal, high)

The FZ7 has two image stabilization modes. Mode 1 turns it on all the time while mode 2 only activates stabilization when the photo is being taken, which is more effective. When the camera is steady, you can turn off OIS to prevent the opposite results. There's no panning mode here though.

 

Both shots were taken using macro mode at 1/8 second. The left shot was taken with IS off and the other with IS on. The differences are subtle in downsized photos but can really make a difference when viewing the full-size or printing. The FZ7 has a 5 cm macro mode.

Recording

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 has a fairly good movie mode. It takes VGA movies with sound at 30 FPS till the memory card fills up. If you like, a widescreen 848 x 480 option is also available at the same frame rate. A 10 FPS option is available if you want longer movies but it's just too choppy for my taste.

Auto exposure and the optical image stabilizer can be used while recording. You can't zoom or focus though.

The Panasonic FZ7's movies were good in both video and audio quality.

Performance

The Panasonic FZ7 start up time is an about average 2 seconds. The FZ7 normally takes about 1/3 second to focus at wide-angle and about 1/2 second at telephoto. Low-light focusing was excellent but that happens mostly at wide-angle.

Shutter lag is a little obvious at telephoto in low-light conditions but is otherwise not noticeable. Shot-to-shot speed was a nice 1 shot every 1.5 seconds, longer if the flash is used. Flash recharge time using a fully charged battery took 4 seconds. The camera zooms fairly silently from wide-angle to telephoto in 2.5 seconds.

In continuous shooting, the FZ7 can shoot indefinitely at 2 FPS till the memory card is full - provided you have a high-speed card. High-speed and low-speed modes take up to 8 shots at the best settings at 3 and 2 FPS respectively, though I can't see why you'd want to use low-speed with the infinite option.

The FZ7 powers down in a lengthy 3 seconds with the lens at wide-angle.

Image Quality

Now for image quality tests for the FZ7:


ISO 80 (f3.3, 1/15 sec)


ISO 100 (f3.3, 1/20 sec)


ISO 200 (f3.3, 1/50 sec)


ISO 400 (f4.0, 1/125 sec)

At ISO 80, things are reasonably smooth and not noisy at all. Noise is already starting to become slightly evident at ISO 100. It goes up and up again consistently at ISO 200 and ISO 400. I don't think that ISO 400 is useable. Chromatic aberration (color fringing) is a little higher than I would have liked.

Barrel distortion is noticeable while pincushion distortion is not. Colors accuracy was fairly good but the camera tends to become confused with very dark or light colors. There was a little red-eye in the FZ7's people photos.

Despite having noise levels a little higher than competition, overall image quality of the Panasonic Lumix FZ7 was fairly good.

Photo gallery

Check out the Panasonic Lumix FZ7 photo gallery.

Playback

In playback, the Panasonic Lumix FZ7 can playback stills and movies (With sound) as well as do all this: Protect image, print marking, sound memo, slideshow, rotate, resize and crop. You can also magnify still photos by 16x and take a look around using the 4 arrow buttons.

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 shows a lot of info while playing back, including a histogram and exposure information.

 

Conclusion

The Panasonic Lumix FZ7 features 6 megapixels, 12X zoom, a large 2.5 inch LCD, an ISO 1600 high sensitivity mode and optical image stabilization.

The FZ7 has a nice 12X lens which is slightly faster than on other cameras while the optical image stabilizer gives you 3 to 4 stops of handheld shooting flexibility. The LCD is large, bright and has a wide viewing angle but still lacks resolution.

Overall performance for this ultra-zoom camera was very good save for startup time. The FZ7 also has a noticeable performance increase when using a high-speed card. It has a nice VGA and WVGA 30 FPS movie mode and unlimited continuous shooting at 2 FPS. Brisk AF time and a 3 FPS shooting option will surely impress some action shooters.

Image quality was good with the exception of some fairly high noise and color fringing. I was a little disappointed as well with the inability to zoom while recording a movie.

The FZ7 is a nice ultra-zoom camera which competes with things like the Canon S3 IS (Fancy movie mode) and Sony H5 (Low image noise). Ultimately, if you want performance and speed, the FZ7 is for you.

Camera rating upon 10 (more about this): [Category: Ultra-zoom]

  • 8.0 - Body/Exterior
  • 7.0 - Bundle, batteries and memory
  • 8.5 - Lens
  • 7.5 - Feature set
  • 7.0 - Controls and operation
  • 8.5 - Performance
  • 6.5 - Image quality
  • 7.6 - Overall rating

What's hot:

  • Fast 12x zoom lens with optical image stabilization
  • Large LCD with good visibility
  • Powerful flash
  • Full manual controls with an array of accessories
  • Unlimited, fast continuous shooting
  • Fast performance
  • Good movie mode
  • Fairly good image quality

What's not:

  • Low LCD resolution
  • Startup and shut down time could be faster
  • No jog dial and bad positioning of tripod mount
  • Fairly high noise, color fringing levels a little high
  • No focus or zoom available while recording movies

Recommended Accessories

  • 512 MB high-speed Secure Digital card

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