Panasonic
Hooray! ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Yeeeeaaar’ …. Once again I wish all readers Merry Christmas and a happy New Year 2009! This year I had a wonderful Christmas, not the BBQ turkey we had, not the 5 bottles of red wines we had (a mixture of French, Chilean and Australian, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot… Yucks! 
), not even those Dannemann Moods cigars, BUT the Christmas present that I bought for myself, a Nikon D60 DSLR! Though I bought it a week ago and took a few shots, I purposely packed it back and unpacked it on the Boxing Day! What a feeling!! 
As I mentioned earlier, I’m already a happy owner of Panasonic Lumix FZ28. I brought it along as my travel camera on my Shanghai vacation and have captured some beautiful photos of my trip. It is no doubt a perfect camera for travel (Read my Top 5 ‘Wow’ Factors about FZ28 here). So, what is the motivation for me to buy another camera for travel, albeit it is bigger, heavier than Panasonic with the same amount of pixels but more expensive? Here are the top 5:-
- My children are growing up and they are extremely active and energetic - Babies look different every day. Though my son, Dylan is 15 months old now, I love to capture those special moments of him when he runs, plays and laughs. More to say, I couldn’t expect him to pose for me standstill. I need to react fast and so do I need a faster camera. My Panasonic Lumix, being the nature and characteristics of a compact camera with a small light sensor, doesn’t serve very well in this department;
- I love potraits and my 2 children – Potraits are always my favorite section of photography. When I realised DSLR could capture sharper and better defined face of my children, it has become my biggest motivation to get a DSLR;
- My best friend ‘motivated’ me a lot - He owns 2 Nikons, D60 and D90, and plenty of lenses. I could always borrow his 18-270mm zoom lense if I need to. I’ve been poisoned by this devil a lot. ;
- To be a motivation to travel even more! – Naturally, when you buy a new camera, you would think of whatever reasons to visit more places than before and the same ‘chicken and egg’ philosophy applies. Either travelling a lot so motivated to get a camera or, got a new camera so motivated to travel, are the same to me, and
- The price of DSLR has dropped tremendously – They have a price tag similarly to an advanced compact, like Canon G10. Nikon D40 is selling even cheaper than some compacts! Recent price drop of Nikon D60 to RM1800.00 has motivated me to getting it fast, before it’s being replaced and repriced.
With the above strong motivation pushing behind me, though it was only less than 3 months after I bought the Panasonic FZ28, I decided to buy a second camera for my travel. With the priority of taking fast action children movement and nice potrait, I chose DSLR. With my past experience of owning both Nikon and Canon film SLR, I chose Nikon. For its lightest weight among other DSLR in the market (better to my shoulder during vacation travel), I chose D60. With the recent economic down turn, I chose to pay by credit card… – Travel Feeder.
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Since I bought it 2 weeks ago, I have been practising and exploring all the features of this Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 compact camera with no reservation. Until this morning, I have shot a total of 1100 photos which I think is quite enough to understand, if not fully, the characteristics of my new toy. I did this evaluation exercise with 2 reasons: One being so ‘hot’ and tempted to shoot photos while it is still new and fresh in my hands, while the other resaon is to try out and figure out the capabilities of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 in handling all kinds of environment, situations and lighting (not in the rain of course:) ) before I take it along as my new travel camera to Shanghai in another 11 days!
However, I need to stop this evaluation exercise at once (or temporarily?) before my travel blog turned into a Tech savvy blog . As a conclusion, I have summarised 5 top ‘Wow’ factors of my new camera, Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28
- 18x Ultra Zoom- One of the biggest selling points of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX28 is its awesome 18x optical zoom (though the latest Canon boosts up to 20x) from 27mm wide angle to 486mm telephoto. Thanks to the business collaboration between Panasonic and Leica, FZ28 uses a multi elements Leica’s high precision DC VARIO-ELMARIT zoom lense that produce stunning and bright telephoto picture while keeping the least distortion to wide landscape; 27mm Wide Angle View
27mm Wide Angle View
486mm Telephoto View
- Optical Image Stabiliser- This is also one of the strongest weapon of Panasonic with its proprietory O.I.S. technologies that produces one of the best stabilised image even in those shaky hands like me . I’ve tried to shoot a night object with 1 sec exposure and the result was to my biggest shock!;
Awesome O.I.S. stabilised this dark image for 1 second!
- Intelligent Auto- Also the Panasonic’s proprietory features, this camera is equipped with the latest Intelligent functions of such as Intelligent ISO, Intelligent Exposure and off course, the fully Intelligent Auto for Point-and-Shoot. The IA is especially great to me which the camera could detect the scene (either potrait, landscape, macro, night portrait or night landscape)and adjust the setting and colours automatically, when I want to merely point-and-shoot various scenes on vacation but lazy to dial the scene mode. This IA could even trigger macro focusing mode automatically when I point to an object as close as 10mm without pressing any button!;
Intelligent Exposure automatically adjusted highlight and shadow
Intelligent Auto triggered Macro mode when point closely to an object
- RAW Shooting- Such a big ‘Wow’ for such a competitive price! There is not many cameras in the market at this price range actually allowed to shoot in RAW or RAW+JPEG format! This used to be DSLR dedicated feature is now available in FZ28 for me to shoot in RAW and process it myself later for full flexibilities and creativities (though inexperienced user as me would raher leave it to the camera to post-process my photos most of the time). This is an once-in-a-while feature for me when I decided to shoot some ‘serious’ scenery shot (when I hold the camera and stand like a professional photographer ), and
KL Night Scene
Morning Call
- HD Video – For its selling price or rather my buying price (I bought it for RM1300 which is quite a lot cheaper than the market price of RM1499 ), nobody would expect it to record nice video but it does! Even better, it records video in HD format! And the best, it records while zooming in and out!
“‘Wow wow wow wow wow”. That’s the top 5 ‘wow’ factor features of Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28. Did I mean it is the perfect camera for all? Not quite. Not unless Panasonic incorporated an even better and larger image sensor than 1/2.33″ in this compact ultrazoom camera. However it is definitely the perfect choice for me at the moment.- Travel Feeder.
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Yes! My final choice of digital camera for my travel is Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28! The decision made was not easy at all as I talked about my 5 finalists before that all have their individual strength and weaknesses (for travel purposes particularly). However, I made my life easier by first decided the shop of purchase. [...]
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