Home > Consumer Reviews > Panasonic DMC-FZ1B Digital Camera [2MP 12xOptical]

I bought this camera to replace my old 35mm with telephoto and wide angle lenses and it has proved to be a revelation. Extremely lightweight yet with a typically solid panasonic feel to it. The 12x optical zoom is really amazing and the final picture quality stunning. Although only rated at 2mpixels there is no image quality loss when viewing larger pictures. A terrific point and shoot camera but invest in a bigger SD the 8mb one supplied as standard is woefully inadequate for this class of camera. I bought a 256MB card for under £50.00 and it gives me the capability to take up to 592 pictures at 1600x1200 and allows me to use the video capabilities of the camera much more. Buy it.

I had resisted moving to a digital camera after many years of using quality SLR cameras. I read a great deal about the cameras available and concluded that the lens was the key to quality and not necesarily the megapixels. Also the light gathering capability was important The Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ1B with the F2.8 Leica lens seemed to meet my requirements. The electronic view finder gives me the same composing features as I am used to with my SLR's.I have not been disapointed with the results and the features. It is easy to use and the 12X zoom alows me to frame the picture as I want it without wasting too many pixels. I have hardly ever needed to use the flash unit as the light gathering capabilities and the motion stabilisation feature are superb. I have a 64Mb SD memory card and use the maximum definition to get 74 pictures. The battery has more than sufficient capacity. Another battery and another memory card if similar or larger capacity would make this a complete unit. The lens creates a very sharp picture from maximum to minimum optical zoom although with a little barrel distortion at the widest angle. The defintion is as good or better than I get from lenses which cost more than this camera. The review feature with its zoom capability helps me to decide if my pictures are sharply focused or require re-taking. I find continous autofocus is rarely needed as the triggered auto focus is very fast and saves on battery capacity. The audio note feature is very useful when taking photographs where type, location etc is important. I often use the bracketed exposure when lighting may be difficult and use burst mode for multiple exposure when taking animal photographs in particular. These two features work very well. Although there is no manual feature the various photo modes, coupled with exposure compensation, spot metering and other picture adjustments, enable most things to be achieved. I have not used the motion picture mode very often but it seems to be quite adequate. I have enlarged pictures to 10" x 12" and found that, because I frame carefully, the results are very good. At A4 size the results are excellent.