I’m extremely happy with my Panasonic FZ150 – a 12MP bridge camera with 24x optical zoom and a compact sensor. Yes, a compact sensor. Although I get the advantage of a lightweight cam with up to 50X of non-degraded zoom (at 5mp) I don’t have the advantage of tiny F-Stops or sensors that are able to receive 10 times the light that a DSLR would. It would be a major issue if the FZ150 didn’t have such an amazing stabilization system…

The two pictures above were taken at full zoom….handheld.  That’s 50x non-degrading zoom at 5MP on a 12MP sensor. That moon is obviously a long way away. I’ve cropped the image but it still looks impressive. The helicopter was a long way away too. Here’s the 1:1 version….

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This low-light handheld test is important for me as it’s one of my most-used scenarios. I’m also interested in telephoto shots at on-stage press events and various types of video but for my first Panasonic Lumix Z150 test I wanted to see how much better it was than my old (5 year old) Canon S2IS 5MP bridge camera. Of course it’s a massive improvement. I’m estimating a total 8x quality improvement of sensitivity, stabiliser and definition through sensor pixel count and lens. That’s a massive 3 f-stops of usefulness.

All my Lumix FZ150 posts are shown together here.

In this test I took a large number of shots of a multimeter (showing a LUX reading of around 95 from a big 30W daylight-temperature CFL energy-saving bulb 2M away) and chose the best pictures to analyse.

The other two devices used were the Canon S2IS and my Nokia N8 which has a larger sensor than both of the bridge cameras. To help make the images easy to compare I set the ISO at 400 and took the images at about 15 cm, the distance at which the multimeter was full-frame in the non-zoom Nokia N8.

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Here’s the unboxing and walk-round of the Panasonic Lumix FZ150 that I’m starting to test for my online photo and video work. The unboxing was done a few days ago so I’m already well into testing. In terms of sensor performance it’s doing what I expected. It’s completely trashing my 5-yr old Canon S2IS bridge camera. Interestingly though, it’s getting better results than the Nokia N8 in a handheld low-low-light test. It’s an important test for me and an important result because the Nokia N8 is a quality camera and has a larger sensor. On top of that the FZ150 has an amazing image stabilization system. The N8 is still a camera I will use because it’s tiny and internet-connected but the FZ150 is opening up new photography possibilities. Once again, I haven’t bought a DSLR because I don’t believe I need that much focus on quality photography. What I do is not photography! I don’t really fancy the weight and cost of a DSLR either. Maybe the FZ150 is something for you too? Stay tuned for more posts.

Video below…

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I like photography but I don’t have the time for it. For my work, however, I need a camera. I don’t call that photography, I call it blogography and it needs a different type of device. I’ve just bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ150 which I’m hoping will fulfill an important role in my job as an online reporter.

DSLRs are wonderful bits of kit with amazing light sensitivity, fast processing, quick startup and quality lenses. They are great for photographers, but not for bloggers who need a different kind of media device. Here’s my list of requirements…

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