camera advice

[arran256]

im a complete novice when it comes to photograpy and am looking to get a panasonic fz50 as ive read some good reviews and its in my buget. id like to know if it would be suitable for taking close ups of insects ect or would i need a seperate lens? also ive read that quality drops when using high iso (not quite sure what this means) could i get decent silloute shots?

any help greatly appreciated

[matt_xyz]

as with all bridge cameras you do get a lot of noise (i.e. grain) if you raise the ISO. Raising the ISO increases the camera's sensitivity to light and so allows you to use a faster shutter speed (or smaller aperture) if light levels aren't great. It's no major problem though and you soon learn to live with lower ISOs. The FZ range do have image stabilisation so you can get away with slower shutter speeds in lower light levels, to an extent.

For macro images you do need a close up lens for good results. Several FZ users on WAB use the Raynox DCR150 clip on lens. They can be tricky to get hold of and sometimes have to be ordered from the US, but they are relatively cheap (£15 -£20 when sold in the UK, more if ordered from US). Here are a couple of examples of how close you can go with one of the close-up lenses attached (these were taken with the previous version of the FZ50, the FZ30).





Short of buying a DSLR and lots of expensive lenses, I would say the FZ50 is about the best wildlife camera you could buy.

Matt

[arran256]

thanks for the fast reply. great photos they are exactly the type of thing that id like to try to capture. with the iso on low would that still enable me to to get shots of moving images like insects/birds in flight?

[mh68]

Originally Posted by arran256

im a complete novice when it comes to photograpy and am looking to get a panasonic fz50 as ive read some good reviews and its in my buget. id like to know if it would be suitable for taking close ups of insects ect or would i need a seperate lens? also ive read that quality drops when using high iso (not quite sure what this means) could i get decent silloute shots?

any help greatly appreciated

Hi Arran and welcome to WaB. I`ve recently bought an fz50 to replace my old and battered fz20 which i`ve been using for the last few years(approx 15,000 shots with the fz20, the majority being insect macros).
As far as insect shots are concerned, all the FZ series cameras produce excellent results if combined with a Raynox macro lens as Matt suggests.Theyre also capable of very good closeup shots of larger subjects such as butterflies or dragonflies once you get the hang of how the zoom functions - either close to the subject or further away with what is known as the telemacro function.
Re high iso noise,while noise does indeed occur its certainly not as bad as many make out and with images reduced to viewing size on a PC screen, or if making small prints the noise isnt as obvious anyway.I`ve just printed out some iso800 shots at A5 and you cant see the noise at all.On those occasions noise is visible, free noise reduction programs such as Neatimage deal with the problem very well.Since using the fz50 (approx 1000 shots) I think i`ve used Neatimage 3 times to clean images up, and thats shooting a lot of shots at 400iso and quite a few at 800iso.
One tip if youre planning to shoot insects - buy yourself a compatible seperate flashgun as you`ll get far better results than using the cameras onboard flash.The magnifications are so great with macro shooting that using a flash is necessary more often than not to eliminate camera shake.

Mark H

[matt_xyz]

Originally Posted by arran256

thanks for the fast reply. great photos they are exactly the type of thing that id like to try to capture. with the iso on low would that still enable me to to get shots of moving images like insects/birds in flight?

in good light there's no reason why you couldn't get your shutter speed fast enough for in-flight shots. But the autofocus on non-DSLRs can be a bit slow so in-flight shots can be tricky. Not impossible though.

Matt

[arran256]

would i need another lens for taking general wildlife shots (birds?mammals ect) at 15 to 20 meters? or would the standard 12 times zoom be suitable?

[mh68]

Depends on the size of the subject really...

There are 2 ways of getting more "reach" with the fz50, the first being to use the EZ mode, which essentially crops the centre of the image by various amounts so the subject appears larger.Or, you can add a teleconverter lens which will give you more magnification. Both methods will give decent results.The most popular teleconverter lens for the fz50 is the Olympus Tcon-17 which has 55mm threads so will attach straight onto front of the fz50`s lens.You can find them online for around £50 or so.
To get maximum reach you could combine the teleconverter and the cameras EZ mode but a tripod would be needed a lot of the time to combat excessive camera shake at such high magnifications and image quality will be slightly lower.It would prove useful for getting long range shots that you wouldnt have been able to get otherwise though.

Mark H

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by arran256

would i need another lens for taking general wildlife shots (birds?mammals ect) at 15 to 20 meters? or would the standard 12 times zoom be suitable?

I agree with mh68 - but just to clarify from your question - the FZ50 is a fixed lens camera not a dslr so you cant change the lens - but you can , as mark suggests, screw addaptors onto the filter thread to give you more reach.

as regards wildlife the best thing is to develop your feild craft to get as close as possible (within reason as the welfare of the subject always comes first) thus enabling you to get to a range where a 12x zoom will do the biz

[mh68]

Originally Posted by eeyore

as regards wildlife the best thing is to develop your feild craft to get as close as possible (within reason as the welfare of the subject always comes first) thus enabling you to get to a range where a 12x zoom will do the biz

Yep totally agree with that. Recently I`ve seen 2 FZ shots, one a shot of a gull in flight, and the other of a white squirrel in the states, which are as good as any DSLR pics i`ve seen..BUT...to get quality like that from the small sensor of a bridge camera like an FZ you have to get fairly close.They dont pick up distant detail as well as DSLR setups, but by understanding the cameras limitations and working around them, the FZ cameras are capable of some excellent images.

Mark H

[arran256]

cheers for the replys. ive been searching through the forum trying to get as much info as i can on the cameras capabilities before i part with my cash. it sounds like this is a good choice for non dslr (which is out of my price range once different lenses are added). has the fz30 been discontinued now?