Panasonic FZ1000 Camera of the Year 2014

The silly season  is almost upon us. At this time of year many photo websites and blogs like this one post some kind of  “camera of the year” award.

In previous years I have not thought any single product was sufficiently noteworthy to merit an award. I have instead put the view that  Micro Four Thirds was the most promising system available  and I still believe this.

But I am just one member of a substantial cohort of camera users who really hate changing lenses.  

I have for many years lived in the hope that some clever maker would produce a convincing all purpose, do everything mega zoom camera which would offer very good picture quality with  access a full range of focal lengths without having to change lenses.

Several manufacturers have been improving their superzoom offerings in the last few years.

Panasonic’s FZ200 looks appealing on paper. I bought one and found its picture quality and performance wanting.

The Sony RX10 comes close to meeting my requirements. But its zoom range is a bit limiting and I have several concerns with performance and ergonomics.

I bought a Panasonic FZ1000 as soon as it became available in Australia and soon sold all my interchangeable lens camera gear, with no regrets then or now.

Here is a quick summary  of the FZ1000:

Specifications and Features 

* All in one camera requiring no accessories beyond the 62mm protect filter on the lens and one or two spare batteries.

* Very good quality 16x zoom lens ranging from E25mm to E400mm focal length.

* Built in high quality EVF, fully articulated monitor, flash unit and full complement of controls for the expert user but also with fully automatic operation for snapshooters.

* The camera is very versatile.  It works well for a wide range of purposes and settings; landscape, architecture, candid, street, documentary, wide angle, telephoto, macro, sport/action, wildlife………the list goes on.

* As a bonus it does 4K video straight out of the box without the usual handcart full of accessories required for decent quality video. Users have reported however that an external microphone is desirable.

Picture quality

* Excellent at low to mid ISO settings.

* Usable for most purposes at high ISO settings.

Performance

* Very fast, accurate operation, autofocus and continuous shooting.

* Very responsive camera.

Ergonomics

Setup, Prepare and Review Phase actions are all carried out very efficiently.

In Capture Phase, Holding, Viewing and Operating are all efficient, effective and user friendly.

Limitations,  and some workarounds:

* No ultra wide focal length.  For real estate and architectural photographers whose bread and butter is ultra wide angle interiors, the FZ1000 will not suit. For occasional situations however either the automated sweep panorama function or stitch panorama can be used.

* No ultra  long focal length. Workarounds include using one of the JPG only e- Zoom functions, or cropping RAW capture.   

Actually I think there is a substantial niche for a dedicated wildlife/sport/action/bird camera with a smaller sensor than the FZ1000 allowing a lens of longer effective focal length and wider aperture. This camera would not try to offer the wide angle end of the focal length range, but would concentrate on the long end with fast AF, big buffer and fast operation.

* Luminance noise at high ISO settings. This is not the first camera I would select for indoor sport/action photography. I have used it however for indoor junior basketball and produced quite decent results. 

I think that some camera users who post on internet sites have gotten themselves overly exercised about luminance noise in photographs. Some cameras these days exhibit almost no noise up to extreme ISO settings.  I suspect this has given rise to expectations that all cameras will have this capability. This is both unrealistic and un-necessary. High ISO photos from the FZ1000 print very well even at large sizes.

* Limited buffer for RAW capture. The workaround is to use JPG capture for sport/action. A bigger buffer and faster clearing would be nice however.

* The small sensor (compared to full frame) means that depth of focus at any lens aperture is greater than that found in a full frame photo. This can be a benefit for the documentary style photographer who wants everything in frame to be sharp but a disadvantage for the sport/action worker who wants the background to be smoothly out of focus. I guess you can’t have everything.

Summary

I regard the FZ1000 as a game changing product. It comes very close to making entry to mid level DSLRs and Mirrorless ILCs redundant.

With 2 spare batteries, spare memory cards and  microfiber cloth it fits into a Lowe Pro Apex 110 AW bag and weighs just 1270 grams including the bag.  

In my house, it replaced a Panasonic GH4 with high grade wide, mid and long zooms, a kit which was much more bulky, heavy and 5x as expensive as the FZ1000.