Anyone have Pana FZ20? Also, Sandisk SD question. (1 Viewer)

[Brian Price]

I'm thinking about buying the Panasonic FZ20. It seems like a solid choice. Anybody have experience with it and could provide me with an opinion?

Also, I was looking at buying a 1gb Extreme III Sandisk SD card. Based on specs it looks like it has the fastest transfer rate of any SD card. Opinions? Thanks.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

I picked up the FZ20 a couple of months ago and took it to the HTF national meet. I don't have any pics online right now, but they may be getting the meet pics restored soon.

I absolutely love this camera. It has zillions of features and it's very easy to use. It works great with everything on auto or on manual. It's a little bigger than many of its competitors, but it feels really solid in my hands.

I kept my old Canon A-1 SLR, but after a couple of months with the FZ20, I don't know that I'll ever use the A-1 (which I've had for over 15 years) again. Last night when I got home, there was an *enormous* moth in my garage, and I quickly grabbed the cam and played around with various settings shooting it. That wouldn't have happened with the A-1.

I started a thread here in September called something like "Taking the Plunge: Pocket vs. Prosumer vs. DSLR." Do a search on it and you'll find more info.

I can't comment on the SanDisk card. I have a 512 MB KingMax, which has worked fine so far.

 

[Aaron Silverman]

www.dpreview.com finally put up their full review of the FZ20 with sample images. Their reviews are very in-depth.

 

[Wes]

Wow, they gave it a great review!

I have had mine for several months now and could not be happier. I am really impressed with the speed of the exposure. I have a 60x 512 card and it is fast. I picked up my older 2.1mp Nikon a few weeks ago, after shooting (missing several shots because of slow writing speeds) I gave it to my mother and am happy to be using my Panny again.

Here is a photo I shot a couple months ago!
http://images4.fotopic.net/?iid=y55kbk&outx=600&oq=0

Wes

 

[ScottHH]

This guy tests CF cards for speed. The only camera I see him having tested SD cards on are the Canon 1D and 1Ds. Your 1gb Extreme III Sandisk SD card was the fastest card he tested on the 1Ds.

Brian, are you concerned about shutter lag? Or the ability to empty the buffer while in burst mode? Wes is talking about lag between pressing the shutter release and taking a picture. With his mom's camera no matter how fast a memory card you use, it's still going to take a while to shoot the picture. My Mom has a Canon G3, and the shutter lag is annoying to me, because I'm used to a dSLR. Where the fast card is useful is when you fill the buffer. For example. I can pretty instantaneously shoot of 3 raw images. But then I need to wait for the buffer to write to the card before I can shoot again.

The specs on that Panasonic are great.
5 megapixel
36 - 432mm (equiv.) F2.8, 12x Leica Zoom Lens
optical image stabilisation

My only gripe would be with such a big zoom, why only go to 36mm. That's not wide enough for me. I really like my 24mm on 35mm.