Jock Elliott
Hall of Famer
- Location
- Troy, NY
If so, how was it?
Cheers, Jock
Cheers, Jock
Yup, I've had 2. Sadly, both fell victim to poor QC and I had to return them.
In short, image quality was OK, IMHO the best superzoom image quality comes from the Canon SX50. But the Fuji handles much nicer, feels more solid and the EVF is worlds better.
I had one, but only for a couple of days. It felt awesome in hand. I like the controls and the output was about as good as I've seen from a small sensor. The direction of my 2 camera kit changed and I decided to go with a DSLR instead of a superzoom to cover all my focal lengths. I can't go quite as long and it's a LOT heavier, but that was my choice.
I don't have enough experience with it to recommend it or say stay away. Although hearing Chris' experience would definitely make me rule out a used one.
Jock, have you considered a m4/3 camera + VF3 + Panny 100-300 lens? That would be 600mm equivalent, and even cropped by 50% it might give a 1000mm/1200mm superzoom a run for it's money. More expensive, but could still be done for under $1000. That's the route I'm going to take, as finances allow.
I'm in the middle of this decision-making process as well. Thinking about the Canon SX50 and also the Nikon P510. The Nikon is cheap and gets good reviews. Biggest nit is it doesn't do raw, which I really don't care about so much. Has anyone here shot with the P510?
And I'm weighing that against an Olympus 75-300. I already have an E-M5, so the lens sort of make sense. But I like the convenience and versatility of a superzoom and I'm not sure about cropping to make the 75-300 "equivalent" to the Canon or Nikon.
A used 75-300 is about $100 more than a refurbed P510.
Decisions, decisions...
Demiro,
Just to screw up your decision making process even more, I just heard from Panasonic product support: "the DMW-LT55 55mm Tele Conversion Lens work with all the Panasonic cameras in the FZ series." It's telephoto conversion lens for Panasonic ultra-zoom camera. 1.7x magnification level.
If I have the math right, it would turn the FZ150 or FZ200 into a 1000mm . . .
I really like the FZ150 (if you search on my posts, you'll see some results), and it has a lever on the side of the lens that can be used for manual focus (or zoom, but you already have a zoom lever next to the shutter button), so you have separate easy to use controls for zoom and manual focus (which is handy when you want to focus on something behind the foliage).
Cheers, Jock
I'm in the middle of this decision-making process as well. Thinking about the Canon SX50 and also the Nikon P510. The Nikon is cheap and gets good reviews. Biggest nit is it doesn't do raw, which I really don't care about so much. Has anyone here shot with the P510?
And I'm weighing that against an Olympus 75-300. I already have an E-M5, so the lens sort of make sense. But I like the convenience and versatility of a superzoom and I'm not sure about cropping to make the 75-300 "equivalent" to the Canon or Nikon.
A used 75-300 is about $100 more than a refurbed P510.
Decisions, decisions...
Demiro,
Just to screw up your decision making process even more, I just heard from Panasonic product support: "the DMW-LT55 55mm Tele Conversion Lens work with all the Panasonic cameras in the FZ series." It's telephoto conversion lens for Panasonic ultra-zoom camera. 1.7x magnification level.
If I have the math right, it would turn the FZ150 or FZ200 into a 1000mm . . .
I really like the FZ150 (if you search on my posts, you'll see some results), and it has a lever on the side of the lens that can be used for manual focus (or zoom, but you already have a zoom lever next to the shutter button), so you have separate easy to use controls for zoom and manual focus (which is handy when you want to focus on something behind the foliage).
Cheers, Jock
I dont know if this helps, but I had a P500 and it was *awful*. The viewfinder was woeful, the jpgs were woeful and i ended up selling it. I've steered well clear of Nikon Superzooms ever since. DO consider the NIkon 1 System, which is excellent. The reach isnt as great as the superzooms, but its eminently croppable. You can see plenty of examples in the Nikon 1 forum
The Panny 100-300 is faster and gets better reviews than the Oly 75-300. Remember, due to the m4/3 "crop factor", that 300mm lens offers a 600mm field of view, even if you cropped to match the Canon SX50's 1200mm, you'd still have (possibly higher quality) 8MP to work with.
Sometimes the biggest challenge when shooting distant wildlife is atmospheric distortion.
The Canon SX50 does have an interesting feature for wildlife photogs: when setting your Auto-ISO, you can specify how aggressively the camera ramps up the ISO. It's been a few months so I don't remember the precise terminology, but there's something like a low/standard/high setting. As an example, if you are shooting in bright light, the camera might choose to keep the shutter at at least 1/250s in the "standard" setting. That's fine for Canon's excellent OIS, but may not be fast enough to freeze motion. If you switch the auto-ISO "aggressiveness" setting (sorry, I don't remember the term Canon uses) to "high", the minimum shutter speed might be 1/500s. Pretty cool, IMO.