![]() ![]() ![]() So I decided to go for the FZ300 and rely on mostly extended optical zoom. Sure you can mostly achieve the same thing by cropping in post production, but I find that being able to frame the shot as you intend to use it helps quite a bit. My recent Olympus cameras have had a 2x digital zoom feature that when used, gives decent results to extend the focal length (better than some other digital zooms I've seen). And then I read about the FZ300 having extended optical zoom (page 201) and intelligent zoom (page 202) in addition to the normal digital zoom (page 203). I was looking at the Nikon long range triplets (B500, B700, P900), the old Olympus SP100EE, the FZ80, along with brief looks at the Canon and Fuji offerings.Īs I kept reading about the FZ80, the FZ300 kept coming up as being better than the FZ80 due to having a f/2.8 lens through out the zoom range, which can minimize the diffraction effect that the other super-zoom cameras have when shooting f/6.x at the long end. Originally, the FZ300 wasn't on my list, due to it topping out at 600mm equivalent focal length (my micro 4/3rds cameras top out there). Sure there are times when you want all of the extra gear, and there are times (particularly towards the end of the vacation) when you want to downsize the weight. We had gone before in 2011, and in looking over the wildlife pictures, I was noticing how often I was cropping to achieve more zoom.Īlso for a vacation camera, it is useful to just have one camera than multiple camera bodies and lenses. Yes.but there is sharpening going on.and I never liked the results of the halos it sometimes gives.I have a trip to West Palm Beach in Florida coming up, and I felt the need for more zoom range. From what I read somewhere (can't locate source, sorry), the iZoom is processed in-camera using intelligent Resolution, so there's much less image degradation than simple DZ. I have been using this feature for almost 10 years now, with various FZ's. Thats why EZ zoom is crops, but does no interpolation.resolution stays at fixed lower setting. In PP, you just crop.without the degredating interpolation, scaling up the resolution. But, it's not immediately obvious to me why that produces a better result than simple digital zoom at the same magnification.ĭigital zoom is a simple sensor crop, same as if you'd cropped in PP to artificially 'zoom' a portion of your imageĪctually Digital zoom does interpolates the resolution back up to the original resolution. Image noise in the original file can be smoothed out in a few different ways, but in handling noise, we're probably best off using a good after-market noise reduction program, rather than relying on in-camera noise reduction or other software (or hardware) manipulations. Detail not captured in the original RAW file can never be manufactured. To me, the important part of this is that none of these non-optical "zooms" will add detail. But I have never thought that the detail and noise were improved, when compared to a cropped and edited RAW file, providing the images are displayed at the same size. One benefit of the cropped sensor approach is that I can frame the subject better, and I can sometimes get a more accurate exposure. But for best results, I've never found anything better than a carefully cropped and processed RAW file. This suggests that the i.ZOOM scaling up is the source of the enlarged noise that Graham doesn't like - but it is perhaps somewhat better than EZoom when used in the lower half of its addtional range extension.įor small prints, web displays, cell phone displays, and for images which don't rely on rendition of fine detail (buildings, distant landscapes, some portraits) cropped sensors and software generated fixes can be perfectly fine. ![]() ![]() "Now let's look at the case of I.Zoom or Panasonic's "intelligent zoom feature" In this mode of operation the image dimensions always remain the same 4000 x 3000, 3264 x 2448, 2048 x1536 etc for the 12M, 8M and 5M file sizes however in this mode the magnification is achieved by cropping into the image from the sensor and then re-sizing it to the original dimensions in software." How many of Panasonic's features truly work remain a mystery, so we're left to do as Graham has done and test them to see what they do rather than peeling back into how they do it. I sent him an email a couple of weeks ago but got no reply. It tells why and when to use is but doesn't really explain the mechanics of what's done in the camera. Yes, I've watched that video a couple of times. ![]()
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