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The Panasonic FZ150 is a super zoom camera with a 24 to 600mm lens and is the new flagship of Panasonic’s bridge cameras. The 12MP camera uses a swivel monitor for comfortable shooting and offers professional Full HD video capabilities.

TIPA Camera Test Online: Panasonic FZ150

By TIPA

Cameras

08 December 2011 12:00

The Panasonic FZ150 is a super zoom camera with a 24 to 600mm lens and is the new flagship of Panasonic’s bridge cameras. The 12MP camera uses a swivel monitor for comfortable shooting and offers professional Full HD video capabilities.


Comments on Handling

The Panasonic is a super zoom bridge camera with a 12 MP sensor and a 24x zoom lens. The design of the body is oriented on classical SLR systems, but the camera has no interchangeable lens system. It offers a zoom lens with a wide angle setting of 25mm and an extreme telephoto setting of 600 mm (35mm film equivalent). The FZ150 uses Panasonic’s newest version of the O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) which is called “Power O.I.S.”. It works very well and allows the photographer to shot images with longer shutter speeds than might otherwise be possible, even at 600mm. The image stabilizer also works when the camera shoots video (“Active Mode”): It records Full HD video with 1920 x 1080 pixels and can shoot in 50p mode with high bit rates because it supplies the new AVCHD 2.0 standard.

The SLR-like body design allows comfortable shooting with the FZ150. The large grip on the right side offers comfortable handling, the shutter release button and the zoom rocker switch fit perfectly for easy operation. The camera offers two additional switches on the left side of the lens system: The first switch is an additional zoom switch, the second switch allows for a very fast change of the focus modes: AF, AF including macro setting (down to 1 cm distance to the front lens) and manual focusing. The only thing that is missing are lens rings for manual zooming or manual focusing. Manual focusing is controlled with the setup dial on the back, which isn’t really comfortable. The camera will help to focus manually by zooming into the center of the electronic view finder image when starting to move the setup dial (and when manual focusing is activated by the switch on the left hand side).

The large LCD screen (3 inches) is fully articulated and can be flipped upwards, swiveled to the side, downwards and even to the front for shooting self portraits for example. The monitor offers a resolution of 460,000 RGB dots which is standard in this camera class. The camera offers an additional EVF, the user has to toggle manually between both systems by pressing the “EVF/LCD” switch.

The new FZ150 is very fast: It offers a serial mode with up to 12 frames per second (with locked AF system) and up to 5.5 frames per second with activated AF for every image. The internal buffer allows the user to take sequences with 12 images.

For setting up exposure modes the camera offers a large and handy mode dial on the top. The photographer can use standard exposure modes (P, S, A, M) and 24 scene modes in “SCN” setting. In addition it offers six of the most important scene modes on the mode dial (portrait shot, landscape shot for example) and including the “Creative Control” setting. This makes it possible to create images with a “Retro Look”, in “High Key Mode” or with creating of a “Miniature Effect”.


Test shots


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Even though the FZ150 boosts sharpness by an intense filtering system very fine details in this image (hairs, fabric structure) aren’t looking overdone. The skin-tones are fine, although some areas are a little too red.


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The standard test shot shows a good sharpness and detailed rich reproduction of even very fine details. The colours are very nice and realistic and the automatic white balance system works very well.


Comments on Image Quality

Colour:
The automatic white balance system causes a very, very light bluish touch in the standard test image. This is also visible in the result chart which also shows that brighter areas are shifted into the more yellow and green coloured area. This is also noticeable in the background of the portrait shot. In the portrait shot you will notice natural looking skin-tones and even a realistic reproduction of red colours, although there is a minor shift into the more yellow/green area. The saturation is a little lower than in images taken with most other cameras - 98.96 percent saturation is a low result for a compact camera system, but helps to create realistic looking nuances instead of very gaudy colours.

Sharpness:
The results of the resolution tests are very good for a super zoom camera. The FZ150 gains up to 2689 lines in picture height which would be a very good result even for an SLR system with a nominal resolution of 3000 lines in picture height. Nevertheless the contrast lines in our test images show that the camera boosts sharpness by an electronic filtering system which creates high overshot results and therefore some halos/double contours on contrast lines.

Noise:
Noise results are on a good level: The camera uses a 1/2.33” sensor with a moderate resolution of 12MP and creates clean images up to ISO 400. Due to the luminance noise factor (y-factor) which is on a high level even in lower ISO speed settings, you will notice some noise artifacts even in our standard test shots which are done with ISO 100 setting. Nevertheless these noise artifacts are very discreet because the more annoying color noise is very low and electronically filtered.

The camera showed a very good performance in the dynamic range tests: It gains a maximum of 10.9 f-stops, but dynamic range will decrease in higher ISO speed settings drastically.


Opinion

Pros:
     + Very handy and fast camera
     + Extreme zoom lens offers wide-angle and extreme tele-shots
     + Robust, rugged body
     + Internal flash system and additional accessory shoe
     + Raw images
     + Swivel monitor

Cons:
     - Manual focus controlled by setup dial


To download the PDF specifications sheet for the Panasonic FZ150, click HERE.


About TIPA

The Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) is a non-profit oranisation made up of a worldwide family of independent photo & imaging magazines with the most expert editors.

TIPA uses BetterNet GmbH in Heidelberg, Germany to perform routine digital camera tests based on an independent and objective testing method. The TIPA sponsored tests range from small compact cameras to popular DSLRs and even up to high-tech medium format models.

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