Digital Camera Fiend - A Camera Review

Taken with a Panasonic DMC FZ20 digital camera.

Bicycles are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. I love their gentle geometry. There’s something nostalgic about a bicycle as well, whether it’s a beaten-up vintage model resting on an urban street corner, or my personal favorite…a shiny new beach cruiser.

Well-placed cruiser bikes, like the several as we see in the top photo, can make a photo come alive.

It’s amazing how quickly the king of the mountain can become also-rans in the digital camera industry.

Two and a half years ago, Panasonic came out with the DMC-FZ20. At the time, it was the company’s flagship model for super-zoom cameras, boasting a 12x optical range and five megapixel resoltuion. It was the closest a compact digital camera had ever come to resembling a digital SLR camera.

Today, many compact cameras are mimicking the functionality of DSLRs. And if you still have the FZ20, be happy…it’s still a solid camera. It has a Leica branded DC vario-Elmarit zoom lens with an impressive optical image stabilization technology.

The stabilization allows you to hand-hold at the 12x end of the zoom range at speeds as low as 1/30th of a second.

Steves digicams called the FZ20 “incredibly responsive,” noting that it captures consecutive shots nearly as quick as a motor-driven film camera. The MEGA BURST feature enables consecutive rapid-fire shooting at three frame per second.

Of course, technology has passed the FZ20 by in other regards. Its use is basically restricted to ISO 200–anything else is very noisy.

But as DP Review summed up in a review when the camera first came out at the end of 2004, the Panasonic FZ20 is highly recommended and was worth its $500 price tag at the time.

“A small price to pay for such an impressive camera,” the reviewer stated.