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My Lumix DMC-FZ30

The Lumix DMC-FZ30 was released around 2005. I got it as a hand-me-down from a family member. At the time I wasn't really excited about it. To be honest, I really wanted a video camera so I could become the next big YouTube star. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) that didn't happen. I have really come to like this camera, though.

I'm not about to start listing pages of technical stats. If you want to read a very in-depth review of this camera, DP Review has a great one. In fact, they have great reviews for almost any digital camera.
Check out their review here if you want to know more.

For now, I'll just go over my personal feelings about this camera.

WHAT I LIKE:
-The FZ30 has many of the buttons and controls of an actual DSLR. Aperture and exposure can be controlled with dedicated dials on the front and back. It's hefty, and feels really good to hold and shoot with.
-It has a built-in digital viewfinder. This is good because you don't need to use the hot shoe for an attachable viewfinder (which you end up losing one day!!)
-The lens is quite nice (as far as a noob like me can tell.) It's got a good zoom (35-420mm) which will let you do anything from portraits to taking paparazzi photos of that famous actor in the cafe.
    *To be technical, since this ins't a full frame sensor, there is a crop factor of about 1.5x. If that matters to you.
-There are mechanical zoom and focus rings. This makes it easy and fun to get a good shot in manual focus mode.
ƒ/3.61/6022.6mmISO200


WHAT I DON'T LIKE:
-The lens can't be changed. Even thought it's a zoom lens, it won't let you experiment with different, high quality lenses.
-Since this is an older camera, you can only use up to 2GB memory cards. These are actually getting harder to find. If shooting in raw, the card will fill up at around 80 photos. (Good if you want to practice taking thoughtful shots. Not so good if you just want one card for a vacation or event.)
-It's an 8mpx camera, so getting extreme detail, especially in low light, can be a challenge. Also, the ISO only goes up to 400 (which resulted in very grainy images for me) so it's quite a bad low-light camera.

ƒ/3.21/412.2mmISO200
Overall, I think the DMC-FZ30 is awesome. For an older, fixed-lens camera, it works great, and I'm really glad that I have it now. It's a lot of fun to practice with, since all the controls are so easy to get to. You can adjust aperture and exposure with dedicated dials. Like I said, there's not much room to adjust ISO on this, so just pretend it's a film camera and stick with 100 or 400 film, and try to shoot in good lighting conditions or with a flash. At the end of the day, though, you can get some really nice pictures with this camera.

Some more images shot with this camera.

ƒ/3.61/6023.8mmISO200

ƒ/2.81/137.5mmISO80

ƒ/3.61/1552.8mmISO100

ƒ/3.61/8029.6mmISO100

ƒ/4.51/12518.9mmISO200

ƒ/3.61/6069.2mmISO200



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