Panasonic FZ80 Review

 Last year I shot and reviewed 52 cameras in one year (one every week).  It was a monumental task and now I've mostly been using this Blog to ramble about my thoughts about Photography in general and camera technology in general. 

I do enjoy doing these camera reviews and since there are far far more then 52 digital cameras ever made (think more along the lines of tens of thousands; far more then I could ever hope to review) and add to that there are some digital cameras so incredibly rare that they are priced well out of the funds I have to dedicate to my digital camera collecting hobby.

The camera I am going to review today is neither Old nor Rare.  It does mark the swansong era of the late 2010's with the end of the Bridge Camera; an odd niche camera for most to use in the current age as it doesn't have detachable lenses nor can it fit into a pocket.  

Bridge Cameras often try to be "prosumer" and offer some of the features found on higher end DSLR and MICL cameras, but at the price of having lower end pocket camera responsiveness and handling which I may delve into later as I could easily do a follow-up article just about the concept of bridge cameras and how they evolved and eventually met their demise.

I could ramble on and on about the history and evolution of the Bridge Cam; so that will likely be done in a seperate post. For context purposes we'll still identify where bridge cameras, the FZ80 in particular excel and where they fall short during the review.

So now, lets dig into the camera in this review, a late model Bridge Camera the Panasonic FZ80.

Before I get into the review I should preface this by this camera being currently on loan to me by a local fellow Digicam collector and enthusiast (who I have parted ways with several cameras with and also acquired several from). 

It's a neat camera but isn't one that I am currently oogling over and feel I need to find one for myself to keep at the price-point they currently sell for, and I'll discuss why later in the review.

Released in 2017 the Panasonic FZ80 was one of the last Bridge Cameras ever made alongside the FZ2500 and the Nikon P1000 a year later.  These cameras are new enough you can still buy them brand new in a box from retailers; which pushes the resale value for a used one higher then I'd want to pay for one at the moment.

It has a fairly standard 1/2.3" 18mp CMOS sensor, as most modern bridge cameras use a small sensor like this for the crop factor to get a superior optical zoom; allowing Panasonic to take a 200mm or so optical focal length zoom lens and translate it into "1200mm equivalent" with the small sensor that provides a 5-6x crop factor.

Much like the Nikon P1000 it uses this sensor along with a fixed super-zoom range zoom lens to give users a larger amount of Optical zoom then their phone or even in many cases DSLR would have without lugging around a 5lb lens. This was the one redeeming and selling point for these late model bridge cameras: you could zoom in to your hearts content and capture things at a distance in a lightweight goes everywhere package.

There are a few exceptions like the RX10 and Panasonic FS2500 which offer a 1" sensor instead; but the last real niche for the bridge cams from Fuji, Nikon and Panasonic into the 2010s was to pack as much optical zoom as possible into a relatively compact and lightweight camera with a fixed lens that anyone could easily use.

Turning the camera on there is a short but not terrible startup delay.  It's about in line with what I'd expect from a pocket camera; and fast enough I can still do hipshots in Street Photography without fully missing the moment.  

This delay is more noticeable when you try and do Nature photography. This tends to be the whole package of taking a photo however that is overall slower that will make you miss fleeting moments, from turning the camera on, to waiting till the optical zoom extends, and then dealing with a fairly sluggish AutoFocus system lock onto the subject.  

The Panasonic FZ80 is defiantly more responsive and quicker overall then many pocket cameras; but this still leaves it slow enough you can defiantly tell a huge difference after you've been shooting a DSLR or MICL camera.

Controls on the FZ80 are fairly basic.  It was definitely engineered with the casual shooter in mind.  It does have a single function wheel which you click in to toggle function of such as using exposure compensation vs holding another button down and spinning the wheel such as with entry level Mirrorless and DSLR cameras.  It's a design I don't mind but did find confusing as my brain was always trying to hold down the nearby AF switch FN button and spin the wheel to adjust shutter speed in Manual or exposure comp in AV, SV and P modes.

The Panasonic FZ80 does have three programmable FN buttons which is actually a lot more then most consumer bridge cameras offer: two on the top and one on the back which doubles as the trash button.

The lens on the FZ80 is remarkably sharp and low distortion for the entire focal length; but with a tiny image sensor it does not show distortions and imperfections in the glass as much.  It's a huge improvement in optics over any smartphone lens and a slight jump from what is offered in a lot of point and shoot cameras. It does have some Bokeh smudging and Chromatic Aberration (which you can see in the photo of the owl later), but overall the actual optics of this camera are pretty solid.

I did manage to get some pretty nice photos off of it so far, a few I will share SOOC and two edited pics which I will show at the end when I get into RAW editing and overall tldr on my thoughts.  I really haven't tried using this in anything outside of bright outdoor lighting; but since I know from past experience this is where all tiny sensor (smaller then 1") will fall apart, I felt it wasn't useful to add that in the review and just cover examples and instances when I was able to keep it under ISO 400.

One of the main thing the FZ80 lacks (which is sadly very common in bridge cameras) is a control wheel around the lens element.  This feature is standard on any focus-by-wire MICL lens (albeit not able to do anything other then manual focus in this case with a few exceptions namely Canon).  

The lens control wheel in premium pocket cameras such as the Olympus XZ-1, Canon Powershot S90, Panasonic ZS100 and ZS50 are really nice to have and make fine-tune MF on a subject a lot easier to do.  It is the one major feature that would likely sell me on bridge cameras like the FZ80 more if more modern bridge cameras had this feature even if it could only be used when the camera was in MF mode.

In terms of Optical Zoom IE the big selling point to this camera; what you gain from this camera over a superzoom pocket camera like the Panasonic ZS50 or Canon SX720 isn't nearly as much as the "numbers on the camera" leads you to believe, which is a big part of the reason it isn't higher on my list to purchase.  For an explanation of why that extra "30x" more zoom is really deceiving I've got some examples.

First off here is the lens at the widest setting which Panasonic states as 20mm FF Equivalent (but I feel like is actually more like 24mm; still fairly wide for a fixed lens camera)

Zooming into 30x which is where the Panasonic ZS50 tops out you can see a huge difference, and up until this point every little tap of the zoom lever has a noticeable effect:

When you push past this halfway point the optical zoom seems to "slow down" as it were, and holding the lever all the way to the end at 1200mm makes it feel like you really only got an extra 3x zoom out of the lens vs the 30x additional you were expecting.  

One would think that being at 60x zoom I could clearly read how much gas is per gallon on that pump there right?  Well...  that isn't the case. Here is all the more zoom you get from the pocketable ZS50 to this not so pocketable bridge camera, not that much at all.

Had I not already had something like a ZS50; something like the Panasonic FZ80 would be a lot more appealing.  Ultimately the ZS50 has similar output, low light performance, dynamic range and sharpness to the ZS50 and lacks the second programmable control wheel (that the FZ80 lacks) around the lens, and most importantly I can throw the ZS50 hard case and all in my jacket pocket.  

The extra 6mp on the sensor (12mp on the ZS50 and 18 on the FZ80) likewise does not get me as much real-estate as one would think either; and if I felt this resolution bump was what was holding me back I'd rather just upgrade the ZS50 to the ZS70 which jumps to a 20mp sensor in the same compact form factor.

In addition the size of a bridge cam like the FZ80 means needing to carry a small bag when not in use and while its lighter and more discreet then my mirrorless cameras still it fits a niche I don't often find myself needing and  I own older bridge cameras should the urge to shoot a bridge camera arise such as the Sony F828.

Overall the FZ80 hasn't been an experience that makes me feel the desire to go out and buy one of my own, especially as they still sell for over $300 Used.  For 1/3 of that price at around $100 I can get a used DSLR or older Mirrorless camera that is a lot more responsive with better image quality and superior analog controls. If the camera was under $50 sure I'd still think it was worth that to have one in my collection but I don't see this happening any time soon. And for that $300 I could upgrade my ZS50 to the ZS70 or just about buy a used ZS100.  Seriously, IMHO the ZS100 would be a much better use of that money.

So while the Panasonic FZ80 may not be a great fit for me and I don't feel any specific attachment to it especially after the realization that the "Double amount of Optical Zoom" in reality is only about 10% more; the Panasonic FZ80 still gets really nice photos even Straight Out of Camera. Add the fact that it can shoot RAW (which is something I like about Panasonic in their cameras over Canon on any pocket or bridge camera they released after around 2010) makes it have a fairly solid dynamic range potential which I do have an example I will share later.  For now lets start with the Straight out of Camera un-edited photos I took doing Street Photography at a small town in WI the other day:

Nice colors, fairly accurate exposure metering (even with subjects like the robin that were in shadows which is pretty impressive), and plenty sharp.  There really isn't a lot to say bad about the SOOC results with this camera. Someone who knew nothing about photography could easily take this out, zoom and shoot and have photos that are as good or better then what their phone could take with a reach much longer then what the limited lens on their smartphone couldn't achieve.

The real hidden strength of course is that the FZ80 can shoot RAW.  This is a real full Camera Raw file with all the information included and not the less featured "DNG" format that the Pentax Q10 and various Smartphones can shoot at along with "hacked" Canon Powershots using the CHDK utility.  I have two examples of edited RAWs from this camera, one which I can compare to the original image:

And the final image after some fairly heavy tweaks in LightRoom:

To end the review, here is one more photo on a subject that pushes the camera's limits.  This was taken at the full 1200mm of an Owl under very dark overcast skies.  If I was using my Panasonic G9 and $700 100-400 zoom lens I still would have had challenges with this shot.  

The original which I do not have handy was 1.5 stops underexposed with severe chromatic aberration (thanks to tree branches against a white sky, which you can still see some of- it was way worse before editing). I think it cleaned up pretty well and while it may not be something you would see on the cover of National Geographic but most people would be more then happy with a photo like this: