Hi guys welcome back of the channel and this first video in the series about the
FZ82 Panasonic bridge camera. Everyone loves holidays, it's that special time,
we get to experience something new whether it's new food, new cultures, new places and most of
all its time spent with the people we really love. Therefore being able to document those memories is
very important to everyone not just photographers. With this series of videos I'm going to say if
this is the right camera for you, if you're a beginner are you just looking to downsize from
a DSLR please click and subscribe the channel and you'll get the full series of videos.
So first a bit of background about the Panasonic FZ82. The FZ82 is a medium to low price bridge
camera from Panasonic, positioned under the price of the average entry level DSLR it offers
photographers a step up from their compact camera or mobile device, packing in 18.1
megapixels and a 60x optical zoom, the option of 4k video on paper at least the camera looks
very capable camera indeed. For the most part one of the reasons people have a camera is to
document their troubles family holidays so for the first part of this series we'll start there.
One advantage of a fixed lens camera the compact camera or bridge camera is the fact that they
weigh much less than the DSLR. In addition you won't be needing any of those heavy additional
lenses as the FZ82 comes with a lens that is bought a wide-angle at 20 millimetres up to a
1200 millimetre equivalent at full zoom. With the majority of holiday destinations being at
the sun-drenched variety good, clean daytime shots taken with this camera easy to achieve.
I do recommend however that new users do try and get off the auto settings as soon as possible with
this camera. Users of DSLR and other bridge cameras will recognize the M,S,A modes on
the dial, they are manual, shutter priority and aperture priority. P mode is programmable auto
mode where you can take some control back from the camera and allowing the camera to you look after
things like the shutter and aperture whilst you can control the white balance and the ISO. you can
adjust it for for example for electric lighting or cloudy days what have you, and it should give
you some better understanding of how the camera works and how to adjust to get the best quality
images. But enough of that let's get back to why this camera makes a good travel camera. The first
point about why the FZ82 is great travel camera is the lens whatever your requirements the lens
on the FZ82 should have you covered. At 20mm a is it's a fantastic wide-angle and that should get
great shots of holiday vistas and also it's great for large groups of people. That long zoom range
is also great for capturing the local wildlife, it's also great for family trips to the zoo
where you might want to be able to capture those close-up shots without actually having to get too
close to the animals themselves. Should you be a plane spotter then this camera is also quite good,
I've got some quite good shots in Fuerteventura where the planes were coming in to land and while
there would have been tiny dots on a mobile phone, the FZ82 lens could pull them right in. On the
beach you'll find that this camera is great for capturing water sport activities such as jet ski,
surfers, sailing boats, all that type of thing and I tend oh shoot in shutter priority on the
burst mode, so you can guarantee pretty much you can capture the motion and the shots but you want.
However you can actually use 4kphoto which is basically the camera takes a section of video and
you can then afterwards select which particular individual stills you want the take from that
section of video. Which is good, quite handy, it does lower the resolution slightly. Generally the
FZ82 is a good all-round camera which makes a reasonable stab at those wanting to replace the
DSLR in order to save weight, additionally if you are a mobile phone user and you're wanting
to capture more than you currently can then this camera is quite a good option for you.
So we've talked about what the benefits are the FZ82 was a travel camera so what are the
negatives? Well the first one I can think of the mains charger cable provided with the camera is a
bit poor in my opinion. Basically you have to plug the camera into the wall to charge it and I don't
think that's really how a proper camera should be working if you used to a mobile phone obviously
that's gonna make perfect sense because it's exactly what you do with your phone. However
if you've come down from the DSLR you're gonna think well this is not what I'd normally do I'd
normally leave my spare battery and the charger and take my camera out and then when I came home
I would swap them over again and I'd be good to go straight away or I would charge up two batteries
and take them out with me and yeah it's not a great option. So what I did straight away was
to look at an alternative and luckily there are several places you can buy a third-party charger
with usually with one or two spare batteries so it means you've always got a back up with you,
in your camera bag coming in there and you've also got two spare battery supply so it doesn't
matter where you go, you know usually able to take your camera not worry about having
to charge it up anyway you where you go. My second concern with the FZ82 is that of
the low-light performance. At the heart of the FZ82 is a typical 1/ 2.3" cmos sensor,
most bridge cameras have this type of sensor in them effectively that's looking at crop factor
of 5.6 over a full-frame sensor so it's quite a drastic crop. This does help keep the size of
the camera down yes the smaller the sensor is the smaller the lens needs to be. If I can give you
an example an equivalent 1200 millimetre lens on a full frame camera would be approximately
16,500 grams in weight and 83cm in a length and that was the Canon EF 1200 f5.6 45 M lens. So you
can see why having a small sensor is advantageous. The downside in that is that the performance of
the camera drops in a low light if you are out shooting at night then you'll notice that the
automatic modes and the camera will compensate by increasing the ISO settings this changes the
sensitivity of the sensor but in by doing that it also creates more noise in the images. The
third and final point about the FZ82 which I'm not so keen on is that the optical viewfinder.
I do find it quite difficult to use partly because I'm a spectacle wearer but also because it isn't
quite up to scratch as far as I'm concerned and certainly the more mechanical view finder on my
DSLR cameras are superior. That said if you're a phone user then more often than not you're
probably going to be using the screen on the back of the camera and that's a touch screen which is
great and helps you navigate through all the menus and also you can use it to pinpoint your focus and
things like that so whilst the viewfinder is not great the screen on the back this is quite good.
So to sum up then is the FZ82 a good travel camera? Well I think so and certainly every
time I go on holiday now that's the camera I take and I don't take the dslr's and several
lenses and it saves me a fortune in weight in my hand luggage. So yes it's a capable camera
it does really well in bright sunshine so if you've gone on nice sunny holiday this camera
will do you proud and the zoom lens, fantastic I mean, I've taken shots at the various wildlife
parks have been too and come away with great shots, I've also taking shots which I'm really
really happy with of local wildlife while I'm out there and again it'll do quite a good job
at the beach or you know on day trips out, the type of thing that you do one when you're abroad
on holiday and also family photos. So join me in the next episode if you hit the subscribe
button and the bell you'll get notifications when I upload next video that's gonna be I think about
wildlife photography. I'm gonna show you some of the shots I've taken on holidays as well as
in this country and you can compare and see how the fz82 copes with the less favourable light we
get in this country. It's often quite dull and yes it does have an effect on this camera and
I suggest you take that into consideration before you purchase one. Thanks for watching bye for now.