FZ50 or FZ18??

[ajancso]

I love the looks of the FZ50, but am tempted by the 18x zoom of the FZ18?
Any opinions? Would I be loosing much when comparing a 12x zoom with an 18x zoom? Can this be compensated by croping (thanks to the added pixels of the FZ50)?

[Paradox]

It's a bit misleading - but the zoom rating (12x and 18x) come from the difference between the widest angle and the longest telephoto.

FZ50 - 35-420mm
FZ18 - 28-504mm

So really you don't get as much extra as you'd expect in the way of zoom. If you might be taking wide angle shots (Such as of buildings or landscapes) you might appreciate the wider lens on the FZ18, and it does give you a bit more telephoto as well. But not that much in the scheme of things. And the FZ18 has a retractable lens by the looks of it, which in my opinion is just one more thing to go wrong. Really up to you though.

[TEMPA]

I just recently went through the same decision making process FZ50 or FZ18.

I ended up opting for the FZ50. Primarily for manual zoom ring, the size and look of the camera.

I had a Canon S3 (which I returned for credit after the retracting lens mechanism died twice in a 12 month period...) and as such I had grown sick and tired of overshooting the zoom using the fiddly zoom lever which is a similar set up to what the FZ18 has I believe.

Also the FZ50 has an Extended Zoom (EZ in Panasonic's terminology) function that allows you to use a zoom up to 21.4X if you drop the resolution down to 3MP. They claim it is extra optical zoom, not digital. I am not sure how it works but it works amazingly well and I have still managed to get great quality prints at 8" X 10" using this feature. Not sure this feature would be a deal sealer but it is handy to have the option.

As was pointed out by the post above mine, the zoom rating is a little confusing/misleading due to the wider lens on the FZ18.

Hope this helps. For what it's worth, I am a VERY happy FZ50 owner. Even though I have only owned it a week or so. It just keeps impressing me....

Cheers,

TEMPA

[Paradox]

I'm a happy FZ50 owner as well, but unlike you I was comparing against a Fuji not the FZ18. The extended zoom simply crops the image down. It's exactly the same effect as if you take a photo at full standard zoom at 10 megapixels, take it to photoshop, and do a 100% crop of it. And a 100% crop will never look as nice as the full image scaled down on a Compact, because of the noise from the small sensor. I tried some moon shots with the '50 at full extended zoom, and while this helped greatly with manual focusing issues, the noise on the end product was gross, even at ISO 100. So it's really your choice. But more optical zoom is better than EZ, and definatly better than digital zoom.

But to be honest, I don't often find myself using the longer reaches of the lens. Between 35 and 200 mm seems to be my usual Zone, the ultra telephoto tends to be used rarely. Let alone the EZ.

[ajancso]

First of all, thank you Paradox and Tempa for your replies.
I have one more question: have any of you used the Telephoto lense (LT55) with the FZ50? Is there a better telephoto lense out there that can be used with the FZ50?

The thought here is that the slightly lower zooming capability of the FZ50 when compared to the FZ18, can be easily compensated with a telephoto whenever needed (which according to Paradox is not very often).

Why the need for this zooming power? I am getting prepared for a trip to the Brazilian wetlands and want to be absolutely prepared for these long distance shots.

[tim11]

One thing you need to know is when using telephoto you will lose the wide part (up to 6x) of the lens.

[genece]

The Tcon 17 is as good as the Panasonic TC.....and there is a Nikon 1.7 converter that is better than either of those but its very expensive and very hard to find.
Do not overlook the extended zoom of the FZ50 ...it can be a useful tool.

This page compares the TC and while its for a FZ30 it holds true for the FZ50 as well.
http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/FZ-30/