Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8

By Philip Ryan, CNET.com
Apr 27, 2007

Almost identical in body design to last year's DMC-FZ7, Panasonic's new Lumix DMC-FZ8 carries the torch as the smaller of the company's superzooms, not counting the even smaller DMC-TZ3, which doesn't include manual exposure controls and is targeted at a different audience.

The FZ8 brings with it a handful of updates over the FZ7. Among these are an increased pixel count of 7.1 megapixels (up from 6 megapixels), the number of autofocus points has been bumped up to 11 (instead of nine), and TIFF capture has been replaced with RAW capture, which should please advanced shooters by providing more flexibility when tweaking exposure and white balance.

Design
Like the FZ7, the FZ8's body design is just what you'd want in a superzoom. Surprisingly compact but still big enough to shoot comfortably with two hands, the FZ8 has all the controls on the right hand side, so one-handed operation is possible if needed.

        For more details on the Lumix DMC-FZ8's design and image quality, click on the image.

Overall, Panasonic did a good job of the control system. The tiny yet responsive joystick lets you quickly select AF points or set exposure compensation. White balance, ISO, AF mode, and image size and quality find their home in the main menu.

Other functions, such as bracketing, flash compensation, timer, and flash mode are accessed through the five-way touch pad. We found these buttons a bit small, and there is definitely room for larger ones, but we didn't have much trouble using them in our field tests.

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