Image-quality of the FZ1000 is competitive and visibly improved over previous generations. The output is perfectly usable to ISO 400 with a gradual decrease in maximum print sizes thereafter. Metering is good and colors are not perfect but acceptable after some tweaking.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 is extremely usable and has unequalled versatility. Video is particularly well-integrated and this digital camera offers one of the most seamless experiences for it.

http://www.neocamera.com/camera/panasonic/fz1000/review

The zooming in and out is a bit clunky, nothing like the zooms on ENG style lenses or camcorders.
The focus will not hold, as the lens has floating elements.
The lever on the hand grip works better than the manual ring, which is fly by wheel adjusting (if set to zoom), and very unpredictable.
I really hope they improve the zoom function on the new fz300!

Thanks Kurt,

I think Panasonic really screwed up with the 35mm like fov in the UHD mode :( Maybe a G7 with a 14-140 will work better, although I love the fz zoom reach, as I've shot some very cool close ups with my current fz150. You see I love hiking and weight and speed are big factors to be fast enough to grab that moment and don't hold up my partner with my photography and video, which I do plenty. The Sony RX10 II sounds nice too, but 1300 euro is too steep.

Your second recommendation sounds heavy, nearly half a kilo. Though I'm careful with my equipment, I think it may too much for the FZ1000. Also considering the weight I need to carry up, together with the 25% field of vision gain it's looking less attractive. Mayby the FZ300 will bring some relieve, though I've not heard any technical details about it yet.

Thanks for the help Kurt!

I've been doing some wide angle adaptor searching, and I think the 0,7 is about the sweet spot for UHD video, giving about an 24mm of 35mm equivalent view angle.

1) Since the UHD is a cropped sensor mode, could I use a 58mm thread and use a downsize ring?

2) in regard to adaptors many are labelled camera specific, but in what way are adaptors camera specific? is there more then thread type and diameter I should take into account?

3) I'm considering these adaptors, planing to take one up in the mountains for panoramic UHD video shots, what are your thoughts? A: Raynox HD-7062 Pro 0.7x 62 B: Olympus WCON07 C: Olympus Camedia WCON-14B D: HD-6600PRO Wide Angle 0.66x E: SIOCORE 58mm 0.7x

Thanks for the replies.

@snh

For now I do not work on this firmware. We'll see how it goes later.

About shooting Wide Angle in UHD video mode.

As I understand there is a crop in this mode of about 1.28 , 25->32mm (35mm equivalent), Has anyone tried a wide angle converter on their FZ1000? Any recommendations for a light weight reasonably sharp for 4k video converter? I think the outer edges may be a bit blurry as the camera crops in the UHD mode.

This would make the UHD recording much more practical indoors, for video and photographing moving subjects. Otherwise panorama mode would do.

Thanks for your replies,

Kars

@chaoscloud I seem to be fortunate and have none of those white speckles. Low-light / night shots are getting better as I tinker. Still love the camera for the money and the lens.

@mvesseur this shows some good night shots, doesnt look to disappointing for a £600 camera with a 25-400mm lens and 4k. Be nice to know what all the settings were in the clip though

If there is one thing I would like, is the option to have 30 and 60fps. When I go on holiday to countries that use 60hz, when I'm recording at 25fps with a shutter of 50 (for example), lights etc flicker madly. So I have to fiddle often to get rid of it. Not much of an issue as it can be worked around, but why not just let us have all options available to us ! Is it such a big deal to enable 30 and 60fps on UK versions and vice versa !!

@Vitaliy Is a firmware hack or improvement in the works for the FZ1000? If so, can we have some info on it? Details? Thanks, Brennan

Solar eclipse in 4K : max intelliZoom

Chris Taylor's video is good in that it shows both the strengths and the weaknesses of the FZ1000. In clear light everything looks great, but the footage shot in the dark (1:10, 3:10 and 4:33) shows a massive amount of artifacts. In fact, none of the video footage shot in lower light situations is very crisp, especially compared to the clean and sharp time-lapse sections that are obviously made with hi-res photos. I cannot say I'm particularly impressed by the video quality of this sample.

Cheers for the tip, the iDynamic was set at Standard. Turned it off, helped a little but not much :-( its just as you described @belfeyman bright lights and the blacks are fine, but when its that sort of dim light, murky, it just has this mess of speckled noise, even when running a low ISO. So if the ISO is low, say 200-400, why is that digital noise cropping up to spoil the picture. I can under stand it at ISO 3200 or something, but not say 200-400. Again, maybe i just havnt worked out the correct setting or best way to film these situations. Still a fab camera though :-)

Rich, check your iDynamic setting. If turned on it will jack up the brightness and noise in dark areas. I was not aware until recently that it affected video too - I was trying to shoot some video of the moon and kept seeing noise speckles on dark sky regardless of ISO setting.