Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35

Shooting Modes (20.50)

Whether you’re a point-and-shoot fan or a more sophisticated photographer, the FZ35 offers a nice range of controls to suit your needs. The Intelligent Auto mode is a scene-recognition-based system that attempts to determine whether your subject matches one of six of the camera’s built-in scene modes (portrait, scenery, macro, night portrait, night scenery or baby) and adjusts camera settings accordingly. If scene recognition fails, standard settings are applied. In Intelligent Auto mode, only image size, color effect, face recognition, movie recording mode (AVCHD or MJPEG) and a few system settings can be adjusted by the user.

Program mode, aperture-priority, shutter-priority and full manual modes are also available. The joystick is used to control aperture and shutter speed, by pushing it horizontally and vertically.

Auto Mode Features

Focus – The autofocus system can be set to use up to 11 focus areas (9 areas when shooting videos), or a single focus area, which can be standard-sized or reduced by choosing Spot Focus. There are two single-point focus options, standard and high-speed. The difference between standard and high-speed isn’t clearly explained in the manual, so we pinged our contact at Panasonic, who says that high-speed focusing should be faster, but not in low-light condtiions. They suggest you use the high-speed option when shooting outdoors, the standard 1-area focusing when shooting indoors. In our informal testing, we were hard pressed to find a performance difference between the two./o:p>

Face detection autofocus is also an option, using the detail-oriented Panasonic face recognition system that lets you register important faces in camera memory, prioritize these when shooting, and even have information about those privileged characters displayed on screen during recording or playback.

Autofocus tracking is easy to use, but not entirely effective when shooting fast-moving subjects (active kids and sports, for example). When you choose autofocus tracking mode, pressing the AF/AE button locks onto a target in the center of the screen, turning the on-screen focus indicator yellow. At this point, if you move the camera fairly slowly, or your subject walks at a moderate pace or fidgets while sitting, the focus automatically follows and adjusts to the new position. Pan quickly, though, or try to follow a kid charging down the soccer field, and the yellow cursor drifts off dejectedly.

Yet another autofocus option is pre AF, which attempts to achieve focus even when you’re not holding the shutter button down halfway. There are two settings: Quick AF will focus when the camera isn’t moving much, Continuous AF will keep trying to focus at all times. As you might imagine, the Continuous mode will drain your battery more quickly. We found the pre AF system worked surprisingly well, focusing at a good speed and with no noticeable noise or vibration.

There is a bright red autofocus assist lamp on the front right corner of the camera. It has a long range, and proved helpful in extremely dark conditions, though we found that when shooting in most low-light conditions, the camera actually focused nicely even without the extra illumination. Having a dedicated autofocus assist lamp is certainly far preferable to using the built-in flash for this purpose, a distracting approach used by too many compact cameras.

Exposure – Exposure compensation is available in a ±2 EV range, in 1/3 EV increments. Three-shot exposure bracketing is also provided, in the same range. The Intelligent Exposure system automatically identifies high-contrast scenes and adjusts contrast and exposure accordingly. There are three settings, Low, Standard and High.

Metering – Multiple (full-screen), center-weighted and spot metering are supported. Exposure will be adjusted to match faces detected in face detect autofocus mode if metering is set to multiple.

Self Timer – The self-timer has the typical 2-second and 10-second delays, plus a mode that takes three consecutive shots after a 10-second delay, very helpful when you’re running around to join in a group shot.

Scene Modes

A tremendous variety of scene modes is available, though the organization is a bit confusing. There are five scene mode settings on the mode dial – Portrait, Scenery, Sports, Close-up and Night Portrait – each of which then offers more specialized options when you press the Menu button. The Portrait options, for example, include Normal Portrait, Soft Skin, Outdoor Portrait, Indoor portrait and Creative Portrait, which lets you control background blur by adjusting the aperture.

But like the man on the infomercial says, ‘But wait, there’s more!’ Turn the mode dial to SCN and you can access twenty additional settings. These include a panorama assist mode that maintains a ghost image on screen for lining up consecutive shots (but does not stitch photos together in-camera), a high-ISO, low-res mode, a simulated high dynamic range option, a picture frame overlay and a high-speed, lower-res burst shooting mode.

Picture Effects (3.00)

Below are four Color Effects that can be applied while shooting, and an unfiltered shot for comparison. Color bracketing lets you save the same shot with up to three Picture Effects settings applied. You can choose black & white plus standard, sepia plus standard or black & white, sepia and standard.

Picture Samples
No Effect Applied B/W Sepia Cool Warm More...

Manual Controls (11.44)

Manual focus is available, though it’s only borderline practical, since focus is controlled using either the joystick or the zoom lever, neither of which offers the precision of an SLR lens barrel. On the plus side, you can choose one of two manual focus aids; one enlarges the middle of the screen while you’re adjusting the focus, the other enlarges the entire screen.

The white balance system can be set to auto or one of five presets (clear sky, cloudy sky, shade, flash, incandescent lighting); a fluorescent setting is notably absent. Any of the presets can be finely adjusted along the amber-blue and green-magenta axes, which becomes a practical procedure thanks to the live on-screen update as you change settings.

Setting a manual white balance is easy to do, either from the quick menu or the main menu. Two custom white balance settings can be registered, letting you return to a successful setting if you return to the same shooting situation.

There’s also the option to enter a white balance reading in degrees Kelvin. This is usually a pretty esoteric procedure but, with the live preview capability, it becomes a useful way to eyeball your white balance readings, particularly if you’re hunting for a particular lighting effect.

The maximum aperture ranges from f/2.8 at the widest setting to f/4.4 at maximum telephoto, a fast lens that helps enable faster shutter speeds for handheld telephoto shooting. The minimum aperture is far more limited, at f/8, which could be an issue when trying to keep shutter speeds low in bright light.

Available shutter speeds when shooting stills range from 1/2000 second to 60 seconds. Shutter speeds in movie mode can be set from 1/30 second to 1/20,000 second, limiting your creative slow-shutter effect options.

Drive/Burst Mode (5.00)

There is a single burst speed, a claimed 2.3 frames per second, with a 3-shot limitation at full resolution and minimum compression. As for burst mode when shooting RAW… sorry, it’s not going to happen.

If you need faster burst mode performance, there’s a Hi-Speed Burst scene mode that trades performance for resolution and compression quality. With available picture sizes of 3M (4:3 aspect ratio), 2.5M (3:2) and 2M (16:9), and JPEG compression automatically set to standard, Panasonic claims a maximum burst rate here of 10 frames per second. In our testing we hit about 7.5 frames per second, a very fast and useful rate when shooting sports or other action scenes, with enough resolution to make a decent 4 × 6 and a fine on-screen display.

Shot to Shot (2.15)

Panasonic claims a burst rate of approximately 2.3 frames per second, but we didn’t get close to that in the lab, with a timed performance of 1.3 frames per second in full-resolution, fine JPEG compression mode. Burst mode is severely limited when it comes to duration, and here the actual performance matches the manual specs. You can only shoot 3 consecutive photos with fine compression, or 5 with standard compression.