Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35

Viewfinder (6.00)

The electronic viewfinder is an 0.20-inch screen with 201,600 pixels, providing a field of view approaching 100%. It looks fine, and even lets an eyeglass-wearing user see the full screen and information overlay without fidgeting – as long as you’re standing still. The problem with the EVF is the stuttering that happens when you move the camera. Instead of panning smoothly, the image jerks along in little steps as you move. It’s not a huge problem in ordinary shooting, but we fear for the shooter who tries to follow the neighborhood soccer league action on a full stomach using the EVF.

There is a diopter adjustment dial on the left side of the viewfinder, easy to reach but not prone to accidental adjustment. The FZ35 doesn’t have a sensor system that automatically switches between the LCD and the viewfinder when you hold the camera to your eye. You’ll have to press the EVF/LCD button manually to make the switch, which is less convenient.

Brightness for both the EVF and the LCD can be manually adjusted to one of seven levels via the setup menu.

The information display is identical whether you’re using the EVF or the LCD.

Display (4.40)

The LCD is an ordinary 2.7-inch, 230,000 dot screen. You do have a few choices when it comes to screen brightness control. There’s an Auto Power LCD setting, that brightens or dims the screen based on your environment, and a Power LCD setting that keeps the screen at maximum brightness. And maximum is quite bright, standing up well to outdoor shooting on a sunny day.

While shooting, you can toggle among several LCD information set-ups by pressing the DISPLAY button. These options include a clean screen, a view with current still shooting settings (including available memory for stills), a slightly different view with available memory for movie recording instead, and a view with optional grid lines and/or a live luminance histogram.You can also set overexposed areas to blink during image review and playback.

There are two grid line overlay options, one with a nine-box pattern, the other with 16 boxes plus a pair of diagonal lines crossing at the center. We found the white lines too distracting to leave on all the time, but very helpful when trying to precisely line up a shot, as in architectural photography.

Flash (7.50)

The pop-up flash is controlled using a small button to the left of the electronic viewfinder. It has five settings: auto, auto with red-eye reduction, fill flash (with and without red-eye reduction) and slow sync with red-eye reduction (used to capture a foreground subject with a burst of the flash and the background scene with a slow shutter speed). In addition, you can set second-curtain flash synch, a rarely used option that captures a trailing effect when a subject is moving away from the camera (a car with its lights on is the standard example).

The extended flash pops up reasonably high over the lens, which should prevent red-eye or light clipping from the extended zoom lens (though removing the lens hood is certainly a smart move when shooting with the flash). There’s no hot shoe for connecting an external flash.

Panasonic gives the effective flash range as 0.3 – 8.5m with the lens at its widest setting and 1.0 – 5.4m using maximum telephoto. We found the flash pattern fairly even, with some inevitable unevenness given the size of the strobe, but with no objectionable hot spot in the middle. And we like the fact that the autoexposure system can’t raise the flash by itself in low-light settings: it’s up to the user to pop up the flash manually, which we far prefer to having the flash accidentally fire in inappropriate situations. Flash recycle time, though, takes several seconds, jeopardizing your readiness for the next shot.

Flash output can be manually adjusted in a ±2 EV range, in 1/3 EV increments. Maximum flash synch speed is 1/2000th second, which is relatively high and useful when using fill flash on a bright day.

Lens (12.00)

The FZ35 boasts an 18x Leica 4.8-86.4mm zoom lens (equivalent to a 27-486mm on a 35mm camera), providing good wide-angle coverage along with a very substantial telephoto capability. Maximum aperture ranges from f/2.8 at the widest setting to f/4.4, a fast lens that’s helpful both when shooting in low light and when hand-holding a long zoom shot, where increasing shutter speeds can help cut down on blur caused by shaky hands.

In macro mode, you can get extremely close to your subject (1 cm, or 0.4 inches) for screen-filling shots of small objects.

In addition to the optical zoom, there’s a straightforward digital zoom, which we never recommend using, and an ‘extended optical zoom’ that increases apparent magnification by cutting down on image resolution and using only the middle part of the sensor. This extended optical technique does prevent loss of image quality, though with an optical zoom of nearly 500mm, it seems like overkill.

Adjusting the zoom length with the side-to-side switch is typical for this type of camera, though the FZ35 lens does move smoothly rather than jerk into place. Since the lens moves faster the further you push the switch, the trick for precise handling is a gentle touch, maintaining a narrower angle for greater control.

As shown below, the long, wide zoom provides a dramatic range of composition options without moving an inch.

Zoom Ratio Examples
4.8 mm	44.7 mm	86.4 mm

Battery (7.00)

Unlike many ultrazoom cameras, which typically use AA batteries, the FZ35 is powered by a rechargerable Lithium ion battery. This not only holds down battery costs, it also contributes to a far lighter ready-to-shoot weight than any of our comparison cameras.

Panasonic estimates battery life at approximately 470 pictures, when firing the flash every other shot, and the time required for a full battery charge at 120 minutes. The estimate for video recording time per charge is 150 minutes.

Memory (3.00)

The FZ35 accepts SD and SDHC memory cards, for a maximum capacity of 32 gigabytes. There is also about 40 megabytes of built-in memory, which inspired the instruction manual writer to refer to the ‘optional’ memory card.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs (4.50)

There are two locations for I/O connections. On the left side of the camera is a door for the HDMI port and a connection for the optional AC power adapter. On the right is the proprietary port for connecting the supplied USB data cable and standard-def AV cable. It’s a minor point, but we like the way the doors for these connectors are hinged, snapping open and staying open until you close them. Lots of cameras have flimsy plastic covers that are hard to open, hard to close and get in the way when trying to connect a cable.

The HDMI output mode can be set manually, though we found the autodetect function worked fine on three TVs we tried.If you are connecting the cameras to a compatible Panasonic Viera set, you can control the camera using the TV remote, a nice option for sociably sharing your shots.