Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28K Camera Guidepost

The good- I like the camera bag.

The bad- the adapter ring for the lenses/filters appears as a big circle in any photos you take, unless you’re zoomed in a touch. Of course, if you’re using the wide angle lens, it kind of defeats the purpose, and seriously reduces the usefulness of any of the included filters. I suppose that’s not a big deal if the only lens you’re interested in is the telephoto, but for everything else, it’s a problem.

Also, the mounting mechanism for these lenses would make Rube Goldberg proud. After playing around with the various mounting collars, rings, and adapters, eventually you find a configuration that actually lets you attach a lens or filter to your camera. There’s a total of 3 different rings and adapters that screw into each other before you can actually mount one of the lenses, which makes it an extra hassle to use, and takes up extra space/weight in your camera bag.

Since I mostly bought this kit because of the included lenses and filters, I’m disappointed with it, and certainly wouldn’t recommend this kit.

Wow, where to begin….

The telephoto lens produces very poor images. The focus is very uneven; if you get the center properly focused the edges will be distorted. The lens doesn’t seem to work with the camera’s autofocus, and even on manual focus, it was a bit tricky; objects several miles away which should have been in focus at infinity were not, I had to pull the focus back quite a bit. The lens also suffers from terrible chromatic aberration, especially around the edges.

The wide angle lens produced decent images, but unless you zoom in (which totally defeats the purpose of the lens), you end up with a small circular image surrounded by black. It also required a lot of light to get a decent image; the lens gets in the way of the flash, resulting in a dark cone at the bottom of the image.

The lens adapter is well made, but a bit overly complicated. It consists of three different rings which screw together. No instructions were provided, so you’re on your own to figure it out. It does produce vignetting unless you zoom in some.

The filters are too big to use directly on the FZ18, they can only be used with the lens adapter, which again causes vignetting at low zoom levels. The FL-D filter didn’t seem to have much color to it, much less than other FL-D filters I’ve used in the past. I did not try out the polarizer.

The camera bag looked OK, but it stunk of plasticizers.

The cleaning kit was about what you’d expect, although the photo shows a bulb brush, which I did not receive. It did, however, include a screen protector, which was not listed in the description.

The tabletop tripod was of good quality, but I’m not sure if it would be strong enough to hold up an FZ18 AND telephoto lens. I did not open the box for the large tripod, but the brand name was Samsonite.

Super Zoom captures a great images. Convenient auto modes for the inexperienced. Images suffer after ISO 400. Typical for Lumix. Takes near HD video with quick-time format although the audio is sub par. The price has ballooned to Six hundred plus. I paid under three hundred for this unit October ‘08. Maybe a testament to the quality of this camera. This unit has never found a way to disappoint me.

I purchased this camera to replace an old Sony. I needed one with a good zoom and that could take good, clear shots of my son’s varsity soccer games. This one definitely delivers. Out of over 1500 shots I’ve taken, only a handful were blurred, and that was because I moved, not the fault of the camera. It also does a great job on macro shots, like flowers. Without me even trying, it gave me a great shot of a hummingbird in flight! I love that you can adjust settings as much or as little as you want, depending on your level of expertise. It gives me lots of room to grow as a photographer. For the money spent, it really is a lot better camera than I expected to find.

This is a great camera for the price. Zoom is terrific and quality of pictures is the best. I would recommend this to anyone. It is lightweight and easy to handle. My sister would like one but now you can’t hardly find them under $400.

I bought this lens for my Panasonic Lumix FZ18. It is fairly good for the price. It looks like a solid lens and it comes with a converter. I will post a couple of pictures taken at night and during the day.