Lumix FZ38 - Decent used buy?
Discussion
Hi All,
I'm probably a bit late asking now as I just bought a used Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38 on ebay.
I have only used a compact before, but I found that using the manual settings, limited as they were, on my Ricoh R7, they did help me to get some better pictures, so I thought I would buy something that offered a bit more in that regard and it would be fun to play around with and I might actually learn something!
I realise that it is an old camera, but I only paid £102 including the postage. I looked at modern equivalents up to around £150, which were mostly Fujifilm models, but they did not get very good reviews. The FZ38 got rave reviews in 2009, but I'm not sure how it rates against something more modern, but in a lower price bracket than the FZ38 was.
I had settled on buying a manufacturer refurbished Lumix DMC-TZ20 for £135, which is a much more compact and modern camera with 16Mp and 16x zoom and a clever touchscreen where you poke the screen and the camera will focus on the place where you poked it.
So have I done a silly thing in buying this old millstone on a whim? I have read about these bridge cameras only having the same size sensors as compact cameras, so it will never produce a DSLR quality image. My budget and the amount of stuff I would want to carry around is limited, so I accept that, but it would be disappointing if I could have bought a compact for a similar price and with similar performance.
I'm probably a bit late asking now as I just bought a used Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ38 on ebay.
I have only used a compact before, but I found that using the manual settings, limited as they were, on my Ricoh R7, they did help me to get some better pictures, so I thought I would buy something that offered a bit more in that regard and it would be fun to play around with and I might actually learn something!
I realise that it is an old camera, but I only paid £102 including the postage. I looked at modern equivalents up to around £150, which were mostly Fujifilm models, but they did not get very good reviews. The FZ38 got rave reviews in 2009, but I'm not sure how it rates against something more modern, but in a lower price bracket than the FZ38 was.
I had settled on buying a manufacturer refurbished Lumix DMC-TZ20 for £135, which is a much more compact and modern camera with 16Mp and 16x zoom and a clever touchscreen where you poke the screen and the camera will focus on the place where you poked it.
So have I done a silly thing in buying this old millstone on a whim? I have read about these bridge cameras only having the same size sensors as compact cameras, so it will never produce a DSLR quality image. My budget and the amount of stuff I would want to carry around is limited, so I accept that, but it would be disappointing if I could have bought a compact for a similar price and with similar performance.
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