Product Reviews

Panasonic's FZ18 has been our favourite ultra-zoom camera since we reviewed it almost a year ago. Its successor isn't much different: the only external changes are a slightly larger LCD, up from 2½in to 2.7in, and a new playback switch. Still-image resolution has increased from eight to 10 megapixels, but we're more excited by the video mode, which now captures 1,280x720-pixel frames. If it weren't for the basic sound (a problem with most stills cameras) we would consider doing without a separate video camera.

The FZ28 is quick, taking 2.7 seconds to switch on and shoot and 1.7 seconds between subsequent shots. However, it's disappointing that this marks a steady decline in FZ-series models. The six-megapixel FZ7, three generations back, captured a shot every second, and they've been getting steadily slower ever since. Continuous shooting has also regressed, but the 1.7fps we measured is a little better than that of the FZ18. It's also ahead of the current competition except for Casio's EX-FH20.

RAW format support is a rare treat at this price, and performance remained reasonable

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at four seconds between shots. The .RW2 files it generates are currently incompatible with Adobe applications, but the supplied Silkypix Developer Studio 3 SE software is powerful and reasonably friendly. As with DSLR cameras' RAW modes, processing the FZ28's RAW files in software allowed us to recover lots of highlight details.

Most people don't have time to fine-tune each photo in software, so it's fortunate that the camera's automatic settings and built-in processing are among the best we've seen. Exposure settings and colour balance were consistently excellent at capturing a scene at its most flattering. Gone are the days when Panasonic's noise reduction created swirling, watercolour-like splodges. Photos generally looked sharp and clean up to ISO 400 and even the top ISO 1600 setting sometimes produced acceptable results. However, subtle textures posed the biggest challenge, particularly in darker areas of photos - some noise was visible here even at ISO 100. This is disappointing, but the FZ28's noise reduction is still ahead of its competitors', as is the quality of its lens. Photos were a little soft at the full telephoto zoom position and wide-angle shots exhibited some barrel distortion, but both problems were slight compared with other 18x and 20x zoom lenses.

The FZ28's image quality, controls and performance are a long way behind DSLR levels, but they're ahead of the other ultra-zoom cameras at this price - you'll need to spend £350 on Fujifilm's S100FS to see improvements. As such, the FZ28 wins a Best Buy award, not because it dazzled us, but simply because it takes over from its predecessor as the best-value ultra-zoom camera currently available.