Camera Reviews / Panasonic Cameras / Lumix Point & Shoot i Preview

20.10 Megapixels	16.00x zoom	1 inch size sensor

Panasonic FZ1000 II Review -- First Impressions

by Mike Tomkins
Preview posted 02/18/2019

Updates:
09/13/2019: Added details regarding battery life and charging

Back in mid-2014, Panasonic made its debut in the large-sensor, long-zoom camera market with the FZ1000. An impressive rival to the already-entrenched Sony RX10, the FZ1000 scored an award for Camera of the Year in the enthusiast zoom category in our 2014 Camera of the Year awards. Almost five years later, though, it's clearly time for a replacement -- and that's where the Panasonic FZ1000 II comes in.

A brand-new body hides a familiar imaging pipeline

Although it has been completely restyled and gifted with a fair few new features at the same time, the basic imaging pipeline of the FZ1000 II -- including a 20.1-megapixel, 1-inch format MOS sensor, Venus Engine processor and 16x optical zoom lens -- is very similar to that of the earlier camera. And while it has been a new visual aesthetic, the newer model will nevertheless feel familiar to FZ1000 owners, with many controls and features being similar to those offered in the past model.

So what's changed? Perhaps most importantly, there's a brand-new, cleaner-looking body with twin control dials instead of just a rear dial. It also replaces the zoom / focus and Power O.I.S. switches that formerly lined the left side of the lens barrel on the FZ1000 with several new programmable function buttons, instead. Overall dimensions are changed only very fractionally, with the FZ1000 II being just ever so slightly less wide and tall, but minutely deeper than before instead. Weight has fallen by 2-3% to 28.5 ounces (808g).

Much the same lens as before, but with a couple of tweaks

Like its predecessor, the FZ1000 II still sports an SLR-like layout, along with a fixed 16x optical zoom lens whose maximum aperture starts from f/2.8 at the 25mm-equivalent wide-angle, falling to f/4.0 well before reaching the 400mm-equivalent telephoto. The lens still carries Leica DC Vario-Elmarit branding, and has 15 elements in 11 groups, including four extra-low dispersion elements and a total of eight aspheric surfaces across five aspheric lens elements. And it still includes a five-axis hybrid optical image stabilizer with optional high-strength active mode.

But unlike the earlier camera which limited you to a minimum aperture of f/8 across the board, you can now stop down to f/11 in the Panasonic FZ1000 II. And there's also a new Zoom Compose Assist function accessible by default with one of the new programmable function buttons on the lens barrel. When you lose track of your subject in the viewfinder or on the rear-panel LCD, this function can quickly help you regain your bearings by quickly switching to a wide-angle view before returning to your original zoom level once more.

Extremely high-res electronic finder has a larger viewfinder image

Speaking of the viewfinder and LCD monitor, both are on the list of updates for the FZ1000 II. The viewfinder is still based around an extremely high-resolution 0.39-inch, 4:3-aspect, 2,360k dot Organic LED panel, but the viewfinder image now boasts a more generous 0.74x magnification, up from 0.7x in the FZ1000. Panasonic still self-rates the panel as providing 100% field of view. It also has an eyepoint of 20mm, but no figure was stated for the previous version.

The LCD panel, meanwhile, has increased in total dot count, from 920k to 1,240k dots with the same 3.0-inch diagonal and 3:2 aspect ratio as before. That suggests Panasonic has likely added a fourth, white-colored dot to the red, green and blue dots that make up each individual pixel on the display. If so, we can expect to see little change in resolution, but a noticeable improvement in maximum screen brightness and/or lowered power consumption.

There's also a new touch-screen overlay for the LCD monitor

And alongside -- or rather, overlaying -- the new LCD panel, there's also an additional change in the tilt/swivel-mounted display. It's now been gifted with capacitive touch-screen like that used in your smartphone, allowing it to serve double-duty as an input device. This includes both the ability to select subjects for autofocus simply by tapping on them, and also to configure up to five on-screen soft buttons for quick access to your favorite controls.

The tilt/swivel mechanism has both a 180-degree tilt and a +/-270-degree swivel range, allowing for framing from in front of the camera, as well as for closing the screen inwards to provide a little extra protection from minor knocks and scrapes.

Oh, and Panasonic says that it has improved on-screen menus for better ease-of-use, although it doesn't explain precisely how.

Performance hasn't changed, but burst depth is much better

Performance looks to be unchanged from the earlier camera, with the Depth from Defocus-based autofocus system still yielding a manufacturer-claimed 0.09-second to lock focus. The FZ1000 II is also still said to be capable of seven frames-per-second capture at full resolution with autofocus adjustments between frames, or as much as 12 fps with focus locked from the first frame.

What has changed, though, is the buffer depth available to FZ1000 II owners. They can expect to achieve as many as 100+ JPEG or 26 raw frames in a single burst. That's more than double the 11-12 raw frames we could extract from the FZ1000 each second during our in-house testing. (Although at our test standard of ISO 200, we found the earlier model to be a good third slower than Panasonic's spec.)

Panasonic also says that continuous autofocus is now more stable, with less hunting for both still and video capture.

4K video capture remains, and 4K Photo mode gets a big upgrade

When the Panasonic FZ1000 first reached the market, its ability to record 4K footage in-camera was unique among compact digital cameras. Today, the ability to record 4K footage at rates of 24 or 30 frames per second is fairly commonplace, but not so the still imaging-oriented 4K Photo modes on offer in the FZ1000 II. (Which, by the way, still offers the Creative Video and 120 fps Full HD high-speed video options from the FZ1000.)

Admittedly, while it lacked the feature entirely at launch, the original FZ1000 was gifted with a 4K Photo mode of its own in a post-launch firmware update. But while it offered the ability to quickly locate and extract high-res 8.3-megapixel frames from a 4K video clip through the new 4K Photo function, it still lacks a raft of related features from subsequent Panasonic cameras which now make their large-sensor, long-zoom debut in the FZ1000 II.

4K Photo adds Pre-Burst, auto marking and sequence composition

So what's new for 4K Photo mode in the FZ1000 II? Well, you can still shoot 4K Photo bursts at 30 frames per second, but there is now a pre-burst function which continuously captures frames then discards them shortly thereafter. By holding onto just enough frames, it lets you reach back to before the moment you tripped the shutter.

There's also a new Auto Marking function which helps you quickly find frames where the image has obviously changed from previous ones, making lighter work of finding the best frames. And a Sequence Composition function lets you freeze parts of the image frame where there's subject motion at regular intervals, creating one single shot where your subject's motion through the frame can be more easily analyzed.

And a new bulk saving function will let you save 4K Photo frames en masse, so you can do your subsequent selecting or processing on another device.

4K Photo also gives access to post focus and focus stacking functions

Also new to the roster are both post-focus and focus-stacking functions. Both rack through the focus range during 4K video capture, but what happens after that point varies.

The post-focus function lets you choose an image area you want to be in focus *after* capture has been completed. This is accomplished by the camera finding and extracting the frame in the video which most crisply-rendered that particular area in the scene.

Focus stacking, meanwhile, creates a single image with much greater depth of field than is possible from a single exposure, something that's particularly handy for macro shooting. Here, the camera stacks all of the frames from the video and for any given area in the frame, uses the image data which is most sharply-rendered.

New bracketing tools for traditional still imaging, as well

It's not just in 4K Photo mode that you'll find new creative goodies, though. For regular still imaging, you'll find that the Panasonic FZ1000 II now sports new focus and aperture-bracketing functions in addition to the FZ1000's white balance and exposure bracketing capabilities. You can have the camera automatically capture a selection of exposures with different aperture values, or have it capture as many as 999 frames in a row with their focus distance varying just slightly.

There are also two new Photo Styles to choose from in the FZ1000 II: L.Monochrome and L.Monochrome D. Both have a three-step high / standard / low grain strength option, and create punchy black and white imagery with emphasized shadows and highlights.

Other creative options retained from the FZ1000 include time-lapse shot and stop-motion modes, plus creative control and creative panorama options. (Panoramas, incidentally, have now been promoted to their own spot on the mode dial, in place of the second custom mode which featured on the FZ1000's mode dial.)

Wi-Fi is now supplemented by Bluetooth, but NFC is gone

The Panasonic FZ1000 already offered a Wi-Fi radio with which to quickly transfer images to your smartphone or tablet. The FZ1000 II supplements this existing 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n (aka Wi-Fi 1 / 3 / 4) radio with a new Bluetooth 4.2 one, but simultaneously drops the NFC antenna which allowed for quicker-and-easier pairing with Android devices.

Once paired, though, the always-on Bluetooth connection of the FZ1000 II will let your smartphone communicate with the camera any time it needs to with minimal power consumption. Once higher-speed communication is needed for transferring full-sized images and movies, then setup of a temporary Wi-Fi connection can be negotiated automatically via the Bluetooth radio, as well.

The Bluetooth radio also allows the camera to piggyback off your phone's GPS receiver for geolocation information, so your images can be tagged with their approximate capture location as they're captured.

New in-camera USB charging

Another new feature for the Panasonic FZ1000 II is support for in-camera battery charging, where the FZ1000 was reliant on an external charger. (Which, of course, you can still do if you want by purchasing a dedicated battery charger.) The FZ1000 II ships with an AC/USB adapter.

CIPA battery life is rated at 440 shots with the LCD monitor and 290 shots with the electronic viewfinder using the same DMW-BLC12PP battery pack as its predecessor. The monitor rating is up significantly from the FZ1000's 360 shots but the EVF rating is down slightly from 300 shots, though a new EVF display speed eco mode has been added which reduces the viewfinder's refresh rate to 30 fps for longer battery life rated at 430 shots.

Panasonic FZ1000 II pricing and availability

List pricing for the Panasonic FZ1000 II is set at US$900. In the US market, availability is slated for March 2019.