This first shot was taken with the FZ28 under bright light at its lowest 100 ISO sensitivity and therefore represents ideal conditions. Thanks to in-camera correction, there’s no visible fringing. One look at the crops though reveals a disappointing softness, which isn’t surprising given the f8 aperture. Strangely the FZ28 prefers to stick below 1/500 in Program, which under bright conditions like these forces small apertures and diffraction as a result. Coincidentally the earlier FZ18 applied the same strategy.

Landscape: 4.81MB, Program, 1/400, f5.6, ISO 100, 4.8-86.4mm at 4.8mm (equivalent to 27mm)

						Another shot taken under bright light with the lens zoomed-out to 27mm at 100 ISO. This shot was taken at a very low angle and a flip-out monitor would have made composing it much easier. There’s a fair amount of detail in the crops, and again a lack of fringing thanks to in-camera processing, but an ultimate crispness that’s lacking compared to the Canon SX10 IS’s version in its Gallery. Keep an eye on that duck though as we’ll see more of it in a moment.

Landscape: 4.68MB, Program, 1/400, f6.3, ISO 200, 4.8-86.4mm at 86.4mm (equivalent to 486mm)

The FZ28’s continuous AF had no trouble tracking the boat and keeping it sharp despite the very long focal length.

The increase in sensitivity has however resulted in a visible increase in noise, and a loss of ultimate detail.

This time the lens was fully zoomed-in, and it illustrates the flexibility of the 18x range. At one moment you can grab wide landscape shots, and seconds later you could zoom-in for a close-up.

Here we’ve dropped the sensitivity to the minimum 100 ISO and the quality is noticeably superior to the samples above and below at 200 ISO.

Once again the FZ28 has refused to select a shutter faster than 1/500 in Program, thereby resulting in its minimum aperture of f8 under these conditions.

As such, the depth of field is quite large and there’s also softening due to diffraction. We’d recommend using Program shift or Aperture Priority to avoid f8, and if you want a blurrier background, try standing back and zooming-in closer.

So for this macro shot we moved away a few cm and zoomed-into around 2x. The details are roughly the same size as being closer and wider, but the geometry is much improved and the field much flatter.

The crops show very sharp details which extend way beyond the centre – a good macro result.

The boost in sensitivity has seen a visible increase in noise and noise reduction artefacts, particularly in shadows or flat areas of colour.

It’s roughly equivalent to other cameras with 1/2.3in 10 Mpixel sensors like the Canon SX10 IS, and acceptable at smaller sizes. Like that camera, there’s still good detail in the well-lit magazine covers.

As you’d expect, there’s a significant increase in artefacts here. although the FZ28’s noise reduction has minimised the visible speckles – this in turn has smeared away the finest details though.

There’s still a reasonable amount of detail present, but you’d only want to use this for small prints.

The colours are less saturated as a whole, and viewing at 100% reveals undesirable noise and processing artefacts.

Compared against the Canon SX10 IS, the artefacts here look slightly worse, but at 1600 ISO neither are acceptable for anything other than emergency use or for small online images.