FZ-30 or S9500?

Braeden

Braeden

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My friend has upped his budget (although not up to D-SLR money) and is now torn between the Panasonic FZ-30 and the Fuji S9500

Which would you choose between the two and why?
 
A very difficult question. I have not owned a Pano but my back-up camera is the Fuji 602pro. My experience of Fuji is very good and I think they make extremely good compact and DSLR lookalike cameras. Their Super CCD is well proven and with the 9500 is on to the 5th generation so no problem there.

Personal experience aside I will try to be objective. Both cams are similar in price so that is not an issue and I wont mention features that are on both cameras. What makes each camera stand out, to me, is....

9500
9 mpixel (un-interpolated)
Good ISO - 1600 at full-res with acceptable noise
Fast start-up (.8 sec)
Uses AA batteries (better in an emergency)
Good flash coverage
Uses CF (cheap and fast)

FZ-30
12 x zoom
Leica lens
Optical IS
Excellent ergonomics

The lens and IS is very persuasive for the Pano and if I had no experience of Fuji I would probably buy that. However - I do know Fuji and they have taken a good camera developed it and made an excellent camera (S5K... S7K...S9500) so in the end I would buy the Fuji. HTH.

regards
 
Mate here has a 9500 and thinks its great. We've done a comparison of quality of the output to my 350D with kit lens and its the equal of it terms of quality.

Only issue for me would be that the RAWs are not compatible with RSE and uncompressed i.e. about 20Mb.
 
I would have to go with the Fuji also, i had a Fuji s7000 before the Nikon and found it very good. Only upgraded as i wanted to have the ability of using various lenses.
 
i used to own an fz-20 and it was great. good enough to persuade me to buy an fz-30 if it was up to me.
battery life was never an issue with the fz20 and the fz30 is more efficient so i wouldnt worry about the battery.
 
Surely with 9500 money £350 to £375? you are not far off a D50 with kit lens, easily available for around £420, then he could get a 70-300mm lens for around £80-£100 and be laughing, it opens him up to the DSLR world and bigger things in the future.
 
His budget doesn't stretch to D-SLR.

The S9500/Fz-30 + memory + tripod + bag = his total expenditure.

Believe me I've tried talking him up to D-SLR (even 2nd hand) but he's not going for it.
 
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