Panasonic Lumix Question

[LAS321]

I got a Lumix FZ35 for Mother's Day. One reason I got it was because of the zoom. I'm finding that when I zoom in on flowers or my ganddaughter's face, the pictures are fuzzy. What am I doing wrong? Is there a certain setting I should be using? Any guidance would be much appreciated.

 

[ukcatfan]

It would help if you could post some examples, but I suspect that the shutter speed is going too low to capture the shot without a tripod. To improve that make sure you have good light, try opening the aperture as wide as possible, and manually set the ISO as high as you can handle before the noise makes it unusable to you.

 

[bentos]

When photographing flowers, you should turn on the macro feature in the camera if it is available. Also instead of zooming in to flowers try to go as near to it as you can. Cameras become more sensitive to shakes when we zoom.

 

[disneyboy2003]

There are a couple possible things that might be going on here.

First, for your particular camera, when you zoom in, your aperture gets smaller, from f/2.8 to f/4.4. Because the aperture gets smaller, the camera has to use a slower shutter speed to let more light into the camera. It is usually very difficult to hand-hold cameras at slower shutter speeds. You get a lot of camera shake during slow shutter speeds, even though you might be holding it as steady as humanly possible and even though your camera might already have "image stabilization."

So this "smaller aperture while zooming in" effect might factor into this.

The other thing that might be going on is that when you zoom in, your minimum focusing distance is greater. When you're not zoomed in, your minimum focusing distance is 30 cm (about 1 foot). When you *are* zoomed in, your minimum focusing distance is 2 meters (about 6.5 feet).

So, if you're closer than the minimum focusing distance, then your subject will be blurry. I have a feeling this might be what's going on.

One thing you *can* do for these close-up zoom photos is set your camera to Macro mode. This will reduce your zoomed-in minimum focusing distance to 1 meter (about 3 feet).

I got the specs for your camera at: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/FZ35/FZ35A.HTM#. It provides all the above numbers for your camera.

See if that's the solution to your blurry, zoomed-in photos.

 

[SendLessRain]

When you are using the zoom look at the bottom of your screen. You will see a scale going from W (wide) to T (telephoto), above that scale are numbers that show your minimum focusing distance. This minimum focusing distance changes as you zoom. It can be very frustrating. The minimum focus distance in Macro is actually 1 centimeter not one meter at 1X. It is 20cm at 2X. One meter at 3X. Two meters at 4X-10X, and then back to one meter from 11X on up. You can put the camera right up to something when you are not zoomed at all, or you can step back a meter and zoom way in. Not the easiest macro to play with.

 

[LAS321]

Thanks for all the advice. I took some flower pics yesterday and they came out better (used the macro setting and I also increased the shutter speed). I also took a few of my cats and they were mixed blurry and sharp. When I figure out how to do it I'll post my pics. I guess I really need to practice more. I went from a regular SLR to a point and shoot with few manual options. Now I need to re-learn how to use manual settings again.