Official Panasonic Lumix FZ-150 owners thread - Page 3

This is one of those areas where spending extra money does not get extra performance.

Ungerman pointed me towards some reading on SD Cards at Wikipedia.

Confusion comes up because the class ratings guarantee speeds in Mega Bytes per second. A class 10 is guaranteed to run no slower than 10 MB/s.

Our cameras' performance specs are in Mega bits per second. Page 129 of the FZ150 Advanced Manual states, at the highest setting, it is producing data at 28 Mbps. Converting mega bits per second to mega bytes per second explains why it says on page 20 you can use ANY class 4 SD card that runs at only 4MBs. Buying any Class 10 card,at 10MBs, gives you better than a 300% margin for speed!

A 1080p60 camera of any brand can't work fast enough to take advantage of any Class 10 card.

The difference between SD, SDHC and SDXC designations is about formatting and potential storage capacity, not speed. (Fat16, Fat32 and ExFat) Getting a 32GB SDXC is not better than getting a 32GB SDHC card. They are just formatted differently.

Making it more confusing is that the Class rating is a "minimum". They usually go faster in both read and write. And, the card makers can brag about faster speeds if they want to create a "marketing edge" to justify a higher price.

Most of us seem to buy Class 10 cards because they seem to be commonly available in sizes appropriate to what we do. For example on a three week trip I filled two 32GB cards only half way. So, my standard has become 32MB Class 10 of any brand for my three cameras.

If you want to test both speed and reliability, you can use a program called "H2testw" (It's German. Google it for a download.) It takes a blank card, fills it with dummy data and keeps track while doing it. Then it reports if there were any errors and how fast the card reads and writes. My collection of SD cards all passed.

I'm in the same boat. I bought one for my DW as an "early" birthday present. For her real birthday she is getting the lens adapter tube, the telephoto lens and the close up lens. I'm going to have to drug her to get a chance play with it.

Bill

Cheaper filters may not have the coatings the more expensive ones have so you may get some flair or ghosting. It will depend on where the light is coming from.

If the camera is off, it shouldn't matter how you put it in the bag. It is not so flimsy that there would be a problem.

Bill

I had a suitcase full of Nikon gear including a 4 inch stack of 52mm filters that I bought for cheap in overseas Navy PX stores. Suddenly I wish I still had them!

Bill

Last year's Panasonic TM900 and it's replacement for this year, the X900MK have them. So did the SDT-750.

Bill

My wife got the Panasonic adapter, telephoto lens and close up lens as listed in the back of the Basic Manual for her birthday yesterday. Today she tried it. So far, only smiles. She likes what she saw in the first few shots. It continues to be hard to keep my hands off her camera!

I haven't tried it and didn't know it would do it. This is a cut and paste from the manual:

[HIGH SPEED VIDEO]

This will record 220 frames/second, recording very fast movement that cannot be seen
with the naked eye as a motion picture.

1 Press the motion picture button to start the recording.
• Release the motion picture button right after you press it.

2 Press the motion picture button again to stop the recording.

Note
• It cannot be recorded into the built-in memory.
• Motion pictures will be recorded in the Motion JPEG format. Use the “QuickTime” or
“PHOTOfunSTUDIO” software on the CD-ROM (supplied) to play back motion pictures on a
computer.
• Audio is not recorded.
• Motion picture can be recorded continuously for up to 2 GB.
• The focus, zoom, exposure and White Balance is fixed to the value at the beginning of the
recording motion picture.
• Under fluorescent lighting, flicker or horizontal bars may be seen.

Bill