Photography Equipment - Zoom Lens and Two Cameras Compared

In my last post (Link to last post) I talked about my Panasonic FZ200 which has a 24-600mm super Leica zoom lens.  This post will show you why equipment can make a difference - it all depends on why you are taking the photos and what use you might be using them for as well as whether you and your subject are happy with the results.

My comparison lens, which I just bought on Ebay, is the AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR.  Notice the f/3.5-5.6 on this lens compared to the f/2.8 for the Panasonic.  For my purposes for this comparison, it won't have any advantage to have the faster lens because I shoot almost all photos between f/5.6 and f/11 when shooting candid outdoor shots with either camera.  For portraits, you wouldn't be using a zoom lens in either case.  Although, after seeing the results of the Nikkor lens, I would feel pretty confident on getting a good portrait shot.  

Now about the camera - the lens was put on a Nikon D600.  Compared to the Panasonic FZ200, it is capable of shooting at a much higher ISO - 400 ISO maximum for the FZ200 compared to 3200 ISO for the Nikon for usable results.  What that means is I can get the same light at f/8 on the Nikon as I could get at f/2.8 on the Panasonic.  Or at a faster speed.  So you are much more likely to get sharper photos.  And this is exactly what happened with the Nikon - every photo I shot came out sharp and well focused.  Note that both camera lens combinations have a form of vibration reduction which allows you to shoot steady at lower shutter speeds.

Another difference between the two cameras (and there are many), is that the Panasonic is 12.1 megapixels, and the Nikon is 24 megapixels so the images from the Nikon can be enlarged quite a bit more - see the last photo in the below series.  So although the Panasonic goes to 600mm and the Nikon to 300mm, the central part of the Nikon image can be equal in size and quality to the 600mm.  With zoom lenses, especially super zoom lenses, the central part of the image is the sharpest.  The edges tend to get pretty soft.

This has gotten a bit more complex than I thought it would, but the results should show the differences between the two cameras.  Every shot in this series came out sharp.  Both cameras expose very well.

For action shots, the D600 is much better, although the FZ200 will work, but not as many usable shots.  Had I shot Paula and Gaston with a prime lens, they would have been sharply in focus, but very little else would have been.

The photo below is a close-up crop of the photo above.  The original could be printed at a size of about 40x60 inches.  But this was just to illustrate the differences between the two cameras.  There was no post processing done, no planning for the shot, just a fun photo for these two wonderful people.

Hope this explained some of what you might read elsewhere about equipment mattering or not mattering.  Of course, everything is dependent on the right light - direction, type, color, intensity, diffusion, the size of the light source, surface reflections, etc.  That topic is for another post that will be coming up.