Bald Eagle release with the FZ300
 

Saturday I filmed the release of a female eagle that had been seriously injured last year. She was reunited with her mate of 14 years after many months of rehabilitation. My FZ300 has a lot of miles on it and getting beat up but still going strong. I gave up on the FZ2500 as a do everything cam and settled on the FZ300 for video and FZ1000 for stills.

Re: Bald Eagle release with the FZ300
 

Nice Tom

I'm still using just the two FZ1000's now for both video and stills but also an AC-8 for our live streaming camera ..Both my FZ1000's have damaged micro-HDMI ports so I decided to get a camera that had a big and tough full size socket that I could replace if it got damaged.

The FZ2500 had really nice zoom but I still sold it before I damaged the microport as well.

Re: Bald Eagle release with the FZ300
 

Chris, the FZ2500 pushed all my buttons. It was an all in one camera and a big improvement over the FZ1000 in features. However, I get better stills from the FZ1000 and same quality video with the FZ300. I now have an issue with my FZ2500 in that the top dial no longer works so can't use the cam in manual mode. Back to Panasonic for repair.

Re: Bald Eagle release with the FZ300
 

Hey Tom

The A8 (it's called an MDH2 here) I believe has much the same sensor as the FZ300 (so it's not the 1" one) but I would say that optics are inferior to the 300 which still has Leica lenses. Yeah I get awesome stills from the FZ1000's .. amazing quality at the price point. To be honest I felt that the FZ2500 I got here was an inferior build to my FZ1000's when it comes to controls and my mode dial seemed cheap and nasty. Over here the 2500 is made/assembled in China whilst the FZ1000 is made in Japan (well mine are anyway) and you can see the build quality is way better.

I had a poor experience with two Panasonic AC-130 cameras which were out of China (I think they shifted manufacture to China after the Tsunami in Japan) and seriously they were very poor quality and I actually sold them and went back to HMC80's at that stage and 1/4 of the price.

Is your 2500 from China or Japan .. there seems to be a big difference especially with buttons and dials! My mode control felt cheap and nasty and nver smooth like the 1000 dial .. Is that what's failed on your 2500?? I also felt the on/off lever wouldn't last that long either!!

Re: Bald Eagle release with the FZ300
 

Chris, my FZ1000 was made in Japan and the FZ300 and FZ2500 were made in China. I got each of them when they first came out and have had no problems with the 300 and 1000 after a lot of hard use . Those flimsy dials were the first things to go bad on my old SD Sony cams so I don't have a lot of confidence in them. The dial on the FZ300 is a solid exterior dial as found on the G7. It's possible I got a bad copy both in image quality and build quality. I do have the 3 year warranty so we'll see how Panasonic handles it.

Re: Bald Eagle release with the FZ300
 

Hope it works out with the repair Tom! I still (due to experience) feel that the Chinese Panny factories simply don't have the expertise to produce anything near as good as the Japanese factories. I must admit the my FZ2500 worked without a glitch but the mode dial was very cheap looking and not smooth at all when compared to both my FZ1000's .... Apart from the mode knob and a sticky on/off lever I must admit the rest seemed adequate but still not as polished and professional as the FZ1000.

On the other hand they have definately improved as my AC-130's were really terrible! Cheap plastic body and a "no name brand lens" Which a lot of users had to replace and terrible auto focus too !! When I ordered them I really expected the usual Leica optics!!