Panasonic FZ18, impressions and problems....

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Topic: Panasonic FZ18, impressions and problems.... (Read 2636 times)

Hello.

First i want to thank the site admin for putting up some very helpful tips for absolute beginners in modern digicams, they sure helped me a lot!

1 week ago i purchased a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18, i must say that i'm impressed by the cameras fast operation, excellent controls and very comprehensible and easy menus, plenty of options for the tweakers and very good image quality before and after some light postprocessing, the FZ18's images behave well in post process, one thing that isnt mentioned anywhere is that the camera is VERY energy efficient, i snapped 800 photos in a full charge on the battery before the battery indicator turned red, very suprising results since Panasonic claims battery usage of about 300 photos, i believe my 800 photographs limit has to do with the settings i choose for the camera which were Continuous Autofocus OFF and especially all sounds disabled, i much prefer a quiet camera.

Now for the problems part, it seems the CCD sensor developed stucked pixels that show as red in many of my photographs, checked with a 1/1000 absolute darkness RAW capture and Adobe Camera Raw indeed shows hot pixels and dead pixels abound. I can live with CCD faults which are common in digicams that are diminished through cameras noise reductions algorithms, but 1-2 red and 4-5 blue pixels showing up in proper exposured jpgs in light and grey areas at fast shutters is something i cant tolerate. any suggestions?, does the Panasonic has any function for mapping the hot/stuck pixels in firmware like the Olympus and Sony cameras do? or it may be wise to send it back and ask for a replacement camera instead?

Thank you for reading this.