Review

Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 – first stab at set up

September 12, 2018 by David

Rock church Helsinki

The Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 is a very sophisticated camera, as sophisticated as many DSLRs. Although it has a fully auto mode, I’m ignoring this. Setting it up properly can be daunting but it helps if you are used to the Lumix menu options. Set up is very personal and down to how you like to work. There is no real right and wrong if your set up works for you.

I come from the unsophisticated cameras of the film era, so I like to keep my digital camera set up as simple as I can (without completely ignoring the technological advances of the last 40 years!).

Basic Settings

File type and quality

RAW + JPEG Fine (during the initial familiarising phase – I will likely use raw only in due course)

Aspect ratio

4:3 (this is a crop of the 3:2 sensor and a reduction to 17.5MP. Never mind. I prefer the squarer format for composing and I would mostly have cropped the edge in post anyway)

Drive dial

Single shot mode

Exposure mode

Aperture priority

Metering pattern

Evaluative

AF mode

AF-S (single press, not continous).

AF point

Single area, centre point (old fashioned – one day I’ll learn about these multi point AF setups, predictive and tracking focus etc).

AF activation

Half press of shutter or back button (AE Lock customised to activate AF).

Viewfinder

I have the viewfinder set with the main display on a black strip under the viewing area rather than floating on top. I wish EVFs were more customisable, such that you could turn on and off every individual icon and display. I find cluttered displays distracting but the clean display options remove too much).

C1 position on the mode dial

I have my settings saved to the C1 custom set position on the main mode dial.

Next…

I’ll make a second set up post about all the complicated menu options and customisable function buttons next.

Index to FZ1000 articles

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