Panasonic LUMIX FZ80  Camera Review

The Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 isn't especially portable, though it's pretty lightweight for a bridge camera. If you'd prefer a more portable point-and-shoot, the Panasonic LUMIX ZS80 offers similar performance in a more compact package, though it doesn't have quite as long a zoom range. For a more portable bridge option, consider the KODAK PIXPRO AZ528.

This camera feels reasonably well-built. It's plastic, and while the buttons feel somewhat cheap, they're nice and clicky and offer good tactile feedback. The battery and SD card slot are covered by a hinged door that feels solid, while the inputs are covered by a rubber flap.

There's a single control dial on the back of the camera near the thumb rest. By default, it controls shutter speed or aperture when in Manual mode; pressing the dial toggles between the two. The camera also has three physical 'Fn' buttons as well as several others you can access on the touchscreen, all of which are customizable.

• Panasonic LUMIX DC-FZ80 camera
• Shoulder strap
• Lens cap
• Lens cap string
• USB-A to Micro-USB cable
• AC adapter
• 1x Panasonic DMW-BMB9PP battery
• User manual

This camera feels quite comfortable to shoot with. It has a large, rubberized handgrip suitable for all hand sizes and feels secure in the hand. The screen has full touch capability, making it easy to navigate the menu, but it's fixed, making it harder to shoot from lower angles. Some of the buttons, like the directional pad on the back, are on the small side, so it's easy to accidentally press the wrong input. The command dial button press is also very sensitive. Also, there's no eyecup around the viewfinder, so it isn't very comfortable.

The electronic viewfinder is very small. The relatively low resolution combined with a very small 0.46x magnification makes it hard to see your shots clearly through the viewfinder. The plastic around the EVF with no eyecup also makes it uncomfortable to use. It also lacks an eye sensor, so you have to manually press the 'LVF' button to switch between the screen and EVF, which is a minor inconvenience but can still be annoying if you want to switch seamlessly between the screen and the viewfinder. If you prefer a higher-resolution EVF, consider the Panasonic LUMIX FZ80D variant instead.

The Panasonic FZ80 has a fixed screen, which is limiting if you want to shoot vlogs or take selfies. It's also harder to take shots from lower angles. It gets bright, so you can still see it in sunny conditions, and it has a fairly high resolution, so the image looks sharp. Thankfully, it has full touch capability, and you can use it to navigate settings, pull up the 'Fn' menu, select focus points, or set it to use as a touch shutter. If you prefer a higher-resolution display, consider the Panasonic LUMIX FZ80D variant instead.

The menu system is very easy to use, thanks to its simple layout and organized tabs. You can easily navigate through it using the directional pad or tapping the touchscreen. It also has a lot of customization options, including customizable tabs on the screen and an 'Fn' menu for commonly used settings. There's also a display option that lets you see all of your shooting settings at once. From there, you can adjust relevant settings as needed, but you can't see your subject on screen or through the viewfinder with this display engaged.

Battery performance is decent. It supports USB charging, so you can use a portable battery pack for longer shooting days, though you can't shoot with it while it's charging.

The Panasonic FZ80 has a good continuous shooting speed, and it shoots at a fairly quick rate in its high-speed drive mode, allowing you to capture bursts of fast-moving action. Though it isn't the fastest burst rate, it's still fairly quick for casual sports and wildlife photography, where timing plays a more important role anyway. Unfortunately, it has a small photo buffer, especially if you shoot in RAW. Thankfully, the camera clears its buffer fairly quickly, but it can still slow you down or interrupt your shooting at a critical moment.

The camera also has a '4k PHOTO' mode that lets you pull still frames out of 4k video clips shot at 30 fps, making it easier to freeze moments of fast action.

The Panasonic FZ80 uses a contrast-detect AF system with Panasonic's Depth From Defocus (DFD) technology. Contrast detection systems tend to be slower to focus; DFD is meant to help speed up the process by quickly comparing the sharpness of images taken at two different distances to get a better sense of how far the subject is from the lens.

As far as continuous tracking goes, it supports eye and face tracking and does a passable job keeping moving human subjects in focus when moving at a moderate pace, though it struggles to keep them in focus when moving more quickly.

Autofocus is a lot more reliable when you set the focus point yourself rather than relying on the AI to track subjects automatically. The camera can keep focus on subjects in the center point fairly well, though it can still sometimes fail to keep pace.

The camera also has some extra features to help you fine-tune the focus. 'Post Focus' takes a 4k 30 fps burst at different focus points, allowing you to change the focus after taking a shot. This is great for macro work or photos of still subjects, where you might want to adjust the exact focus point or emphasize different parts of an image. There's also a 'Focus Stacking' feature, which combines several images taken with different focus points to produce a single image with an expanded focus range. You can use this to ensure that your entire subject is in focus. The camera also has an 'AF Macro' feature that adjusts the minimum focus distance to 0.39 inches (1 cm), so you can focus on subjects very close to the lens.

The Panasonic LUMIX DC FZ80 uses optical image stabilization instead of in-body sensor-shift stabilization. It does a good job of steadying the shot when taking photos, allowing you to get clear shots at speeds as slow as 1/15s. That said, stabilization performance varies when shooting at longer focal lengths. You'll likely need a tripod to steady shots taken at the farthest end of this camera's focal length range.

The Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 has poor dynamic range, so it can't capture a very wide range of shadow and highlight detail. It's disappointing even at its base ISO and gets progressively worse when using higher ISO settings with shorter exposure times, giving you even less range to work with when shooting in low light. There's very little exposure latitude as well, as trying to recover shadow detail in underexposed images results in unusable levels of noise.

The camera doesn't resolve fine details super well because of its small sensor. While this is most evident when pixel-peeping or cropping your photos, images generally don't look as clear or detailed as those taken on cameras with larger sensors and higher resolutions.

The Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 has poor RAW noise handling. Noise becomes noticeable very quickly as you raise the ISO, and its ISO maxes out at 3200, meaning this camera isn't well-suited to shooting in low light. It's very difficult to recover all the details in an image when processing your RAW files unless you take your photos in very bright, sunny conditions, which is where this camera performs best.

Unfortunately, the Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 can only record 4k video at 30 fps with a noticeable 1.27x crop. Because of the crop factor, the equivalent focal length range also changes from 20-1200mm to 28-1680mm.

Internal recording capability in 4k is decent, although the camera can only output lower-quality video files under 100 Mbps. It's also limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 color, so there's less information to work with when processing video footage. 4k video caps at 15 minutes of continuous recording, so it's not great for shooting longer takes. On the upside, it doesn't overheat when recording 4k video continuously.

The Panasonic FZ80 has disappointing autofocus performance in 4k. It struggles to stick with moving subjects and is slow to find its target and refocus after it's moved. Though it supports face and eye detection, its face tracking is very hit-or-miss, especially when subjects are moving more quickly or moving in and out of frame.

Video quality in 4k looks bad, especially in dim lighting, where it looks very grainy and soft. It's better in more well-lit conditions but still has a lot of soft edges and noise.

The rolling shutter effect on the Panasonic FZ80 isn't too bad. There's still some noticeable skewing of vertical lines, which can be especially distracting if you're moving or panning the camera very quickly, but it isn't too noticeable with slower camera movements.

There's only a couple of frame rate options in 1080p, but thankfully there's no crop. Though there isn't any high frame rate mode in Full HD, it does have a 'High Speed Video' option that can record 720p/120 fps or 480p/240 fps to capture slow-motion videos without sound if you want to incorporate slow-mo footage.

Internal recording in 1080p is decent. You can record continuously for up to 30 minutes, which is good for longer takes. It can only record at fairly low bit rates, so it captures less data per second, resulting in lower-quality video. Unfortunately, the camera is limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 color, giving you less latitude when editing.

Autofocus performance is okay in 1080p. It can track people reasonably well, though it's not especially "sticky" when those subjects are moving more quickly or popping in and out of frame. It also sometimes struggles to find a subject again after losing track, causing some distracting pulsing as the camera hunts to find its target.

The video quality in 1080p is bad. It looks very soft and grainy even in more controlled lighting conditions.

The rolling shutter effect is okay in 1080p. It's noticeable with skewed vertical lines when the camera is panning very quickly but isn't too bad with slower camera movements.

There's just a single UHS-I SD card slot, and it's located on the bottom of the camera, making it harder to switch out cards when using a tripod.

The Panasonic LUMIX FZ80 has a limited selection of inputs and outputs. There's no microphone input, meaning you need to record audio separately if you don't want to use the camera's built-in mic. Also, while it has a Type-D Micro HDMI port, it only supports playback on an external device, not external recording. The newer Panasonic LUMIX FZ80D features a more modern USB-C port for charging.