Panasonic FZ2500 First Shots: The “fixed-lens GH4” with a 20x zoom lens begins its trip through our lab

by William Brawley

posted Tuesday, November 8, 2016 at 6:40 PM EDT

Back in 2013, Sony's new RX10 long-zoom fixed-lens camera revitalized the once-popular enthusiast-grade "bridge camera" category, providing a host of high-end features, a large 1-inch sensor and an impressive 24-200mm eq. zoom lens with a constant f/2.8 aperture. This Sony reigned supreme for a while, but soon competitors appeared, including a very popular offering in the form of the Panasonic FZ1000. Now, with the new Panasonic FZ2500, the features and versatility of Panasonic's premium long-zoom camera get bumped up a big notch, so much so you might consider this camera a fixed-lens version of the GH4 given its wide array of shared video features and then some.

Although the FZ2500 sports an altogether similar 20.1-megapixel 1-inch-type CMOS sensor, the lens is all-new, going from a 16x (25-400mm eq.) zoom on the FZ1000 to a powerful 20x (24-480mm eq.) range on the FZ2500. The ISO range remains unchanged, expandable all the way from ISO 80 up to 25,600. If you want to see just how the image quality of this new enthusiast long-zoom changes across the ISO range, we invite you to check out our just-published First Shots set of lab test images.

As always, our First Shots set of images encompass standardized test shots of our Still Life target across the ISO range with both default noise reduction settings as well as the most minimal NR level. On the Panasonic FZ2500 Samples Page, you can view and download both straight-from-camera JPEGs as well as RAW files for all your pixel-peeping pleasure. And, of course, you can compare lab images from the FZ2500 against any other camera we've tested in our handy Comparometer.

To get you started, here are a few comparison shots, first against the FZ1000 predecessor and then against the most recent Sony competitor in the RX10 III.