Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5

Good – This camera is awesome during the day and during bright scenes. It is quick, has a stunning Leica lens and is small and very light weight but feels very well built. The camera has a lot of manual control but I would prefer a few more aperture stops and some more speeds. The only thing letting this camera down is its poor low light performance. Without ample light it becomes grainy. Another disappointing this is the fact that the viewfinder becomes unusable during very low light. As a consequence long exposure shots are extremely difficult to take. Nice and light weight, great pictures, great zoom, easy to use The price dropped to half in one year, the grainy low light performance, the poor low light screen visibility

Good – Easy to use camera that takes clear and sharp pictures pretty much all the time. You can pull the camera out very quickly, get all your required settings in place in a relatively short period of time and rely on it to pretty much always take good photos. Brought this camera while on holiday in the States and instantly fell in love with it. Nice and compact (compared to an SLR) relatively light and easy to use controls even for someone like me with sausages for fingers! I was a bit worried about buying a camera with AF only (after having a bad experience with an old Canon SLR that was pretty useless) but I was instantly blown away by the responsiveness and accuracy of the AF on this camera (and that’s without having to turn it onto auto-hunt which obviously sucks a bit more battery.) The 12 X optical zoom and the quality of images through the Lecia Lens is something to behold and I found it really hard going back to my old digital camera on the odd time my partner and I swapped cameras. Battery life is average to very good. I did run out of battery once right in the middle of the Washington DC monument area but it was more bad management on my part and to be fair the camera gave me plenty of warning (thank god for having a 2nd camera.) One useful thing is that the battery charger is really quick to bring the battery up to full charge again so no waiting around for 5 hours for a battery charge which is important when you have a proprietary battery. Since I’ve got home I have had a chance to use the camera for indoor night shooting parties etc and with the auto-hunt turned on and plenty of allowance for the flash I got some pretty good head shots of people which for my skill level I was pretty happy with. See Delywn's 40th birthday on my website for examples of this. One other feature I like on the camera is its ability to take wide aspect ratio (HDTV) shots. Really handy for showing slide shows if you happen to know someone with a flat screen TV that has a SD card slot. The images play natively straight out of the camera so no need to go through the PC stage if you want to do a ‘what I did in the holiday” slide shows for your guests. Image stabilisation works well although at 9 X optical zoom plus it does tend to struggle a bit .The mini tripod came in handy for that sort of thing. A few people have complained about the shutter noise which just a sound byte turned on by default in the camera. They need to take time to read the manual - Muting this sound effect was pretty much the very first configuration change I made to the camera. Other features of note: - Impressive multiple shoot capibility. - Easy to use video camera mode. Microphone has a good dynamic range. - Nice menu system. Logically laid out and easy to use. - Quick start-up time Pity it was only an 5 MXP camera although for my purposes this is not really a limitation. I see the DZ30 has now come out with 8 MXP and they have gone back to Manual and AF. Maybe I need a 3rd camera.... There's neve a good time to buy these things although I was pretty happy with what I paid for it and I got a 3 year warranty. A bit of noise at high ISO but not too much to be worried abotu for a camera in this price range

Good – Overall I am very happy, basically i have got the features of a base model 35mm SLR camera in a small digital camera that is very easy to use. Price was very reasonable. Easy to use, the simple mode makes taking everyday snapshots a breeze whilst the other settings allow for an amatuer photographer to play around with exposure time etc... Very easy to take well focused photos. great zoom, to get this sort of zoom on my old SLR would have required a huge lens! The burst feature is perfect for photographing my little toddler! indoor photos at nighttime sometimes come out a dreadful orange, i have yet to try all the settings yet can see no reason for this to happen (because it only happens sometimes.

Good – Easy to use camera that takes clear and sharp pictures pretty much all the time. You can pull the camera out very quickly, get all your required settings in place in a relatively short period of time and rely on it to pretty much always take good photos. Brought this camera while on holiday in the States and instantly fell in love with it. Nice and compact (compared to an SLR) relatively light and easy to use controls even for someone like me with sausages for fingers!

I was a bit worried about buying a camera with AF only (after having a bad experience with an old Canon SLR that was pretty useless) but I was instantly blown away by the responsiveness and accuracy of the AF on this camera (and that’s without having to turn it onto auto-hunt which obviously sucks a bit more battery.)

The 12 X optical zoom and the quality of images through the Lecia Lens is something to behold and I found it really hard going back to my old digital camera on the odd time my partner and I swapped cameras.

Battery life is average to very good. I did run out of battery once right in the middle of the Washington DC monument area but it was more bad management on my part and to be fair the camera gave me plenty of warning (thank god for having a 2nd camera.) One useful thing is that the battery charger is really quick to bring the battery up to full charge again so no waiting around for 5 hours for a battery charge which is important when you have a proprietary battery.

Since I’ve got home I have had a chance to use the camera for indoor night shooting parties etc and with the auto-hunt turned on and plenty of allowance for the flash I got some pretty good head shots of people which for my skill level I was pretty happy with. See Delywn's 40th birthday on my website for examples of this.

One other feature I like on the camera is its ability to take wide aspect ratio (HDTV) shots. Really handy for showing slide shows if you happen to know someone with a flat screen TV that has a SD card slot. The images play natively straight out of the camera so no need to go through the PC stage if you want to do a ‘what I did in the holiday” slide shows for your guests.

Image stabilisation works well although at 9 X optical zoom plus it does tend to struggle a bit .The mini tripod came in handy for that sort of thing.

A few people have complained about the shutter noise which just a sound byte turned on by default in the camera.

They need to take time to read the manual - Muting this sound effect was pretty much the very first configuration change I made to the camera.

Other features of note:

- Impressive multiple shoot capibility.

- Easy to use video camera mode. Microphone has a good dynamic range.

- Nice menu system. Logically laid out and easy to use.

- Quick start-up time Pity it was only an 5 MXP camera although for my purposes this is not really a limitation.

I see the DZ30 has now come out with 8 MXP and they have gone back to Manual and AF.

Maybe I need a 3rd camera.... There's neve a good time to buy these things although I was pretty happy with what I paid for it and I got a 3 year warranty.

A bit of noise at high ISO but not too much to be worried abotu for a camera in this price range