Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7 6.0 Megapixel

I was looking for a good buy in an extended zoom camera on ebay, and I did a lot of research on the leading brands for point-and-shoot extended zooms. I looked at Olympus (longest zooms), Fuji, Kodak, and finally noticed the Panasonic Lumix camera showing up as comparison standards in many of the tests.

Reviews on the Panasonics were quite good, and seemed to avoid the inevitable "except for" flaws that showed up in the other reviews.

The DMC-F27 is an out of production camera, dating from 2006 and carried into 2007. It's been superceded by the FZ8 with another megapixel of resolution, but little else of significant improvement. The FZ7 showed up as a new item on ebay, and I purchased at a good price, less that what I would pay retail for the bottom of line extended zooms.

I find the Panasonic controls are well-located and intuitive. It takes excellent pictures, is lightning fast to focus, and fast on turnaround; one of the reasons for my purchase was fast recycling between shots in comparison to many of the other cameras.

I have yet to really test it, though I have taken pictures under most normal situations and been happy. Shots are sharp and appear sharp corner to corner (though most of these camera show some softness in corners when you delve deeply into them; certainly fine for normal viewing.

I was pleased to find that the 12X zoom is actually more when you run with a lower resolution setting. I see no reason to take huge pictures suitable for printing off into almost posters when you are likely only going for 8 X 10 if not smaller and the resolution for that is fine. I set my shots for the 3m setting, yielding me shots 2048 X 1536, and the zoom takes the centre out of a larger resolution and gives what really is a 16.5 power zoom at that resolution, without resorting to digital zoom! This is almost to the Olympus 18X zoom, and that much of an extension is difficult for holding solid in any event.

The lens extends out relatively far for zoom, but certainly less than the Pinoccio-like extension of some other cameras. It's equipped with a Leica lens, for many decades known for being one of the world's finest companies for lenses and cameras.

The only things I don't like are things I have to learn... unless it has a setting I haven't located yet, the flash has to be opened manually (button on top left) to have the flash on; you tend to forget this and it will take the picture without flash, many times OK for exposure, but soft because of slow shutter speed. Secondly, when you forget the lens cap in turning the camera on, it gives beeps and a message to this effect, and you have to tap the right arrow to clear this (after removing the cap). The right arrow is a little more tricky to quickly find than just tapping the joystick (a special feature on this camera for moving through menus and reviewing pictures), or just half-pushing the shutter--- these would have been easier things to clear the lens cap warning feature.

I'm only a few weeks into ownership, but at this point extremely pleased with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7.

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Update after a year of owning... still very pleased with the camera. Pictures are excellent. Took many shots recently of para surfers in the DR, fast action as they swept past, and the focusing ability was excellent on these difficult targets. I sometimes detect a slight smearing of the colors, particularly red(effect of angles of refraction), at extreme zoom range (16.5