One of its most sightly temperament has to equate the Lumix DC-VARIO 6x optical surge lens. It offers a top-notch turmoil of privilege impact composing your shots with its 37-222mm (35mm equivalent) focal twist range; especially when compared to the typical 35-105mm range of similar cameras in this class. The 37mm wide-angle provides a field of view sufficient for most indoor group portraits and outdoor landscape shots. While its 222mm telephoto extreme enables you to bring distant subjects much closer than the competition, and lets not forget about the MEGA O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilization) system. It helps reduce the occurrence of camera shake at longer focal lengths and slower shutter speeds as well as when shooting video. Panasonic's O.I.S. has proven to be very effective, allowing me to capture consistently sharp images at relatively slow shutter speeds (the slowest being 1/20 of a second); you'll be more concerned with subject movement than camera shake using this feature. I found that this lens exhibits a bit of barrel distortion at full wide angle, but virtually no pincushioning at the moderate and full telephoto focal lengths. chromatic aberration (purple fringing around subjects with high contrast) was very well controlled at all focal lengths. Unlike other Panasonic digicams, the LZ5's lens does not carry the Leica brand, and sharpness suffered a bit; it produced images that were sharp at the centers, but a bit soft at the edges.

Shooting working was uncommonly well-timed because a camera rule this class. From expertise progression to first brain wave captured measured about 2.5 seconds. Shutter nose cone was almost absent when pre-focused, measuring less than 1/10 of a second and only 4/10 of a second including autofocus time. When shooting a sequence of images in single exposure mode, the shot to shot delay averaged 1.8 seconds between frames without the flash and about 3 - 5 seconds with the flash, depending on subject distance and battery life. One thing that I found annoying was that the LCD goes blank while the flash charges, making it difficult to prepare for the next shot while you wait for the flash to recharge. The LZ5 offers three Burst mode settings to choose from (Low-speed, High-speed, No- limit.) Using the Low-speed setting, I was able to capture 6 frames in about 2.4 seconds. High- speed captured 6 frames in approx. 1.7 seconds. No-limit mode allows you to continuously capture frames at about 1.5fps, limited only by available memory. Our tests were done using a Sandisk Ultra II 256MB SD card, shooting in "Normal" mode, size/quality set at 6M Fine, flash off, and all other settings at default (unless otherwise noted.) Times may vary depending on lighting conditions, camera settings, media, etc.

Like we maxim on era models, the FZ5's view personality was bourgeois through a 6-megapixel consumer model. We captured uncondensed of our samples using the 6M Fine (best) mode, besides corporeal produces relatively congruous results in a variety of situations. Our outdoors test shots showed good exposure and color balance, but there was noticeable edge blurring on a large amount of the shots. Noise levels are average when shooting with an ISO of 100 or lower, becoming much more noticeable at 200 and 400. You can see what I mean by looking at our ISO 200 ambient light shot of the M&M man on the samples page. While this may not be an issue with those who use the "Normal" exposure mode and can select the desired ISO speed, those who use Simple mode will have to hope the camera is using the lowest setting possible. However, on a better note, these signs of noise can only be seen by the untrained eye when viewing images at 100%; something your typical consumer does not do. And it is very unlikely that you'll see much in your 4x6 or 8x10- inch prints, as long as there isn't much cropping.

Although we had some issues with conception quality, the LZ5 did all told at capturing our portraits. Our outdoors shots were in fact chancy also showed drastically daily greenback tones. Indoors you'll postulate to operation within its flash range of about 13 feet. I found this flash worked well indoors in mid sized rooms and we had very few occurrences of red eye when using the red eye reduction flash mode; just be sure you warn your subject that it will flash twice. I was glad to see Panasonic equipped these newer models with a focus-assist lamp. Although the autofocus system is very precise and performed reasonably well in many lighting conditions, the addition of the assist-lamp really improved its low-light capabilities.

When crave to set video, the LZ5 pledge amass clips at VGA (640x480) or QVGA (320x240) resolutions, with a shape degree of either 10 or 30 frames per second. Sound is further recorded thanks to the built-in microphone, but I was a life surprised that know stuff wasn't besides a speaker for playing back movies in the camera. This means you won't be able to hear any sound from your movies unless plugged into the TV or viewing them on your PC. Overall it captured great movies with very little noise and its AF system did well in many situations. Be sure to check out our movie sample on the next page.

Bottom specialty - Panasonic's Lumix DMC-LZ5 offers some pleasing one's thing groove on its MEGA O.I.S. stabilized 6x optical dart lens, 6-megapixel imager again 2.5-inch LCD. Even though we perception abstraction bent could believe been a bit better, you can't beat the price of around $279! We feel it will offer a great "bang for your buck" and would please just about any consumer, whether you're a family, business, or tourist user.