Evaluation:  
Conclusion: Excellent camera for home use, but should have more dials
Review: I bought this camera for my first-borne. And it takes EXCELLENT pictures. The present modes are special situations are time saver, but I hoped that they could be reached from a separate dial, instead of diving into the menu.
Download the new pictures to the computer is a breeze. Just plug the camera and the software will recognize it and download the new pictures and movies to the computers. The clips and the pictures are saved by their time stamp, and they are saved in folders labeled by the dates they were taken in. Being unable to modify this, or name the pictures, like 'my daughter on her wooden elephant.jpg' on the camera very annoying. Because I only download the pictures when they approach the capacity limit of the SD card (4GB), and by then they would be dozens of them (if not hundreds) and of course I won't remember which was 'my daughter on her wooden elephant'. Also, I can't save them into folders by occasions on the camera, like work, home, weekend, Amazon product reviews...etc The closest is saving them as travel story; The camera gives the option to collect a group of pictures by a specific period, starting from a departure date and arrival date that you have to set. Even with this, you'll see pictures saved in folders as 'first day, second day..etc
Previewing the stored images and clips on the TV is great except for the navigation controls. It is just basic, and could be much better, allowing for example, selecting non-sequential photos, sorting files into images and clips, using more than one marking to mark different groups of images like 1, 2, 3 or H,W,WE or Home, Work, Week end..etc, and preview each gallery alone. This is very important if you have private photos among work photos, and you want to hide them from colleagues. Because of this, I carry two SDs, one for my private family and another for my public friends and word photos and clips.
Otherwise, it's fairly fast and video clips are limited in length only by the SD capacity.
The photos are crisp and great, but not extremely professional
The videos are great for family occasions, but of course a VGA movie at 15 frames/sec cannot compete with camcoders and SLRs. VGA movies at 30 Frames are available, and they are smoother, but they heavily tax the SD capacity. I find the 15 frames a good compromise, and unless you are shouting a very fast moving person (like my daughter sometimes) it's fairly enough for most cases.
The camera is not bulky but still big. I bought a carrying case for it, but I hoped Panasonic would had provided this for me, because the camera NEEEEDs this carrying case. If it was a slim one, then I could put it anywhere in my shirt or jacket.
I recommend it for private non-critical professional work, for its low price, many options, very good photo quality and ease of use.
I did my homework before buying it, and I am satisfied with the time I invested comparing several cameras, and the decision to buy this one.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Fully loaded camera, but pictures are not that good
Review: The camera is small, lightweight and fully packed with manual controls and the possibility of attaching additional lenses. Battery lasts forever, I think I took 250 to 300 pictures (20% with flash) without having to recharge. The pictures come out extremely sharp, color is good not so saturated, but be adivsed that noise is a seroius issue. You dont really want to take picutres with this camera above ISO 100. At ISO 400 pit gets very grainy. Remember to leave the "Noise reduction" setting at "High" in the options menu, it helps a bit. Overall is a four star, would buy it again. I would now go with the FZ18K, which is packed with 18x zoom, sports 8 megapixel and has face detection.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: panasonic lumix
Review: Beautiful pictures from this camera. Perfect weight and nice feel in hands. I have highly reccomended this camera to family and friends.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: Still love it after a year and a half
Review: I'm not an expert photographer, but in my experience using the Panasonic DMC-FZ7, I've found that:
- it takes clear, crisp photos in daylight or using the flash.
- in dim light, the photos have a lot of noise.
- the optical zoom lens is great.
- the macro feature allows incredibly detailed close-ups.
- it's best to use a tripod if you're not using the flash (to reduce blurriness).
I've owned the FZ7 for about a year and half and I still love it and have had no problems with it thus far. My best use of the camera was during a camping trip to the mountains where I got some really good photos that I'm still showing off to people.
The optical zoom feature is INCREDIBLE! I was standing quite a distance from a tree that had a huge hornet (or wasp?) nest in it and I zoomed in as close as possible and the photo was crystal clear.
Two of my absolute favorite photos taken with this camera were a super close-up (using the macro feature) of my cat's face and the photo described above of the hornet nest (using the 12x optical zoom). Awesome.
Evaluation:
Conclusion: good camera great pictures
Review: This is a fine camera, light, small, great zoom and stabilization. Battery life is also good.
The negatives would be the manual focus is a bit tricky to master and the small size leaves your pinky finger with no room. The other negative was the high ISO setting is a bit obtuse as you have to go to scene mode to engage it.
Lens caps seem to get lost as well.
The light weight makes it a bit unstable at long zooms. Michelle Ress USA
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