I was so excited about this camera and ordered it on the day it came out - it seemed like the perfect compromise camera as I couldn't afford a DSLR and wanted something better than my regular point and shoot.

Unfortunately though, I was really disappointed with the results. Yes, it's a nice camera, it feels good and is easy to use and hold, it is fairly portable and compact (compared to a DSLR) but still has the whopping (26x) zoom and 10MP. One feature I did like was the HD movie recording with stereo sound, this was not something I bought the camera for but I did find myself using it quite a lot. The disadvantages are the shutter lag you get and the fact that (even though it's quick) sometimes by the time I'd turned it on, I'd missed my subject. The battery life is not amazing either, and the thing that annoyed me most was the battery would be fully charged and then suddenly drop down to half an then empty in a space of about an hour.

Overall, it's a good camera, it's just not exactly what I wanted. My advice would be if you want something a bit better than a point and shoot then go for this, if you can afford it though (or it takes an extra 6 months of saving) wait and get a DSLR.