Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18

As a lot of people on this site already know I am a professional photographer and as such I own many cameras but the camera I am about to review is actually one that I do not personally own but have been spending a lot of time with of late. At my photography club we have access to many cameras as well as the ones we own, this is very beneficial to a serious photographer because different cameras operate in slightly different ways just like the photographers themselves. I gave this one a few weeks run out on the advice of a friend and what sound advice it turned out to be. The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18EB-K is not a DSLR camera although it might look ...  Read the complete review

I had been after a Digital SLR for some time, and when the opportunity arose to buy one I did just that. Well, that's not actually technically true. By rights this camera is not a digital SLR, but in fact a compact 'superzoom' camera, it looks like a digital SLR and definitely performs like one though. I had been saving for a while, not really with anything particular in mind to buy at the end of my saving spree, just in the knowledge that if I saved for long enough then I could eventually buy something that I would not normally be able to. As it turns out, the product I ended up buying was this very camera and I have to say that I have not been at all disappointed with ...  Read the complete review

How do you start to describe this camera. Well I guess the lens is as good as place as any. The high quality Leica lens is the main reason you'll want to buy this camera. The optics are highly regarded in professional reviews which consistently rate the FZ18 head and shoulders above it's competitors. It has an outstanding focal range which is the equivalent to a 28-504mm zoom on a 35mm camera. There is inbuilt image stabilization to help cope with this huge zoom which works very well... but obviously it can't perform miracles so you will still get blurred images if shooting handheld shots at 18X in low light levels. When used in normal light or with a tripod, images are ...  Read the complete review

After developing an interest in photography through a previous job, I was keen to get an SLR camera. Having pestered my parents in the run-up to Christmas, I received this camera, and it was love within a few hours! My parents, understandably unsure of whether my new love of photography was simply a passing phase, had seen this as a good compromise between an SLR and the compact digital cameras. And they were right. The camera is lightweight and easy to use. I never actually read the instruction manual, but instead prefered to play around with settings and find what worked for me. With an impressive zoom and good size digital display screen, the quality of ...  Read the complete review

Prior to buying this camera I had little experience with digital cameras. My previous Olympus SLR had served me well but the future is digital and I was fed up with carrying around the cumbersome zoom lens. What I needed was a camera with a reasonably high pixel count and with a very good zoom capacity. I also wanted something that could act like a 'point and snap' if necessary. In steps the Panasonic DMC-FZ18. It comes in black or silver. For some reason sometimes one colour is cheaper than the other and as I result I ended up with the silver version. The -S or -B at the end of the model number tells you whether it will be silver or black - ...  Read the complete review