Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7

After much internet surfing and comparison i purchase one of these from currys online for £229(couple of months ago now so prices have come down since) My main aim was to use this for wildlife photos as well as the usual family snapshots. The thing that drew me to this model was the 12x optical zoom and thanks to this i have taken some great bird pictures and even had a few published. The camera operates fantastically on the simple mode it even automatically focuses on moving subjects but focus but the biggest problem for me is that this is a really high spec camera and i am only using about a tenth of the functions. The main ...  Read the complete review

I was tired of not having a decent digital camera (I was actually still using the old film cameras three years ago...) so, as usual, did a lot of net surfing to compare different models. I was definitely on the market for a bridge camera. That is to say, not a compact featureless camera, but not a professional reflex (and expensive) camera. After comparing many models I came across this one. It looked good on paper and the price of about £230 at the time seemed quite reasonable. The camera is not heavy at little more than 300g and does not feel cheap. I thought I was handling my friend's expensive Canon film camera. The buttons are nicely laid out and a large ...  Read the complete review

I was looking for a 12 x camera with OIS, and I was considering a FZ5 when I come across the Panasonic DMCFZ7BS. For just £30 more, I thought it would be better to get a newer camera. This camera was great; a big improvement over my LZ1. The best thing (and selling point) about this camera is its 12 x zoom. What it did not say on the box is that it becomes 16.5 x zoom if the picture is taken below 6MP, which is over 450mm! The OIS works to cancel out hand shake at such huge zoom numbers. There are bags of controls for you to fool around with. You can even set/fine tune your own white balance, the weakest point of most digital cameras. Although having said ...  Read the complete review

When I broke my Olympus Mju recently and was able to replace it on the house insurance, I decided to opt for a camera where picture quality and optical zoom were the important issue. Not the size (I figure with mobile phones having a 3.2 cybershot camera, that's all I need in my pocket) and I can do without another little tiny fiddly camera where I'm scared to place my fingers because they may be in the way. So I was open minded about trying a new (to me) type of camera, possbibly chunkier etc. So off I toddled to my local city centre and wandered around the various camera shops, asked lots of questions and got a lot of advice. In each shop the final thing ...  Read the complete review

I have owned this camera for nearly 2 years now and have had very impressive results. It has 6 million pixels and a 12 x zoom lens. The model I own is actually the same as this but with the suffix K to denote the all black body rather than the silver and black model illustrated, I found this colour more appealing and less prone to sticky finger prints and discolouration. The lens is the real star of this camera made by German specialist Leica. It has a zoom range of 36 - 432 mm which is very impressive in a body of this size. Coupled with the lens is Panasonics Venus II engine electonics, which is both fast and reliable and includes a ...  Read the complete review