We used this camera intensively during two weeks in the US and were very pleased with it. With 14 megapixels and a 16x zoom that remains at good definition at extreme ranges there are a few more options that improved our opinion of the camera.

Different shooting modes are accessed using the dial at the top. As I'm no expert photographer I relied on the 'SCN' setting which allows you to choose various different presets such as 'candlelight' 'moving target', 'landscape' and 'portrait'. This automatically alters the shutter speed, exposure and flash to suit to the conditions of the description of the setting. Using the 'moving target' setting allowed me to take some great pictures even when we were going at 65mph.

All of the other photography settings seem to be there such as white balance, video capture, macro vision and playback. Apart from playback I fiddled around with these options but didn't take any good pics, but that's probably my own skills rather than the camera.

We took over 500 photos over two weeks and the camera required charging about once every two days on average, but it did see very heavy use. The shutter button and zoom are located at the top of the camera, and was very user friendly. Indeed, we had people from all over the world offer to take photographs for us and they all seemed to intuitively know how to operate it.

There is no view finder so you're always relying on the display for composition, you can add a target or a grid to assist with composition. Autofocus works well, and the camera appeared to locate and 'track' peoples faces and other targets, keeping them in focus as a priority. I am told this is a new feature with modern cameras, being an evolution of the auto-focus.

Transferring your photos is done via USB to your PC and I there's no dedicated software included to do so, which I found rather refreshing.

The only drawback is that the buttons and controls are very small, so if you have big hairy frying pan hands like me you may have trouble twisting the little dials around without accidentally pressing another button.

In summary, I am not very good at taking photographs, but was able to take lots of acceptable photographs using the TZ-18.