fab camera

Bought this to improve the zoom compared to my old camera, love it. Easy to use, looks good and takes a wonderful picture. Would recommend this camera.

nikon camera

Does take excellent pictures,a really good compact camera.
light enough to carry in your pocket,edit in camera a good feature.
would recommend to friends.

Just what I needed

I couldn't be happier with this camera and it's for that reason that I have been prompted to write a review. I've had a Canon camera before and really like the make so when I was looking for a new one it seemed an obvious choice. I wanted to buy a camera with little fuss and bother that would take good photographs and this does exactly that. I've only had it three days and thus far have only needed to use the auto function - the photos are clear, well focused and good quality and I haven't needed to do a thing! If you're looking for a point and click camera then this is for you. And it's pink.

Brilliant Compact

Only had this camera for a few days but initial reactions are that it is great! The quality of the pictures are amazing, so clear even on full zoom, and the HD video is brilliant - the fact that you can zoom while you are shooting a video is something I have never seen before on a camera. There are some really funky modes that take great fun photos like fisheye effect, and I love the colour accent which keeps one colour and makes everything else black and white.

There are also loads of manual modes for the more serious photographer - I don't know how to use these yet, but hopefully with a bit of practice I will improve my photography skills!

The flash does pop up when the camera is turned on but unlike one of the other reviewers I don't find it an issue. You can push the flash down if you don't want to use it, but you can still hold the camera quite comfortably if it is up.

I'm going on safari later this year and can't wait to use the 14x zoom to get really up close and personal with the animals.

I'd definitely recommend it.

nice camera

My last camera was a samsung but this one has knocked spots off it.I find this a very impressive camera, one of the features is that when you view your photo's in slide show mode, you can have music and diferent ways to view them which is cool.Also you can get very close to a object and the results are sharp and clear.There are still alot for me to do with the camera,so all I can say is it's a nice camera to purchase.

JUST FAB!!!

this camera is great! it arrived to me this morning and this afternoon i've been going round the garden taking some fab photos. the change from Auto to self program helps with getting graphic close ups! and the change of apature is manual so its a real added bonus as you dont get that on most digital cameras.

this camera is a great especailly since my old digital camera was so awful. it was a Casio that was just 2 years old and the anti-shake never worked and the pictures were way to exposed when using the flash yet this camera just blends with your setting without any fuss!!!

so im so looking forward to nights out, holidays and outtings with this little baby without lugging my DSLR around all the time.

Nice camera, but Amazon bundled case is too tight a fit

Just bought this camera for my 11 year-old son. He's had it since yesterday and is already taking good-looking photos and I just installed the PC software for him - very impressive, clear and simple to use. He's already used it to upload a couple of photos to Facebook (I may live to regret that...). The automatic photo tagging is a very neat feature - think I'll have to buy myself a new camera now - though he's disappointed to find it won't work on his cat. There's a challenge for you, Kodak!

One negative comment about the bundle that Amazon (currently) have on this page though - the"Lowepro Apex 10AW Digital Camera Pouch" that we ordered with it is too tight a fit for this camera. Fortunately, his big brother has a slightly smaller camera and a slightly larger case so a swap has resolved that issue.

Beyond expectations

My old camera developed a fault and so it was time for a new one. I read reviews and shortened the list to a panasonic and this one. The F80 was much cheaper and my previous camera with which I was very satisfied was a Fuji and so I plumped for the F80. It is small enough to fit in trouser pockets but large enough not to have to fiddle with the controls. I took it with me to a rock festival and that is where it exceeded my expectations. Previous cameras would take videos but with low quality and no ability to change the zoom once filming - a feature I found irritating. When preparing for the festival I found the camera had an HD setting. Even better, when filming I could change the zoom. It won't replace my camcorder but for situations where you can only slip something into your pocket it is perfect. As for the stills, they started in broad daylight and finished in the dark; some were wide angle (wider than my old camera) and some zoomed and I was delighted with them all. I now have my best rock photos I have ever taken. The evening photos had no motion blur yet captured the scene in bright colour. The only downside is that I believe the battery life is shorter than my trusty F10. The total download at the end of the day was about 28GB of video and stills, taken over 10 hours. I was on my third battery.

At this price it's a killer deal.

Nice little camera...SD was hidden surprise

The camera is a great starter for my daughter. Lovely pink!

What came as a surprise - good and bad - was the SD slot alongside the Sony Memory Stick slot. Good as we have SD cards around the house and card readers. Bad cos, like us, many will buy expensive Sony cards and scrabble around for card readers.

Outstanding, far exceeded my expectations

OK, just a quick one.... I change cameras all the time as I like to try things out and have never found one I've been happy with until now...

I bought this for my upcoming honeymoon, we bought 3 different cameras before this one (Samsung ST500, Sony W380 and Canon Ixus 100). We found all cameras to have serious issues with noise, shutter speed and video quality.... So I wasn't really expecting much from this as I had pretty much given into the fact no compact would be as good as my canon slr....

Woah, how wrong was I, first thing you notice is the shutter speed, very very very fast, pictures are bright and clear, with my last camera (the sony w380) about 1 out of 4 came out blurry and all unless a perfect clear day had excessive noise... This take perfect shots everytime..

The video quality is also amazing, I really very pleasantly surprised how well it stood up to night time recording too. I have played back onto my sony 52" LCD and the quality is absolutely perfect....

In the box it comes with the wrist strap, battery, seperate charger, additional rubber cover to protect further, manual etc...

Negatives, there's always a couple of things... firstly the manus look dated and clunky, not as slick as the samsung or sony. It's a little bigger and heavier than I hoped for but now that I have got used to it it's fine. The initial procedure is a bit of a chew on, you have to wet the seals etc to make waterproof, I tohught they'd have come up with some bionic rubber or something by now to prevent this... and finally the batteries, the legnth of power is good but my FT1 spare battery won't work, when buying compatible batteries make sure it has the 'E' at the end for it to work... so get the BCF10E not the BCF10... It's the same battery but with different code... Panasonic are being silly here, as if manufacturers aren't just going to release a new version so annoying my FT1 battery I bought doesn't work...

Overall aside for the little niggles... this takes outstanding quality pictures, better than the top of the range competitor standard cameras never mind waterproof.... and the Video qualtiy beats them all, it's as good as my Sanyo Xacti HD which is a dedicated HD camera...

A little tip....I am using Samsung Plus Waterproof 16gb memory cards, I figured if the camera leaked then spending an extra 20% on waterproof memory was a wise investment....

Am getting married in two days and then taking this on my honeymoon so will update this when I get back (spending a month in asia, singapore, hong kong, thailand, bali, dubai etc, will make for some intersting shots)

A reasonable backup

I bought this camera in duty-free outbound to the Maldives, and was willing to risk wasting £120 given the cost of going there in the first place. All in all it was a risk worth taking.
I own DSLRs and use those for proper photos, but there's no way I was going to be spending the thousands required for DSLR cases and underwater lighting when all I wanted was some half-decent photo and video while snorkelling... and in that regard the Pentax came up trumps.

Would I recommend it as a primary camera? Absolutely not!
Its feature set is quite impressive for the money: it does the usual set of photo modes, face detection, smile detection, basic post-shot editing, 720p video, and yes it's not half bad underwater. The zoom range is pretty good too. However, its noise in even medium lighting - let alone bad lighting - is awful. The underwater footage we got was exactly as we wanted, and dry video was great too: in terms of lighting though we were in shallow equatorial water; I'm not sure how well it would do without such strong sunlight.
Photos are noticeably sub-par compared to an similarly specified 12M Casio Exilim in all conditions.
Battery life is reasonable. We were initially frustrated at being given battery warnings every time we went out snorkelling, but realised that after shooting non-stop photo and video for 2+ hours, it's actually not bad.

Would I recommend it as a niche/backup camera? Sure.
It's cheap, cheerful, and solidly built; and it does a fair job of what it claims to do. The price is reasonable for what you get in return.

Just what i needed!

It's a really nice camera, I bougth it cause my old one died... Photos are very nice and its just what you need to catch the moment!!! and certanly the price, perfect!!!! 100% recommended!

qUniue Macro feature

I upgraded from an FX35 to this so I could obtain better zoom (4x to 8x). I then found it had a feature which was kept"secret". I love macro shots and the ZX3 has a special setting which gives you 3x digizoom in macro so that you can get up extremely close indeed, probably greater than 1:1. The"downside" is that if you leave it on that setting you are then limited to 4x main zoom. Having 14 million pixels to play with instead of 9 million, the macro zoom feature doesn't affect the picture as much as trimming/cropping on the old FX35. So all in all, I get a bonus both ways - more zoom and greater macro - and it still works in the same way as my old Panasonic and is almost as small and light.

wanted something smaller.

I am happy with this, but it isn't as sharp as I expected, I have had and do own other Panasonic cameras, I wanted one to fit in my pocket, and this does. It wont replace my larger camera as the results are not as good. the menu selection could be easier, if you want to take a picture in a hurry the subject will have gone before you find correct setting. Also took some of my daughters party [ disco] even on party setting/ or fireworks/night setting /pictures were blurred.

NIKON S3000

LOVE EVERY THING A BOUT THIS PRODUCT, IT'S FANTASTIC LITTLE CAMERA FOR A GOOD PRICE!!!

Very good camera

This camera is excellent. It is cheaper than other Lumix cameras of equivalent spec because it has Panasonic's own lens instead of the Leica lens. However, in my opinion this does not detract from the quality of the pictures at all.

This camera is also known as the FH22 in the USA. Look at the professional reviews and it gets outstanding reviews and so this camera definitely is something of a bargain. It is also basically the same camera as the FS30 (FH20) but has a touch screen.

The touch screen on this camera is brilliant and really adds to it. Use the buttons on the side of the screen to go into a menu, then the different options are presented in the touch screen. Also when viewing photos, you can swipe your finger on the screen and the photo changes. Additionally, the touch screen allows you to touch a particular area of the scene and focus immediately on that- for example the face.

The camera has optical image stabilisation- good for both photos and video and allows you to take indoor shots without the flash and use the zoom without blur.

It does good quality 720p video. It is saved in .mov format. This is not as technically good as AVCHD which some of the expensive Lumix's use, but it is a lot easier to edit and put onto DVD etc. The quality of the video is very good- equivalent to one of the mini HD cams you can buy from Flip or Kodak, but this also has the image stabilisation which makes a lot of difference and makes the film more watchable.

One point to note is that you cannot use the zoom when recording video. This seems to bother some people, but it has never bothered me- you should not really be zooming in and out whilst filming as it looks awful and with my video camera I hardly ever did that. You can set the zoom before starting shooting, then it is fixed in that position.

Each video clip is limited to 2GB which is 8m 24s of HD. You can immediately start recording another. Again, not really a problem because I cannot in all the years of recording video on holidays etc really remember recording more than 8 minutes continuously.

There are many different scene modes, but it also has intelligent auto which seems to do a very good job of guessing what you are pointing the camera at, and applying one of the basic scene modes automatically.

Some of the photos I have had out of this are outstanding- particularly the portraits.

Overall, I doubt you would be disappointed with this camera.

EDIT- note those who complained touch screen is too slow. Update the firmware to 1.1 and the touchscreen is wonderful to use, the new firmware speeds it up considerably!

Sony Cyber Shot Digi Camera

I ordered 2 similar cameras & have chosen this one over the other one,
because of its Xtra feature of panoramic sweep,
which is very useful when taking views of scenery,
where before one would have to take a succession of adjoining shots to join up.
Have just started using camera, which is first digi one for me,
& so far am pleased with its performance.
Am still learning about its functions etc,
but only because I have no previous experience of digis.

disappointed

Bought this ( not on Amazon) but going to return it - as :

1. first time charged - charge lasted less than an hour - had to delete some piccies off the memory card - then went to take some shots - battery exhausted after 6 shots!

2. Now charged 3 times - lasted enough for max 6 piccies each time!

3. Front slider to switch camera on and off - suspect it is opening/ switching self on when I am carrying it around unintentionally - perhaps reason for going flat so quickly!

4. Haven't had opportunity to take enough piccies to decide if camera itself is any use due to duff battery!

Going back to store! ( Shame as it looks great and is a great size etc.)

Brilliant Camera

The camera is perfect for a person who just want to take a good picture without to much knowledge about cameras a person like me. I have had an older Nikon camera which took good pictures and have now replaced it with Samsung ES65 which simply take EXCELLENT PICTURES. I can highly recommend the product to everybody.