Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ7

My parents bought this camera about 2 weeks ago after seeing the ad on the tv. It cost about £125 from amazon, with free delivery, but I haven't really had a proper look around the market and you will probably be able to find it cheaper on ebay.

It is a seven megapixel camera with six times optical zoom, so you get a lot of zoom for your money compared to similar digital 'point and shoot' cameras on the market. Therefore it remains easy to use and is ideal for anyone who is after a reasonably priced, good quality 'Digicam' that just offers the extra deal breaker of having more zoom than its competitors. It also avoids becoming too complex or advanced for the targeted user; my parents for example are far from technical experts and they managed to set up and take pictures without so much as a glance at the manual.

I am not a camera expert and if you are a professional photographer you should take little note of what I have got to say next about the image quality, as I am simply basing it on my limited experience with digital cameras. Though I am sure that very few, if any, professional photographers would be looking for a product in this category.

The photos I have taken so far mainly include the inevitable random test shots, such as sleeping cats, my guitars, my dad's motorbike etc etc. So far I have been impressed with the sharpness of all of the photos and the well balanced colours, which I have found many other digital cameras to struggle with. The photo of my dad's stunning 1200 Suzuki Bandit however, did have a more than desired amount of glare from the tank and chromed exhaust. In fairness though, he had just polished it.

I have also taken a few pictures of my friends' band as they practiced in a darkened garage. Even though it was taking blind pictures at arms length whilst moving around, 90% of the shots came out extremely well and once uploaded to the computer looked even more impressive than the camera's display. Again the only issue was the amount of glare in some pictures, from the drum symbols, but my friends argued that it gave an eerie effect and was perfect for their 'look', so kept all of the 127 pics I took.

I also took a few shots of the horizon at full zoom to see if it maintained its sharpness and balance of colours. In my opinion the sharpness was exactly the same as all of the previous photos, however the colour balance was not quite as well maintained, which was notible even to me.

Throughout all of the shots there was only a very limited amount of red eye and it seemed to only consistently apply to one person from my friends' band in particular. So rather than blame the camera we have mutually agreed that he is in fact some sort of daemon.

The Shutter Lag for taking multiple photos is another noticable, but perhaps over critical issue with the camera. It deals with single shots within half a second but if you then want to take another quick fire shot in succession it seems to take an eternity to re-focus the lense, especially when you're trying to take a number of sequenced motion shots of people jumping around playing guitar. The picture you really want could be missed in this agonising recycle time. Whether the flash is on or off it seems to make very little difference as it can easily recharge in the time it takes for the camera to re-focus.

The general feel of this camera is that its quite bulky and too large to fit into a pocket. A raised grip area on the front helps you hold the camera steady when taking a shot. We've got the black one but its also available in silver as pictured.

Approx Dimensions: 99 x 62 x 33 mm

Weight: 184g

Batteries: Two AA. and Panasonic suggests in the manual that you should be able to take about 250 pictures before needing to replace them.

Memory cards: Built in memory is 27mb (enough for about 9 shots), no memory card is supplied. The camera is compatible with SD and SDHC cards.

Good points:
Ease of use, picture sharpness and overall image quality, LCD display quality, reasonable price.

Where it could improve:
Shutter lag that causes long recycle times.

Overall Verdict:
Very Good, easy enough to navigate thorugh the various functions and computer software. Panasonic would find it hard to make it any easier to use.
It is a solid camera for the price and compared to cheaper models with shorter zoom lenses I think it offers better value for money. Although it has a slow recycle time, so do many of its close competitors and for that reason I would highly recommend this camera over many of the similar ones on offer. To anyone looking for a great family camera that a monkey could take good photos with, definitely take this one into consideration. I am still trying to convince my parents to let me borrow it for my fast approaching holiday in tenerife!