Topic: A review of a compact camera

I have been meaning to do this for ages and Barry's night time photo's reminded me!
As I said some time ago, I treated myself to a small snappy point and shoot camera. this may seem a little odd but I don't always want to take my Nikon on the beach for example, social occasions and I also thought that a snappy camera would be good to put in my pocket when I am out and about with the 300mm lens on.

I also wanted to be able to small amounts of video in the way that we used to with the dimage i.e a minute of places to recreate the atmosphere.

After quite a lot of research, I settled on the Panasonic Lumix TZ7 which I purchased from Camera box online. Camera box was fine, the courier they used was a nightmare but that is a different story and I did have my card cloned shortly after.... In hindsight I would have just gone and bought it from Jessops!

Anyway for now here are my initial impressions of it.
The video is superb. I am very impressed, the quality is excellent although I have yet to play anything back on HD.
There is loads to learn about this camera so plenty for people who like to play. However, it can easily be turned to intelligent auto and the resultant images are of good quality.

I am still playing with the macro facility. It has two settings and each seem to be geared towards slightly different scenarios.

The colour on some of the pre-settings seems a little dull although I have managed to change some of them to a more vibrant setting.

The 12X zoom is damn good. I have seen other people struggle and get blurred images on zoom but the image stabilisation works really well on the camera. This means that the zoom is capable of about 300mm and can be hand held!

Confliction type shot: water, sky and sun in wrong place

Night scene

Sunset

Macro

Zoom in twilight!

I treated myself to a small snappy point and shoot camera. this may seem a little odd but I don't always want to take my Nikon on the beach for example, social occasions and I also thought that a snappy camera would be good to put in my pocket when I am out and about with the 300mm lens on.

Hi Chrissy.
I did the same and I am liking the TZ7. I also have plans of doing some AP/AV. Just waiting for work and weather to co operate.

Hi Chrissy.
I did the same and I am liking the TZ7. I also have plans of doing some AP/AV. Just waiting for work and weather to co operate.

I do think it is a cracking little camera. I find it quite astonishing the way that it handles the light. I have now taken a few bits of video with it and am super impressed with that too.

That has been VERY helpful - I was torn between the TZ7 and the Canon Powershot SX200 IS, now I have some info' from someone without an axe to grind, I'm off to see what sort of deal I can get at the local emporia. (Usually end up at John Lewis - i.e. - "Never knowingly undersold".)