Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7 Digital Camera

It is easy to take good pictures with this camera. One of my favorite features is auto review with zoom. With this turned on, you can instantly see if you got a good shot. As soon as you take a picture, you see the picture for one second, and then a 2X version of the center of the picture for another second. No more wondering if the shot was in focus.

The camera is light weight and easy to grip. The controls are all easy to operate. I have a tendency to block the auto focus light at the top left, but I just have to remember to grip somewhere else.

The camera is fast. The detailed info from Panasonic says it can take 3 frames per second. That is in burst mode which does not work with the flash turned on. With auto focus on and flash off it can take almost 2 frames per second. With the flash and auto focus turned on it can take a frame about every 2 seconds. This is assuming that the scene is somewhat lit and at least a few feet away. Auto focusing in the dark or close up seems to take several seconds. After 10 to 25 flash pictures in rapid sequence, it slows down. It may take 10 seconds or more to take a flash picture when the flash "gets tired".

The image stabilization really works to let you take sharp pictures at slower shutter speeds or tighter zoom ranges than you could get without it. I took several pictures with and without image stabilization turned on. I found that I usually could take blur-free pictures zoomed in at least twice as far or shutter speed at least half as fast compared to what I could do without image stabilization.

The playback mode offers several nice features. If you zoom out, you can see 6 or 25 thumbnails at a time. Zoom out again and see a calendar, select a date, and see the pictures that were taken on that date. You can also zoom into a picture that you are playing back - up to 16X. You can cursor around to see different parts of the picture. You can also choose to display a lot of information about the picture - when it was taken, what the camera settings were, and a histogram which shows how much of the picture was black (left side), white (right side), and everything in between. You can crop a picture and save it as a new picture, or overwrite the original.

The controls are well thought out and fairly easy to operate. There is a simple mode for people who just want to turn on the camera and start taking pictures. In that mode there are limited choices and few large simple icons on the screen. Image stabilization and auto focus are always on in easy mode.

The P mode works fine in most situations. If you are not happy with the default settings, you have several choices for flash mode, burst mode (taking several pictures at once), exposure plus or minus, white balance, ISO setting, and others.

A knob on top selects different modes. You do not have to change modes to do a quick review of the pictures you have taken. You can simply press the review button and then cursor left or right to review other pictures. Using the zoom control, you can zoom in up to 8X and cursor left, right, up, or down to view any part of the magnified picture. Just press the review button again to resume snapping pictures.

The most used functions are accessible with the press of one button. This includes turning on the flash (flash release button to raise the flash), flash mode (toggles through modes), self timer (toggles 10 seconds, 2 seconds, or off), exposure plus and minus (press the exposure button then cursor left to decrease or right to increase), image stabilization off or on, manual or auto focus, and burst mode. Auto bracket and flash exposure plus and minus are accessed by pressing the exposure button multiple times. Changing the white balance, ISO sensitivity, resolution, and compression modes is accessed by pressing the joystick and then moving to the different options.

You can delete pictures one at a time, or select many to delete and then delete all selected.

You can change the shutter or aperture with the joystick depending on whether you are in shutter, aperture, or manual mode. When in manual mode with auto focus off you can change aperture, shutter speed, and focus. Move the joystick left and right to select what you want to change, and up and down to change it. When manually adjusting focus, a scale shows up on the right side that gives a rough estimate of the distance and the depth of focus. In manual mode, when you half press the shutter button, a meter shows up at the bottom of the screen to show how your settings compare to what the camera thinks the exposure should be.

I do not think I will be setting the focus manually very often. If I want a different focus point than the camera gives me, I can always zoom to what I want to focus on, press the shutter button half way to auto focus, keep holding the shutter button, frame the shot, and press the shutter button all the way to snap the picture. Or if I want to take several pictures with the same distance and focus, switch to manual focus after auto focusing. In the setup menu you can choose between several auto focusing methods. If you like to set the focus yourself there are 2 focus assist modes. One gives you a 2X zoom in the center of the picture, and the other zooms the entire picture 2X. Your choice of focus assist automatically kicks in while you adjust the focus, and goes away when you quit adjusting.

Menus allow you to change many settings. The first thing I did was turn off the noise - no fake shutter noise and no beeps when I press the buttons. The advantage of this and other digital cameras is that you can make it be quiet. I guess that may not apply to SLR cameras.

In auto sensitivity the camera will never select higher than 200 ISO without the flash or 400 ISO with the flash. 800 and 1600 ISO are available only in the scene mode as one of 16 preset scenes.

There are several preset scene modes including fireworks. If you like 1 to 2 second time delay exposures, the results are good. I put the camera on a tripod and used the short timer to avoid camera shake as I pressed the shutter release button. It is a little tricky to anticipate when the fireworks will look their best. I guessed correctly on many of the shots, but was wrong on others. I would like to have a fast shutter speed preset as well. The low shutter speed F8 ISO 80 preset gives a neat blur effect with no noise, but I would like to also be able to capture fireworks as they really look as points of light instead of short streaks.

The camera comes with a 16 Mb SD card - adequate only to see if the camera works. This is only enough for 4 pictures at 6 Mpix and fine JPG mode. I certainly could not live with that. 2 Mb and 1 Mb SD cards are available as well as smaller ones.

The camera comes with a lens hood and adapter. The adapter is needed if you want to use a filter, and / or if you want to use the petal sunshade. You can use both at once. However, you would not be able to adjust a polarizing filter with the sunshade attached. You can leave the adapter attached and turn the lens hood around backwards if you do not need to use it. You should do this or remove the hood when taking flash pictures. You can use 52 mm filters with the adapter. The lens cap is a nice pinch-to-release type.

A USB cable is included as well as a video / audio cable. You can connect the camera to a TV or VCR and view a slide show or movies that you have recorded.

There are 4 choices for movie quality and file size ranging from VGA 30 fps with little compression to half VGA resolution 10 fps with a lot of compression. You cannot zoom or focus while recording a movie.

The manual is informative, well written, well organized, and correct. The basic camera operation is fairly intuitive, but the manual is helpful if you want to be able to use all the features of the camera.

The camera comes with a CD containing software. I loaded Quick Time from the CD so that I could view movies that I recorded with the camera. Quick Time did not work on my computer.

There are 2 different photo viewers on the CD. One of them allows you to view thumbnails, full screen photos, slide shows, and even data about each picture including camera settings. There is no option for deleting multiple pictures with this software. I did not try the photo editing software.

The camera comes with a rechargeable battery and charger. You snap the battery on the charger, flip the AC prongs out, and plug it in. Even if you get an optional DC adapter to run the camera, the battery will not charge in the camera. I bought a second battery from amazon.com. It works fine although I may not believe that it is really a 1000 Mah hour battery compared to the 700 Mah more expensive battery from Panasonic.

Bug report

While playing with the infinite burst mode, I somehow made the camera take continuous pictures and it would not stop. Turning the camera off made no difference. I had to take the battery out to make it stop. I think maybe I pressed the shutter button too many times at the beginning of the sequence. Later I was able to take burst pictures for as long as I held the shutter button, and then it stopped.

Wish list

Auto sensitivity should use 400 ISO if needed. Maybe refusing to use 400 ISO is a not-so-subtle hint to use the flash for dimly lit pictures. However, a flash is not always appropriate. I have always wondered if people at the Olympics and other night sporting events thought that they were going to get a good picture of the field using a flash. At least with digital cameras they are not wasting film.

When the camera is turned off, I would prefer that some of the settings be reset to normal. It is OK for them to stay the way I set them during power save, but I might forget that days or weeks ago I manually bumped the exposure up or down, or manually selected a different sensitivity, white balance setting, flash mode, or burst mode. Those settings might not be appropriate for today's shoot. Forgetting to reset from fill flash mode results in blurry off color pictures when the flash should be providing most of the light. I know that some people want all their settings to stay set no matter what, so there could be a menu choice.

A flip and rotate LCD would be nice and is available on many higher priced cameras. I have such a screen on my camcorder, and it makes those low shots easy. Just point the screen up, put the camera down low, and look down on it. That would be good for shots of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, a baby crawling, a dog cocking his head to chew the end of a bone he is holding between his paws, small wild flowers framed by taller ones, etc. The camera has an LCD mode that allows you to hold it high and look up at an angle to view the LCD. However, there is no look down mode. It would be nice to be able to hold the camera below eye level and still see the LCD. I would use the low mode more than the high mode. My arms get tired holding the camera at eye level, and I would feel less conspicuous when taking pictures with a camera held lower. OK, maybe I should have bought a camera with a flip and rotate screen.

Although this turned into a long review, there are several features that I did not write about. Some of those are covered in the other excellent reviews of this camera. As a matter of fact I read some of them before purchasing the camera.