I did much research before purchasing this camera because I additionally wouldn't enjoy the time or money that most people apparently needs to be doing the eBay revolving door thing. Some tips i stumbled on realize is, disappointingly, there isn't a clearly superior compact or ultracompact camera you can get. You will find only cameras with greater or lesser compromises and the trick is simply finding the one you possibly can experience. The Lumix TZ5 had been a good travel companion and been found to enjoy few flaws.

Since it irritates me when you say they can participate in a great deal of research after never share it (doesn't that irritate you?), here are some for the cameras I eliminated in accordance with my (not your) criteria:
Fujifilm FinePix F100fd (difficult menu design, pink banding issue), Canon PowerShot SD890 IS (reported awful handling and poorly designed controls), Casio Exilim Card EX S10 (No image stabilization, very slim, image quality ok, weak zoom, tiny controls), Casio Exilim EX S880 (No image stabilization, reported poor image quality), Olympus Stylus 850 SW (reportedly poor video shooting, poor battery life), Pentax Optio V10 (No image stabilization), Casio EX Z1080 (Reduced pixels as compared to others, 38mm starting range), Panasonic Lumix DMC FX55 (Reportedly fails to get results on image quality, no viewfinder, larger), Ricoh Caplio R7 (No optical viewfinder, very noisy, some barrel distortion when fully extended, poor customer support?, reported quality mediocre), Pentax Optio A40 (Reportedly poor autofocus), and Canon PowerShot A470 (No viewfinder, no image stabilization, weak zoom).

Unfortunately, doing this research meant I didn't obtain Lumix TZ5 till the day my day at Amsterdam I have been literally reading the manual into your carry on. I would not recommend this, nevertheless it does be the good crash test for which your camera could (and will not) do out of the box.

As you almost certainly know, this may not an ultracompact but it is less big as some reviewers figure out. Could slot in a considerable pocket but it is rather heavy and unprotected because environment and so i got a LowePro case hard that sat on my belt. Worked well, allowed for really batteries and Facts, and access was quick for candid shots.

Things that worked well:
* The Intelligent Auto mode worked pretty much on most situations. I propose staring at the exposure compensation settings since i have was mandated to begin using these often in high contrast and full sun situations.
* One handed operation successful.
* Menu system was pretty intuitive for basic functions.
* Zoom is amazing and E.Zoom setting was valuable. Make sure to read how to change the "extended optical zoom" which helps you to go out to 16.9x at reduced picture quality (My personal opinion you 'must' have display quality set at max 9MB and this is then reduced to 3MB). I didn't take advantage of the digital zoom.
* The screen is gorgeous and also playback is amazing many people commented on this subject.
* Taking video is pretty easy, though We'd have preferred a control button in place of having to rotate a dial. Take care on playback to differentiate between what exactly is still picture and precisely what video I accidentally deleted some video because I thought people were poor still shots, instead of the start of the video.
* If ever the dial is accidentally rotated, the digital camera don't can help you take a picture and soon you correctly choose an actually setting.
* Fairly quick start up not stellar except for bad.
* Can create something called Travel Date, that should organize pictures by 1st, 2nd, 3rd day. This was useful when sharing pictures in order to help you to can recall the chronology of one's trip.
* You can zoom while taking video, although more slowly than with still shots.

What didn't work nicely:
* Regardless of you read, the pretty LCD screen is not an replacement for a view finder even when you apply the Auto Power LCD option to compensate. In daylight, even about the brightest setting, the screen washes out. One other issue I had was We in order to my glasses to compose on screen, that had been a headache with rapidly moving candid shots. I thought this was the actual disappointment and that i took off one star for this purpose.
* Certain functions within the camera will for sure are employed in certain settings. As an example, you possibly can only set the self timer for 10 sec in IA mode, histograms is not to be displayed in IA mode, exposure settings are only able to provide in normal mode, extended optical zoom are not applied to movie mode, etc. It is usually frustrating, sign in forums miss a good quality shot, without having that memorized. I imagine all cameras can be like this, but thought We would mention it since efficient discussing an out of the box experience.
* The doorway with the sockets relating to the right hand side comes open easily (just isn't going to lock closed but only snaps shut), the industry hassle at times. We are concerned that it will snap off some day.
* Unneeded, the flash is underpowered.

Overall, What i'm very pleased of the TZ5 and impressed while using the pictures and video it produced especially since i have had so very little knowledge about it. My best mate, who is a movie maker by trade, have also been impressed using the camera. It really is larger than Appraisal have liked, nevertheless trade off for just a 10X zoom was worthwhile in my situation.

Do purchase an extra battery I went through both batteries in 4 hours of shooting, mostly stills but some video. Big hassle to move out from juice involved with built. A SD Extreme III 8GB was recommended in many reviews therefore it worked well for me, especially with shooting video. In doing research about purchasing a camera, the single most helpful websites I stubled onto was the "What Camera Do i need to Buy?" forum along at the Video camera Resource Page [...]
In going through the reviews here on Amazon with the TZ5, know that there're organized by color, check each color for specifics of this camera.