I did a substantial amount of research before purchasing this camera because I cannot have time or money that some individuals apparently needs to be doing the eBay revolving door thing. Things i arrived at realize is this, disappointingly, there isn't a clearly superior compact or ultracompact camera available on the market. There are actually only cameras with greater or lesser compromises and then the trick is how to find the one you may accept. The Lumix TZ5 had been a good travel companion and turned out to acquire few flaws.

Since it irritates me when we say which they start a lot of research after which you can never share it (doesn't that irritate you?), every on the cameras I ruled out dependant on 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, picture 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), Pentax Optio V10 (No image stabilization), Casio EX Z1080 (Reduced pixels 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 client service?, 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 try out the Lumix TZ5 till before my visit to Amsterdam I was literally reading the manual on the airplane. I don't recommend this, nevertheless does function as good crash test for the purpose the camera could (and can not) do out of the box.

As most likely know, this may not be an ultracompact but it is much less big as some reviewers see. Could match a sizable pocket however it is rather heavy and unprotected in this particular environment then i got a LowePro case as it that sat on my belt. Worked well, allowed for really batteries and Sdcard, 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 been required to utilize these often in high contrast and full sun situations.
* One handed operation useful.
* Menu system was pretty intuitive for basic functions.
* Zoom is amazing and E.Zoom setting was very helpful. Be sure to read how to operate the "extended optical zoom" which permit you to go out to 16.9x at reduced picture quality (I feel you need display quality set at max 9MB this will be reduced to 3MB). I didn't makes use of the digital zoom.
* The screen is gorgeous and then the playback is amazing lots of individuals commented with this.
* Taking video is pretty easy, though I will have preferred some control rrnstead of difficult rotate a dial. See to it on playback to differentiate between what exactly is a still picture and what exactly is video I accidentally deleted some video because I assumed these folks poor still shots, rather than the start of the video.
* When the dial is accidentally rotated, you is not going to permit you to go on a picture unless you want to correctly choose an actually setting.
* Fairly quick start up not stellar yet not bad.
* Can put in place something called Travel Date, that'll organize pictures by 1st, 2nd, 3rd day. This is useful when sharing pictures so to enable you to remember fondly the chronology on the trip.
* It is possible to zoom while taking video, although more slowly compared to still shots.

What didn't work effectively:
* Regardless of the you read, the pretty LCD screen is no replacement a view finder regardless of whether you use the Auto Power LCD option to compensate. In daylight, even at the brightest setting, the screen washes out. Different problems I needed was I had created to take out my glasses to compose on screen, this was problems with rapidly moving candid shots. He did this the greatest disappointment and that i became popular one star in this.
* Certain functions of the camera will surely are employed in certain settings. For instance, you could only set the self timer for 10 sec in IA mode, histograms cannot be displayed in IA mode, exposure settings are only able to be utilized in normal mode, extended optical zoom should not be utilised in film mode, etc. It usually is frustrating, and miss a good shot, if you don't have everything memorized. I imagine all cameras have a resemblance to this, but thought I will mention it since i am discussing an out of the box experience.
* The door on the sockets in the right hand side comes open easily (is not going to lock closed but only snaps shut), which is a hassle sometimes. I will be concerned that it's going to snap off a day.
* Needless expenses, the flash is underpowered.

Overall, My organization is satisfied with the TZ5 and impressed with the pictures and video it produced especially since i have had so little experience with it. Mate, who is responsible for a show maker by trade, was also impressed together with the camera. It is bigger than I'd have liked, however potential upside in a 10X zoom was advisable in my situation.

Do go in for an extra battery I had both batteries in 4 hours of shooting, mostly stills however , many video. Big hassle to exercise of juice during your entire day. A SD Extreme III 8GB was recommended in most reviews and it worked well personally, particularly with shooting video. In doing research about getting a camera, probably the most helpful websites I uncovered was the "What Camera Must i Buy?" forum along the Camera Resource Page [...]
In studying the reviews here on Amazon for any TZ5, keep in mind that they're just organized by color, so check each color for specifics of this camera.