Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this camera with a little hesitation and skepticism. Could it really take decent pictures with that kind of zoom range and f-stop? Admittedly, I am a tough sell since I usually shoot Canon DSLRs with their L-series lenses, and was looking for a light backpacking/walk around camera for times when I didn't want to carry so much bulk and weight. This weekend I shot hundreds of pics indoors and out, from bright sun to no-flash museum settings. All images were shot in camera RAW and in Program mode, but I let the camera makes its own choices about shutter speed and limited the ISO to a max of 400 (the ability to set a max ISO is a nice feature). I processed all of the images with the "Silkypix" software that comes with the camera (which is a surprisingly capable program). The images were, in short, far better than just good. Some were truly remarkable. In the museum where no flash was allowed, I was able to shoot great macros in low light, then a full-room shot at wide angle, then immediately zoom to 600 mm and grab a shot of something sitting on a desk across the room, all handheld. Outdoors, in bright sun, I was blown away by the crispness of the images at full zoom. And having such a wide range of focal lengths gave me the equivalent of carrying a whole bag of "big" gear. One question that has come up on this board is the camera's low light capability. I would give it a plus/minus here. Once you get past about ISO 400, noise does start being noticeable in the RAW files. By comparison to a more expensive DSLR (e.g. a Canon 7D) the noise becomes quite noticeable at ISO 800, but it is very smooth and could be dealt with via software, I have no doubt. This is an area where someone will have to judge for themselves what amount of noise is "too much" at a given ISO. For me, if I knew I was going to do a lot of shooting of moving subjects in low light, this camera might not be the best choice. (Note that if the low-light shooting is of still scenes, the camera performs beautifully.) Given the camera's other remarkable capabilities, I don't think it is much of an issue generally. I haven't played with the video at all yet. Yes, I have a few minor gripes, but they are minor indeed. There is only a little "basic function" printed manual -- the full manual comes on a CD as a PDF file. Having the PDF is great if you need to quickly find a reference, but a printed manual should also come with the camera. For mine, the manual does match the camera, at least as far as I have found. I did not format the memory card, just threw one in from another Canon camera, and the Lumix was perfectly happy. It created its own directory and there have been no issues whatsoever doing it that way. You can quickly get to the format function if you cursor up to page 8 from page 1, rather than going through all the other pages. The menu system is a little complex in some areas and I sometimes find it hard to remember where different functions are buried, but most of those are things you set once and forget about, at least the way I shoot. Build quality is a little plasticky, something you notice if you have mostly owned metal-bodied cameras and lenses, but hopefully the camera will be tough enough to survive some backpacking and such. A nice lens hood is included with the camera, and it will accept 52mm filters. All in all, I am really amazed at this little camera with the huge lens. For my shooting needs - an easy five stars! FOLLOWUP: Just returned from a week-long hiking trip into southern Utah canyonlands and wanted to report that this camera performed exactly as I had hoped. It was very light and far easier to deal with than my Canon DSLR with a couple of L-series lenses. Although I usually shoot RAW, I even shot some straight JPGs and the results were quite good. Still a two-thumbs up choice, from my perspective.