Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Where do I start? The features on this camera are amazing. The burst shooting modes, the 1080p video, the 20x zoom, the manual controls, scene modes, handling, and menus, are stunning and as close to perfect as you can get - at any price point for a camera that easily fits into a pocket. This camera seemed a bargain for the features. So why two stars? Poor picture quality. I have a camera with $400-camera features and $125-camera photo quality. Maybe I got a bad copy, but I'm reading other reviews saying the same thing so either production isn't consistent or perhaps some people are less discerning regarding photo quality. Several professional reviews (CNET, digitalcamerainfo, and others) have stated that though this model is vastly improved over the previous top of the line Panasonic compact offering it is still sub-par. The guy from CNET said that "Depending on what your plans are for its photos, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS20's shots are either very good to excellent or unusable". I have to agree. If you never plan on going bigger than 4x6 or maybe 5x7s you'll probably be fine. Comparing the photos from my five-year old Kodak Easyshare C875 showed only marginal improvements in some pictures, but most were about the same - some were worse and the colors seemed washed out and duller than reality. The softness and noise of the photos is noticeable upon close inspection even at regular viewing sizes. Oh, and yes, I did the half-press to allow the camera to focus - so that's not the problem. Using the "Intelligent Auto" feature was frustrating at best. Images rarely turned out nicely and I constantly found myself going into the manual modes to try to make the camera take a better picture. As a father my primary purpose for this camera was taking photos of the kids. When they're doing something cute or funny I don't want to mess around with settings. I want to turn the camera on and capture the moment. With this camera many moments were lost. Also, I had many images blurred from movement while using the intelligent auto mode and I would think a truly intelligent auto should adjust shutter speed for detected motion. The camera seemed to do okay when shooting subjects without a lot of detail and that were not moving. Then there are the burst pictures. The concept is great, but usually people using this feature would be using them in action-type shots. Unfortunately the intelligent auto feature doesn't know how to handle this and the pictures all turned out blurry. All - even with the "Motion Deblur" on and the "iHDR" turned off. Trust me I monkeyed and monkeyed with this thing to figure out what I was doing wrong. In the end I had to conclude it was the camera. The other problem with the burst mode is that, while the 2AF and 5AF photos were okay (though still sub-par), the 10, 40, and 60 fps shots looked like something taken with a prehistoric first-generation cell-phone camera. Horrible and unusable for anything other than having. Even the manual mode shots were mostly unusable at 10, 40, and 60fps. Other quibbles are the FLIMSY battery/SD door and the weird crunching sound from the lens when adjusting zoom - though they're definitely not deal-breakers. Some Amazon reviewers have loved this camera. One said they dropped it from a five-story building and it survived. Impressive. Others have said they're seeing near DSLR quality photos. Good for them. Me? I took well over a thousand pictures with this camera and spent hours adjusting settings to no avail. I'm sending mine back and looking for a different model. Though I'd like to give a different ZS20 another chance in hopes of achieving the type of success some reviewers here at Amazon are claiming, I really think these sorts of quality control issues are unacceptable in 2012. I'm not even sure mine is an isolated incident considering the comments from professional camera reviewing websites. A camera can have all the greatest features but if it can't deliver beautiful photos what good are the features? I was mostly happy with the photos from my five-year old 8MP Kodak C875 so I don't think I'm being too picky. I expected better quality than my C875 - what I got I'm not sure is even up to the level of the C875. By the way, I'm seeing on camera forums that Panasonic is rushing out a firmware update to improve the ZS20 photo-quality. It's not out yet, and it may just be a rumor, but keep on the lookout. While it's too late for me as mine is going back, maybe it will be useful for you. UPDATE: The Panasonic Firmware update for improving night handheld shots is here: [...]