Panasonic FZ7K

K as in black. There is a silver version which looks pretty cool too...but I was attracted from the start by the black one since it looks more professional and perhaps, more resistant. Yep, I finally got to change my digicamera. Until now, I took all my beautiful pictures with a 3.2 mb Pentax Optio 30 camera, which I must say, did a lot of things in a great manner. Also had a lot of features and settings that were way over the similar competitors' cameras in the same class. The heir is a Panasonic FZ7. Why? three things: lens & zoom, OIS and price. You cannot go wrong with Leica DC Vario Elmarit especially when you have the OIS image stabilizer from Panasonic. ALL this for under $300. Isn't neat?

Among strenghts:
- high-quality Leica DC VARIO-ELMARIT 12x optical zoom (equivalent to 35mm to 430mm on a 35mm film camera)
- Panasonic's MEGA Optical Image Stabilizer
- Mega Burst continuous capture 14 images @ 3 frames per second
- It is a true optical system; the image is not electronically processed so there is minimal degradation and exceptional picture quality
- both automatic and manual controls
- Panasonic LSI Venus Engine II
- a large 710 mAh battery to help extend the amount of pictures taken on one charge; and it last incredibly long time. I don't think I'll buy a spare
- 16 scene modes; 4x digital zoom; color viewfinder; 2.5-inch LCD monitor
- normal 4:3 (640 x 480) and 16:9 wide (848 x 480) VGA motion image recording

Weaknesses so far I haven't found obvious ones, especially since I am still trying to learn what the camera can do.