Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera DMC-FZ5S user reviews

4.0 stars

"Excellent camera for its price range" on January 6, 2006 by skyline889

Pros: Very reasonably priced, nice slr like design, good image quality for consumer, 12X optical zoom, easy to use menu, manual controls are nice

Cons: O.I.S. doesn't always work very well, poorly designed hood, image artifacts when viewing at full size, plasticky body

Summary: For the price this camera is a very good deal, I bought mine for $400 and am reasonably pleased with it. For what it is, its great just don't expect too much if you are used to slr or dslr performance. The 12x optical zoom is nice but can be troublesome even with the slightest bit of shake, the o.i.s. doesnt completely deal with this. In macro mode I found that many of the photos came out over exposed, pictures in shutter and manual mode come out well though as they allow you to play with the settings. Iso settings are somewhat limited (only up to iso 400 only down to iso 80) At 400 the pictures are useless unless you have some serious noise reduction software, which presumably you don't if your purchasing this kind of camera, even at iso 200 I found the amount of noise a bit unnacceptable. It should be stated though that I am partial to standard slrs I myself owning a vintage nikon f2. Because of this I also did not like the body that was made entirely out of plastic, mind you it did not feel like it was going to break, it felt sturdy, just somewhat cheap. The hood was another thing I didnt care for, it works fine during the day, but sometimes you forget to take it off during night use, and when you upload your pictures to your computer you get a big surprise as the whole top half of the picture will be dark, even with these problems though it is still a wonderful camera, most people won't view pictures at full size anway, most will probably not use the hood as well, so those are a non issue, and the consumer that this camera is targeted for will be satisfied with the amount of manual controls available. For the price it is a much better camera than the sony h1, and just as good as the more expensive canon s2is.