The New Panasonic DMC-FZ30 digital camera is one of the most impressive prosumer camera available in the market. With the looks of a pro digital SLR and features that will cover most of your "I want this in my digital camera" list, this camera is a thorough contender for the top spot of the prosumer digital camera world. The main features are 8 megapixel resolution, 12x Optical Zoom, LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT Lens & ED Lens, Manual and Auto focusing, Optical Image Stabiliser, Manual Zoom ring to name a few.

Excellent 12x Optical Zoom - LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT Lens & ED Lens:

The DMC-FZ30's LEICA DC VARIO-ELMARIT lens features 14 elements in 8 groups, including 3 aspherical lenses and an ED (extra-low dispersion) lens. The ED helps in reducing the colour bleeding that appears in telephoto shots. It has a 12x Optical Zoom (35mm equivalent: 35mm to 430mm). The new Extended Optical Zoom, which minimizes the image degradation that normally occurs with digital zooming, gives you up to 19.1x power in 3-megapixel photos, and up to 15x power in 5-megapixel photos.

Auto and Manual Focus:

The DMC-FZ30 includes a ring that allows you to manually adjust the focus from 0.98 feet to infinity. This is a very useful feature that is normally available in SLR camera lenses. This is in addition to the standard auto focus modes, namely 1-point, 3-point high-speed, 9-point, spot AF, and 1-point high-speed AF.

Panasonic MEGA optical image stabiliser:

This camera has an optical image stabiliser (better than CCD image stabiliser). The camera has an inbuilt gyrosensor that senses hand movement and stabilises the images that are sent to the CCD with the help of a tiny microcomputer that is built inside the camera.

High resolution LCD with free angle rotation:

The 2" LCD has a resolution of 230,000 pixels. You can change the angle of the LCD any way to facilitate proper shooting angles.

Fast shooting with MEGA BURST® consecutive shooting:

Consecutive shots can be taken at the speed of 3 frames per second at the full resolution. There is another mode of continuous shooting until the memory card is full.

Other Features of this camera are as follows:

• Venus Engine II LSI for robust camera operations
• Eye level color electronic viewfinder with dioptric adjustment
• Program AE, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual and 14 Scene modes
• Macro focus with autofocus down to 1.9 inches
• High Speed and Low Speed Continuous, AE Bracketing and Time-lapse modes
• Built-in flash with auto, fill, slow synchrony and red-eye reduction modes
• Shutter speeds from 1/2000 to 60 seconds (Shutter priority and Manual modes)
• 640x480 QuickTime movies @ 30fps (frames per second) or 10fps with audio
• TTL Auto White Balance, 5 presets and custom set
• Intelligent Multiple and Spot exposure metering
• Plug-n-Play USB, Mass Storage compliant
• Li-ion rechargeable battery and rapid charger included
• PictBridge Direct-Print compatible

The FZ30 has lots of exposure modes to suite your needs. With point and shoot simplicity to fully manual settings, the camera can suite the needs and photographic skills of any member of the family.

Shooting performance is very impressive. The power up takes only 1.3 seconds. The shutter lag is 1/10th of a second on pre focus and 3/10th of a second when autofocus is done. The camera gives very good indoor and outdoor shooting performance.

Picture quality is very good when shot with 8M fine quality mode. Uncompressed TIFF and RAW formats are also available. The 12x zoome will allow a lot of versatility while composing images and the 35mm wide angle will give good landscape and portrait shots. Panasonic also sells optionally a 1.7x telephoto adapter lens and a 0.7x wide angle adapter lens.

 You can record movies at VGA (640x480) or QVGA (320x240) resolution with a frame rate of 30 or 10 frames per second. Sound is also recorded. Zoom can be used during recording. Compression picture noise levels are very low on the video recorded.

The proprietary 700mah li-ion battery will last for 230-280 shots depending on the usage method. The provided rapid charger will recharge the battery outside the camera in around 1.5 hrs.

With the above features, this super zoom camera is some sort of a powerhouse for both amateur and "wanting to be professional" photographers.