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One of the lightest and smallest ultra-zoom digital cameras on the market, the Panasonic DMC-FZ5 will appeal to photographers who want to capture those long shots, without the weight and expense of a digital SLR. A 12x, imagestabilized, optical zoom may be the main attraction, but the FZ5 has plenty of other attributes to keep advanced amateurs and snapshooters happy.
Available in black or silver, the camera's mostly plastic body is surprisingly well-built. Designed for ease of use, the FZ5 is dotted with dedicated control buttons, so quick setting changes are a breeze. People with larger hands should beware; even with small fingers, it's difficult to operate the four-way arrow pad.
With a solid assortment of manual and automatic features, the FZ5 will appeal to a range of users. Options for aperture, shutter, full-manual exposure and other advanced features are complemented by "simple mode" and scene modes for the snapshooter.
The FZ5 performed quite well, with minimal shutter lag, fast flash recycling, speedy auto focus (even in low light), a very responsive, smooth 12x optical zoom with a range of 36mm to 432mm (35mm equivalent) and three continuous shooting speeds. (These work best with a high capacity, high speed SD card; too bad only a 16MB card is included.) The optical image stabilization worked very well and allowed us to shoot by hand at shutter speeds and telephoto ranges that otherwise would have blurred without using a tripod. As are all ultra zooms, the FZ5 is equipped with both an LCD and an EVF (electronic viewfinder). Both worked well in all but low-light settings, where they were as dark--or darker--as the scene.
Image quality was very good. Our test shots were sharp, well-exposed and exhibited wellsaturated and accurate colors. We had to enlarge an image 200 percent to find even a hint of purple fringing, and even then its presence was marginal. Also, noise was kept under control up to about ISO 200. Not bad for an affordable, image-stabilized ultra zoom.
-THEANO NIKITAS
DMC-FZ5: 
Panasonic | www.panasonic.com | 800-405-0652 | $500
Pros: 12x image stabilized optical zoom, flexible feature set for experienced users and snapshooters, good performance and image quality, bundled lens adapter and lens hood.
Cons: Small control buttons, built-in flash vignettes lens causes shadows when shooting at a downward angle, below average movie quality.
Requires: Power Mac, USB port, OS 9 or OS X
macHOME recommends: High capacity, high speed SD card
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