Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 10MP Digital Camera (Silver)

In brief: really easy to use, fabulous picture quality in almost every circumstance, well-constructed body, high-quality lens, better than average flash, great image stabilization even at the highest zoom, satisfyingly compact. I haven't used the video except by accident so I can't comment on that, and I don't use the included software so I can't comment on that either.

This is my first digital camera so I have nothing to compare it to other than what friends and family say about their own digital cameras. Judging from their comments, the DMC-ZS3 is easier to use, has more features and produces higher-quality images than anything they have in the same price range (it was a gift, but I think it cost about $275 at the time).

I have two physical complaints, but they're pretty minor. One is that the mode dial atop the camera is easily shifted, so sometimes it's in the wrong position when I pull the camera from my pocket. I've missed some shots from having to return to the mode I usually use, which is the Intelligent Auto. It doesn't happen all that often, though, so it's not a big deal--just momentarily irritating.

The second is that the battery runs out of juice fairly quickly if 1) I leave the camera on between shots, and 2) I review the shots I've taken. The freedom to take a lot of shots without racking up major film and processing costs is new to me, as is the opportunity to review a shot immediately, so I tend to do a lot of both. And I like to leave the camera on so I don't have to fire it up every time I see something I want to shoot. On average I'm getting about 200 shots between charges, which seems to be fairly low compared to what other reviewers are saying. I guess I'll either have to change my habits or get a couple of spare batteries.

That said, after using it for about three months I'm completely in love with the camera. It does everything I want it to do with almost no effort on my part. The Intelligent Auto mode is wonderful--it gets the settings I want probably 80% of the time--and the scene modes work well for most of the things I can't get right in the IA mode.

As an example, I took a shot in IA of some low-flying seagulls in front of a breaking wave, with a promontory in the frame about a half-mile away, and it was almost perfect: it caught the details of the wave perfectly, including the spray blown off by the wind; the gulls were not blurred in the slightest; the land was perfectly in focus. This was at about 6x. The shutter speed was perfect (1/800) and the aperture was really close to perfect; all I had to do was fiddle with the contrast and brightness a bit in my editing software and I had a stunning shot of a scene that I had only a couple of seconds to frame and capture. (It took me about 50 tries to get what I wanted but that's just because seagulls don't take direction very well.)

The zoom is fantastic, the 25mm wide angle is pretty much fun, the lens is great and after some experimentation, I can get the automatic settings to do just about anything I want. I can understand why really experienced photographers might want more flexibility with the manual settings, but for me, and I think probably for most people who aren't professionals or really dedicated and technically proficient amateurs, the available settings are way more than adequate.

Last but not least is the quality of the image stabilization. I don't have the steadiest hands but even zoomed all the way in, I can count on one hand the number of daylight pictures blurred because of camera shake. I've even taken shots that weren't blurred when I was actually moving the camera, which should be physically impossible. There's a limit to it, I've had some blurry low-light pictures because of the longer exposure, but it's otherwise really, really good.

I don't have a large format printer so I haven't seen what the photos look like when printed at the full 15x20 in-camera size, but I've been reducing them to 7.5x10 and increasing the resolution, and even on my mediocre printer they look great when printed on decent paper. No doubt a better printer and more expensive paper would do them more justice, but with what I have they're certainly suitable for framing.

So: If I haven't made it clear yet, I really, really like this camera and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't need the flexibility of full manual controls.

We tried several other camera and found the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 to produce great pictures. It's small enough to fit in a jacket pocket or a small purse. The camera has several setting that allows you to take some control or just keep it on auto mode and it take great pictures.

I received this camera as a Xmas present. Given what I had read about it, I was really excited about getting the ZS3. But when I made my first video, I noticed an extremely loud camera noise as it zoomed. I called Panasonic to report this problem. You can see an example of this noise by check out this video here: [...]. I was told that this noise is normal and if I carefully read the warranty, I could see that Panasonic was not responsible for camera noise. But, as you can see, if you watched the video, this noise seemed extreme. So we returned it to Costco where it was originally purchased and got a new DMC-ZS3. This camera had the same problem. So I decided that the noise was normal, but I was very disappointed with this aspect of the camera. I then sent a video to another owner of the same camera and he said that the noise I was experiencing was about 10x what he observed in his own videos. So I called Panasonic again and after a very long discussion, they offered me a refurbished DMC-ZS3 in return, but the process takes about 3 weeks. I'm posting this video to see if anyone else has had this experience.
The visual quality of this camera's videos is outstanding. The still image quality is fairly good.

The only con is that their space-saving video format, AVCHD is not a very widely supported standard. The videos won't sync with iPhoto, for instance. You have to either use enormous MPEG video or manually copy the video files from the camera's SD card. Both formats look great, though, and it's nice that they have an option.

I decided to return this camera after spending a week with it on my vacation to Florida. I wanted to get a point and shoot with decent video recording. Those flip video HD cameras are nice and small, but no optical zoom, so I went with this instead. The video recording only worked half of the time. I kept getting errors saying the speed of my card was too slow and it would stop recording. I was using an 8gb Transcend class 6 sdhc card. Very disappointed.