I have an FZ50 and so far have had a real positive experience with this camera. Please note that my digital camera experience is limited but I will share some of the things that I like about this camera and also some of the things that still need work.
The things I like
- Lens: crisp sharp photos
- Rapid shutter response (though I hear that it is a little slower than earlier models because of the 10 Megapixel transfer to memory)
- Solid feel and build.
- Easy to navigate menus and functions
- 12xzoom on the lens. Panasonic claims you can get higher zoom than this if you use a resolution less than 10 megapixels but this doesn't sound any different to taking the picture at full resolution and then cropping later.
Some of the cons:
- Noise: The sensor is certainly fairly noisy. The noise reductions software built into the camera works but tends to soften the photo. You are usually better off taking the photo in raw mode and fixing noise later.
- No way to estimate distance for manual focus. My older Sony Cybershot allowed you to set focus to infinity or a number of distance settings. I like the manual focus ring but it would be useful to have distances printed on the ring or shown in the viewfinder.
- Doesn't have a "perfect Picture" button - I guess I'll have to keep practicing...
