This is the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ7 (called DMC-ZS3 in the US) . It's a fantastic little compact DC with a 25-300mm lens (with image stabilization) and 720p HD movie recording. What more could you want? It's focal length covers pretty much anything you'd encounter inside and out and it lets you take decent looking HD movies (naturally, it can't compete with an actual camcorder but it still does a good job at casual shoots).
The 300mm is a life saver for shooting photos and videos during wakeboarding. My old Ixy 910IS only went up to 105mm, so after cropping I was left with a tiny image. The Pany's 300mm is more than enough (I find myself shooting at 200mm) to allow for large photos even after cropping. And best of all, it has a Hi-Speed Burst mode, that lets me shoot at 6fps (caveat: the camera limits max resolution to 3MP). This feature makes capturing the right moment a heck of a lot easier than before:
Naturally, it still takes some practice to time it right. Shooting a moving target from a bumpy boat is no easy task. Using burst mode, my friend and I fired off over 700 shots and a majority of them looked like this (that splash you see on the left is me making a landing):
Still, with 700 photos, the odds were in favor of getting a couple of good shots. Amazingly, my wake buddy was able to capture shots of me smiling. That's right: Me...Smiling. People who know me know I generally default to a blank expression. And whenever I wakeboard, I always have a scowl on my face and clenched jaws. So I must have been giddy from all the jumping I did because I was smiling in a couple of photos.
Ah, here we go. Back to Mr. Pouty McScowlington
BTW. I put up a quick and easy review of the Pany on my fotop site: http://www.fotop.net/teruphoto/Panasonic_DMC_TZ7
I've only had the camera for a week but I look forward to getting more acquainted to it.
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