Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150: First Look

Hey, there, I'm Josh Goldman, senior editor with CNET and this is a look at the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150. It's Panasonic's top full-sized mega-zoom. It has a price tag to match. However, it offers a lot for that money especially if you're after something that's between a point-and-shoot and digital SLR. For starters, you get this ultra-wide angle lens with a 24x zoom and there's controls on top and on the side of the lens barrel for it. There's a flip-out 3-inch LCD, an electronic view finder, a hot shoe for adding a flash or an external mic, shooting modes are plentiful taking you from full manual for photos and videos to fully automatic. You also get lots of scene modes and then extra options inside of those scene modes. And then you also get things like sliders for adjusting contrast, sharpness, color saturation and noise reduction. Now while it has all of this great features and looks sort of like a digital SLR, its photo quality just won't match one of those. The photos still look like they're from a point-and-shoot. However, quality has improved from its predecessor, the FZ100, and it does capture RAW or RAW plus JPEG without really slowing down performance. Shooting performance is excellent for its class by the way with low shutter lag and shot-to-shot times and very fast per shooting. Its video quality is also very good. So if you need something for both photos and movie clips, this is a solid option. All in all, it's an excellent camera for those that wanna take more control of how their photos turn out. I'm Josh Goldman and that's the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150.