Panasonic_DMC_TZ7k_slantFirst of all, I want to tell readers that I am just an average amateur user of digital photo cameras. I have bought my first camera back in 2002, and it was 2 megapixel Canon A40. Since then, I stayed with Canon and have owned another two of their compact cameras – IXUS 430 (I lost it in some bar back in 2005) and IXUS 40 which I used until few months ago, when its battery cover got broken. At the time when I bought those IXUS camera, the primary feature I was looking for was compact design, so I could easily carry the camera in the jeans or shirt pocket.

It was the time when I was single and going out a LOT, and the photo camera was incredible effective tool to approach girls. You could just simply ask nice lady standing in crowd next to you to make photo of your friends and you, and then show her the photos she took, take few shots of her with her friends and immediately you had the contact established. I believe this method will work today too – I haven’t tried it already for years since I met my lovely girlfriend (I didn’t bring camera with me that night when we met, believe it or not). Since then my focus has shifted, so I am mostly using camera to take travel snapshots, some family and friends photos at different gatherings, and also I enjoy pretty much in making panoramas or pictures of architectural landmarks.

So I decided to start looking for the replacement of my broken IXUS. I could maybe fix that broken plastic cover, but honestly I think it was time to move on and get some up to date camera. Already for months I was thinking of buying HD camcorder, as footages captured with my old DV camera in PAL resolution looked terrible on LCD HDTV. The reasons I didn’t buy HD camcorder yet were the price at the first place – the price tag of almost 1000 euro for quality HD camcorder was quite high, and secondly I knew that I didn’t carry my old camcorder around very often. In average I used to carry it with me only for vacations once or twice per year, and then I was quite lazy to transfer videos to my PC with Firewire and make some decent looking DVD. Having that in mind, I probably made the best possible decision and start looking for one of the new digital photo cameras which capable of taking high quality video.

I could choose between couple of compact cameras featuring HD video – Lumix TZ-7, IXUS 990, IXUS 110, Canon Powershot SX200 IS and maybe few more. Another very tempting option was to go for full DSLR camera like Canon EOS 500D, but then I realized that I will have same problem I have right now with the camcorder – probably I would not carry with me bulky DSLR camera very often, so it would most likely just collect dust somewhere in the closet. Among the mentioned cameras, the most obvious advantage of Lumix TZ-7 was great 12x optical zoom and possibility to use zoom while filming – Canon cameras do not allow you to zoom in and out once you start filming. Design wise, IXUS cameras are most attractive of course, but TZ-7 is not much behind, and in my eyes it is much more beautiful that Canon’s super zoom model SX 200.

And yes – decision has been made -my new camera would be Panasonic Lumix TZ-7, in black color. It is also available in red, silver and few other tones, but somehow these colors look little bit gay I would say. Here is the list of the features that I found on internet before the purchase and which were important enough to help me make the decision:

-          720p HD video capability

-          Great 12x optical zoom

-          Super high resolution 3.0” LCD screen

-          Possibility to zoom in/out while recording video

-          Optical image stabilizer

In the second part of the review you can read about my impressions after I actually bought the camera.