Panasonic DMC-FZ30

Anybody own one or have had a chance to use one?

I'm considering buying. I do like the zoom & 8meg.

I'd like to find out how it performs.

 

I have one for about a month now and love it.
I used to think I only wanted a camera using AA batteries, but now I love
that the battery is so simple to slip in. No more worries about which way
the battery goes. It only fits one way. Also, Its so much easier handling
one battery instead of 4 AAs. Also, battery is much lighter if you are
carrying a few spares. Since you can get replacements for about $20, I'm
over the AA preference.

I think the price is very reasonable for all the remarkable features packed
into this camera. You can get them now for about $550.

SD cards have gotten so cheap, i just got a 2 gig card for $125. 1 gig
cards are about $60.

Noise, which is written about so much, is so slight and much lower at high
iso than my last camera which was an Olympus C-750UZ. So, I couldn't be
happier. Focus is very fast, manual focus is great, zoom ring is the best
feature. So many good things.

Ed
"Andrew MacPherson" <> wrote in message
news:memo.20051010020537.3100A@address_disguised.address_disguised...
> In article <ALg2f.3325$gj1.1743@fed1read05>,
> (Al) wrote:
>
> > Anybody own one or have had a chance to use one?
>
> http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1033&page=1
>
> Lots of FZ30 discussion there. I really like the feature set (particularly
> the manual focus ring), but the high-ish price and additional cost of
> switching to proprietary batteries and SD cards has put me off so far. The
> noise issue I could live with.
>
> Andrew McP