Review of two models of Panasonic Lumix Cameras

I love to take pictures. Lots and lots of photographs. As a hobby not a profession. The first really good digital camera I owned was a Pentax which was decent. This was until a friend told me about the Panasonic Lumix Camera she had, when I told her I was looking to buy a new camera. Immediately I logged on to www.Amazon.com and started checking out the specs on the Panasonic Lumix Digital Camera.

Panasonic has a wide variety of digital cameras and I decided to get the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5A 9.1 Mega Pixel Digital Camera with 10 times Wide Angle Mega Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3 inch LCD in a really nice metallic Blue color. Needless to say, I was in love! I have the exact one shown in the Amazon Ad. Lovely Blue color!

I even bought extra accessories for my camera such as an additional battery and a 8GB SD memory card for the camera. Oh and a cute camera case of course, all from www.amazon.com. I will recommend that anyone who is buying a digital camera and plans to use it when they travel, please buy an extra battery. It does not cost much and will be worth it especially when you are in the middle of Disney Land and your camera battery dies and Cinderella is passing on her float!! The great thing about the Panasonic Lumix camera is that the battery is rechargeable so you won't have to spend money buying lots and lots of AA and AAA Durcell or Energizer batteries like some camera's still use!

Some of this camera's product and technical details which I got from www.amazon.com on the product page include:

1. 9.1 Megapixel resolution
2. 10x Mega optical image-stabilized zoom
3. 3 inch LCD (Which I love!)

So let me tell you in my own terms what I love about this camera. I loved the features - there are tons of settings which allow you to film video clips, take pictures of the sunset, take portrait pictures, take aerial pictures, just to name a few. I made use of these features all the time, depending on what my subject was for my photos. Also, the 10x optical zoom was a really handy tool. I loved to zoom and take pictures of stuff far far away. And let me tell you - this zoom is fantastic!!! You'd be amazed! 

This camera went with me all over the world. I had it in Paris, China, Turkey, Switzerland for my honeymoon and in Brazil. I am putting some pictures I took just for you to see the outstanding photos that this camera took. Please let me know what you think about the pictures okay? I would love to get some feedback on the pictures. I am not a professional photographer .. just someone who likes to take pictures to cherish the memories. This camera does all the work for me! 

Okay so now the for bad or in my case, very sad news. On my honeymoon in 2009, whilst on the train to Torgon from the airport in Switzerland, I dropped my camera. This was when the trouble started. The camera conked out for a little while and I was frantic. Oh no! My honeymoon now start and I'm in a new country that is so beautiful with no chance of taking pictures to scrapbook later! Thank goodness it started working a little while after. Throughout my honeymoon trip it gave me some problems but not too much that I was not able to take beautiful pictures to cherish memories forever.

Then after our honeymoon, my husband and I had to relocate for his job to Brazil. Well I have lots of pictures on my computer from when we arrived to now. However, about two weeks before Christmas my camera started acting up again and this time it would not turn on for a while when I was trying to turn it on. I honestly don't know what the problem is. Well I went home for Christmas and when I landed the camera stopped working completely. I was not able to take any pictures for my entire trip home. Sad. I know!

My husband knows how I love to take pictures and on our trip back to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil we had a stop over in Panama city in the airport. In this airport they advertise Panasonic Lumix camera's all over and all the electronic stores sell them. I debated whether or not to buy another camera one time. It is more expensive than if I buy it on Amazon or in the USA. I knew I was going to Miami around April so I said I'd until we both remember - we'd be in Brasil for Rio Carnival 2010! Now I can't NOT take pictures of that! Our first Rio Carnival. So I went into a duty free store and looked at the cameras. I ended up buying a cheaper Panasonic Lumix to the one I had and loved. I bought the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS42. 

Okay so what choice did I have? I did not want to waste my money and also coming back from a vacation home - after Christmas, I had to be sensible about spending my money all willy nilly! So I bought this camera with the intention of getting the really good love of my life camera when I go to Miami.

So let me tell you about this one. I bought the pink DMC-FS42. Its features include:

• Slim, compact body. This I love about the camera. It can fit snugly in your jeans pocket!
• 2.5 LCD display screen. Trust me this is not nice! I loved my bigger screen in the other camera. But in all fairness it is still okay. Better than a lot of other camera's on the market with much smaller LCD screens.
• 4x Optical Zoom. Come on! After having a 10x optical zoom camera - the 4x does not even make sense using! It is terrible. I will recommend buying a camera with 10x or more zoom capabilities. Trust me it will come in handy. I used it whilst on a boat ride on Lake Geneva to take pictures of lovely houses in the mountains. If I had this 4x zoom I'd be lucky to get a glimpse of the shores of the lake!

Okay I should not ill speak this camera too much before it stops working for Carnival! Actually while I am writing this hub, there is a parade on the street outside my apartment and I just used this camera to take some pics and some video clips. Some of the pictures are dark even with the flash on.
Okay so more on the features of the camera. This camera also offers the same scene modes as the other Lumix Panasonic model discussed above such as: portrait, scenery, night scenery, sunset, starry sky, beach, snow and aerial photo etc. Shameful to say I only just discovered it has the same scene modes. So the pictures I am going to put up now may have been better if I had used the scene modes to take them. So keep that in mind.

Okay so by now I know you are thinking.. WOW these camera's are amazing! Yes they are!

In the end, if you decide to buy this camera, it will all depend on your budget, how many times you plan to use the camera, where you want to take photos and what your subjects will be, type of features you want in a camera etc.

They are both great cameras with 9.1 and 10.1 Megapixel picture quality. So don't hesitate. Go check them out online or in an electronic store near you. I look forward to hearing your comments.