I’ve been looking for a new camera the past couple of months to replace my well worn Canon point and shoot. Originally, I had decided to replace it with another Canon, but after some research I discovered and chose Panasonic’s DMC-ZS7 instead.  I chose the Zs7 because of its highly rated reviews, high definition video, powerful zoom, and ease of use. When I’m chasing the boys around, I don’t have time to worry about settings, modes, etc. I want to point, shoot, and capture awesome images, and I must say that so far this camera has done just that!  Of course not every picture turns out – I’ve had a few blurry ones in the mix, but overall I’m totally impressed with the power packed into this little camera. So far I’ve kept the camera in the iA mode (intelligent auto) because I wanted to start taking pictures immediately! I have not taken any pictures in low light yet – it is a weak point to this camera, but I hope to tonight, so I’ll post those pictures tomorrow.

I’ve taken a couple of videos and once I figured out how to get them off the camera, they look amazing. I used Picasa instead of the included software to download my first batch of photos/videos and then erased those items off of my card via the erase all images check-box in Picasa – MISTAKE! Long story short, by doing this I lost the ability to “find” the videos on the card with the Panasonic software on my computer. Once I reformatted the card, however, I was good to go. So note, you cannot delete items from your card via other programs. To keep everything working properly, you must delete your pictures/videos from the camera’s menu. I’ll try and get a video posted soon.

Here are some pictures I took on a walk the other evening. These pictures are straight from my camera. I simply re-sized them to post here….click on an image to see a slightly larger size.

Here are the guys walking to the creek:

Here is the creek:

Here is Ms. Gary doing her thing – I was REALLY FAR AWAY and thought this shot would NEVER work, but it did!!

Here are the boys goofing off in the field:

I decided to play with a shot to see how the iA would work – testing a dummy dof shot:

My little man in the tall grass. The boys had so much fun running through the grass. Luckily, neither picked up any ticks!

And my favorite picture – J totally hamming it up for the camera! How cute is he?! Once again I was at least 50 feet away from him when I took this shot. LOVE the zoom on this camera!

Other than my video issues which I’ve now figured out, I’m so pleased with my choice of the Panasonic ZS7!